Made my first Muenster on New Year's Day (easy to keep track of the date!), and the second on 1/4/11. Used recipe from Ricki Carroll's book, with the exception of adding a little Geo to the spray mix (she'd called for only B. linens) based on advice in various Muenster threads here. No inoculation of the milk itself, just the outside spray.
Everything was going spiffily until 1/10, at which point I discovered that some lovely blue mold had started growing on Muenster #1 in addition to the cool orange and yellow bits of the B. linens. *sigh* I'm sure it was entirely my own fault, since I probably cross-contaminated like crazy whilst busy giggling over my Stiltons at the same time. Muenster #2, however, showed no signs of blue, even though it was in the same mini-cave as #1.
Foolishly, I left #2 in there, while performing surgery on #1. Also foolishly, I didn't use any vinegar after surgery, only a brine wipe, so have spent the last week fighting blue on both of them. Finally got a clue last week and started with a salt/vinegar wash (in addition to yet more surgery!), and it seems to be under control now. (I resprayed both at that time with the B. linens/geo.) Both now have lots and lots of B. linens growing and hardly any blue. I figure as soon as I see them both blue-free for about three days (now in separate mini-caves, finally), I'll go ahead and vac bag them.
Somewhat oddly, a week ago the bits that I cut out and tasted were pretty good. Yesterday, though - YUCK! Guess stinky feet and blue cheese don't really go together well.
In any event - here are some pics of my poor baby #1. As you can see, I had very poor curd knit from the start, which certainly didn't help with the blue mold. I did eventually make a third Muenster last week, inoculating the milk rather than spraying. I meant to mold that one under whey, but completely forgot, so I got funky curd knit on that one too. It is, however, nicely isolated from the others and happily chugging along - I wanted to see the differences in the end results between spray and direct inoculation.
