Trouble shooting advice please

[LantGladstone]

Hi-- I'm mostly a newbie.  A few months back, I posted some questions regarding some overripe camemberts I was making (slip skin, very liquid, lots of ammonia) that were also over salted (to the point of being inedible).  I think people on here were concerned that I was using bad recipes and didn't know what I was doing (which was true) and suggested I read Caldwell's "Mastering Artisan Cheesemaking".

My longterm goal is to make a Camembozola but I figured I'd follow Blue-Brie recipe in Caldwell but just omit the blue until I can get the bloomy part to work.  I liked this process because she drains through cheese cloth (draining was a pain when I had made bloomy rinds before) which gives me a drier curd and I can fit all of the curd from my 4L make into my cheese mold.  It gives me a slightly taller cheese with a lower surface area/volume ratio than a typical Cam.  I also liked it because it uses cream which should slow the ripening down. Previously I had used brine to salt and got very salty cheese so this time I sprinkled the salt.   I used flakey salt but used the same volume of salt as in the recipe. I also decided to ash (with a little salt because I was concerned that flakey salt would have given me too little mass of salt) the surface to give the white mould a favourable pH.  Also I added the P. Candidum and the Geo directly into the milk when I added the culture (Flora Danica) instead of spraying because I thought it would be easier this time.

After cave aging for 9 days I had some nice white mould growth (I'll upload some pictures) and a strong smell of ammonia in my aging box.  The box was quite humid but the cheese was nice and dry on the surface but not soft at all (very firm).  I was concerned about the smell so I then wrapped in cellophane and aged in the fridge for 2 weeks.   I was concerned that the cheese wasn't softening so I unwrapped and opened the cheese.  (see additional pictures)  I expected incomplete action by the white mould but was surprised to find that the entered paste was crumbly and almost looked like an acid set and there was no softening at the surface at all.  I tasted it and it was very unsalted with hints of mild cheddar and mushrooms.  It melted if I microwaved it.

What do you think?  Simply just aging the fridge longer wouldn’t have done it, right?  Should I have salted more?  Or increased the ageing time in the cave before wrapping?   Or is there something else that I'm not thinking of?  What do we think about the moisture content? 

Thanks so much!!!!

[Gregore]

Yes it looks almost like an acid set cheese , and thus the ph got quite low . If you make this recipe again , take off about 20 % of the total time from molding to salting .  And salt with 1.8 percent by weight . When you start making it blue salt at 2.5 % minimum, it helps keep the pc and geo in check.

Acid set cheeses need much more time than 2 weeks to get soft all the way through , and that also goes for cheeses where the ph drops below 4.7 or so .

  I would suggest  on this cheese another 2 to 3 weeks .

 i just made some charouce ( lactic acid set). And they aged for 5 or 6 weeks  they were about 3 inches by 3 inches

[LantGladstone]

Awesome.  Thank you!  And I guess another lesson is that if I had invested in a pH meter, I would have known a bunch of weeks earlier.

[Dorchestercheese]

This all sounds like my same experience. 
I let the mold get a good cover on the surface in th cave. Patted it down wrapped it in breathable cheese wrap and put it in the fridge. Waited 2 months and it was soft and nice to eat.  I noticed that this and other cheeses go through more intense ammonia times.  Maybe more aging it will mellow out. Also let it air out for a while before cutting.

[LantGladstone]

Hi.  I tried again.  I salted much earlier (previously I drained overnight, this time I did salting at the end of my making day), I doubled the amount of dry salt, and I aged longer after wrapping (4 weeks).   

I pretty much got exactly the same thing...crumbly, not very salty, somewhat tart, the rind comes off like a paper.  Not Camembert-like.  If you notice, in the corners we get a little ripening maybe?

Any ideas?

I do have a theory and you can probably figure out what I'm thinking based on my following question:  When you wrap the camembert and put in the fridge, do you put it in a humidified box?  So my question is, do you think it is a moisture issue?  If that is the case, wouldn't we see it dry from the outside as opposed to having it look pretty much uniform?

Conversely, do you think it might be a geo issue?  Notice the rind is quite wrinkly  before I wrapped it.  Would that make it dry and crumbly?

Thanks again!

[Gregore]

I would say that the curd is too dry and maybe too acid . Is the taste sharp ?

There are some cheeses in France served just like this , so go ahead and eat enjoy it .

It should be good shaved into salads and on broiled open face sandwiches.  Yum.

if your still draining in cheese cloth  maybe drain 50 percent less .  The curd should have quite a bit of moisture in it at salting.

[LantGladstone]

Gregore--yes it is mildly, but not overly, sour.  That's why we thought it was acting like an acid set and why we decided to salt much earlier and use more salt.  And yes it is somewhat crumbly and dry.  Before draining it was pretty wet but yes you are right, draining through cheese clothe dried it out considerable.

What was the opinion of dealing with it when it was wrapped in the fridge?  Should it be humidified?

And what did you think of the wrinkliness of the skin before I wrapped it?

Could the ash be in anyway messing things up?

Thanks!!

[Gregore]

Some how I missed this , and now I can not see the pictures .

But I will go on what I remember .

Acid set cheese needs to bottom out on the acid curve , it does not have to hit full bottom but it does need to be near the bottom of that curve .  Then most of the types I have had have a curd that was well drained . They can suffer from a type of slip skin where the cheese ripens really fast under the skin but the skin gets hard enough to hold together and not slip but there  is a soft running hollow area right under it .  This means it had too much moisture .

Wrinkle skin is geo  it can have a harsher taste on cheeses that are too wet . Or at least that is my experience

I would not give up on this cheese because if you perfect it , you will find it a very diverse little cheese and can be aged out even after cutting till it is dry like a parmasean and grated as such.

Also that sour taste when it is young is part of its charm , if you get the moisture just right it will go away just around the time it is ripe .