Holding Plate for Cooling Cave Room?

[Minamyna]

Hello Everyone--
Shall we go further down the rabbit hole in the cheese making process?

So I REALLY REALLY want to make muenster and camembert/ brie. I do not have a 45 degree, 85%  humidity place to store it. What I do have is a sunken pantry/ basement /cave, unfortunately it's pretty constant at 60 degrees. It's easily 8 feet deep, not cold enough. So I have been considering what to do? Put an a/c unit down there? My Dad suggested I build a wall sectioning some of it off out of blue board insulation and but a DC holding plate(like from a boat). Then I could have a substantial area with shelves to hold cheese. I could also build a small one on each side so I could have different aging temps/humidities....

Any thoughts?

[linuxboy]

Have you tried using a plastic storage box as a chamber to solve the humidity issue? For the temp issue, you can put the plastic box in a cooler that has ice packs in it. Should work, but it's only good for a small scale.

[iratherfly]

Use a container to lock in the 85% humidity. The bottom of a wine cooler that is set to white will be about 45F. If you don't' have one, the top shelf of most fridges can do this temp, through usually they are set to about 40-41F

[Minamyna]

I think these things will work for short term, but I am looking for a long term as many cheese as I want solution. I could use a fridge, but I think a small room would suit my needs better.

[iratherfly]

An aging container could work long term. In fact, I have been to professional affinage facilities and seen them using these containers just as I do. There is another reason for using them when you have multiple types of cheese maturing in the same room and that is to prevent cross-contamination (so that your white Camembert bloom won't grow on your Tomme or orange Muenster rind for example, or so that if you have contamination of pathogen in one batch, it wouldn't spread to the rest of the cheese in the room). They are also a lot easier to individually humidity-control so you can effectively have in the same room in different boxes cheese that ages in 90% RH and other cheese that matures at 65%RH without needing a new room or fridge.

A good wine refrigerator can help you. Unlike kitchen refrigerator, wine coolers are designed not to dry the air and to keep moisture in so that the wine cork wouldn't crack and spoil the wine.