Boofer's Tomme #2 -- complex rind

[Boofer]

This is my first Tomme effort with a developed rind.

Started on January 2nd, the humidity seems not to budge above 88%. Today I've added a small dish of water to boost the humidity. I believe it should be more towards the mid-90's. That's a question mark for me because I see the early signs of rind wrinkling. Wouldn't that indicate excessive humidity already?

-Boofer-

[Cheese Head]

Boofer, looks great, personally I mistrust digital humidity meters at very high RH.

[Boofer]

Since I bagged my Goutaler #2, I was left with an extra humidistat. I put it in with the one that was already there as a sanity check. I had had doubts about the level of humidity in this minicave with it resting at 88%.

This morning when I checked the two sensors, the original one sat at 88% while the one I added last night registered 98%. Whoa! What a difference.

Time to check the sensors. I removed the batteries from the 88% sensor and found a thin, dried residue of something on one of the battery terminals. Ah ha! I cleaned the terminal and reset all three sensors. I left the replaced sensor in with the Tomme and removed the water dish. I don't believe I really need that much extra humidity in there. I'll know for sure later today after the sensor has a chance to settle down and start giving accurate readings. I do think this LaCrosse weather station system provides fairly accurate, consistent readings (When the battery terminals are clean!).

-Boofer-

[Boofer]

The readings have settled on the humidistat: 56.1F/99%RH

What a difference! I decided to leave the minicave lid slightly ajar to slightly lessen the humidity. I'm looking to grow the b. linens and to minimize the geo presence. It would appear that these current readings are what the box was showing all along even though the sensor didn't accurately reflect that.

-Boofer-

[OudeKaas]

Boofer, may I ask what you are wiping this down with and what your regimen/schedule has been? I assume this is cow's milk - how does it smell now?

[Boofer]

Boofer, may I ask what you are wiping this down with and what your regimen/schedule has been? I assume this is cow's milk - how does it smell now?

I'm trying to follow this advice from linuxboy. Geo 13, SR3, and KL71 in 3% brine wiped about every 3rd day now. I'm trying to develop a rind, but not have it go crazy and out of control. I need the complex rind character to help knock down what I expect will be a little aggressive acid in the paste. So far the temp/humidity have been spot on for what I think I'm looking for. As I look at the reading now, it registers 55.4F/99%.

At the beginning I mixed the blend of three with the brine in a 16 oz measuring cup and when I need to wipe down, I pour a little out into a clean bowl. This helps to maintain the original in the freshest condition. It goes back to the fridge until the next washing.

This is 3 gallons P&H whole milk ($3.69/gal) and 1 gallon raw Jersey milk ($9.99/gal). Again, this comes from an earlier recommendation from linuxboy to get a little extra character and flavor in my cheese without breaking the bank. It puts some enzymes and other raw milk attributes into the cheese which should lend a slightly better quality to the final product than just using the P&H milk. Thanks, linuxboy. Good stuff!

Any smell is negligible right now. Perhaps too early in the process.

-Boofer-

[linuxboy]

Boof, mate, that 99% RH will really crank up both geo and b linens to the point where it will grow really fast. Way too fast. You'll get a wrinkly, complex, geo-based rind if you go this route. Overall, you have a good approach, but you need to get the humidity back to a most 90%. The species have to be stressed, or one will take advantage and overwhelm. whey geo overwhelms, it tends to form this wrinkly type rind.

[Boofer]

I hear you. I'll try to get it down. I'm not sure how because the box is staying pretty dry. I've swabbed a little moisture from the cave walls, but not so much. Looks like I need to just remove it from the box and put it on the cave rack. That should help bring it down. I don't want the wrinklies.

I thought I had read earlier that you recommended high 90's to develop b. linens. No? Now that I think back on it, what you said was that it was a balancing act between the geo and b. linens. If I bring the RH down to around 90%, that should allow the b. linens to grow okay but will not foster out-of-control geo.

-Boofer-

[ArnaudForestier]

I hear you. I'll try to get it down. I'm not sure how because the box is staying pretty dry. I've swabbed a little moisture from the cave walls, but not so much. Looks like I need to just remove it from the box and put it on the cave rack. That should help bring it down. I don't want the wrinklies.

I thought I had read earlier that you recommended high 90's to develop b. linens. No? Now that I think back on it, what you said was that it was a balancing act between the geo and b. linens. If I bring the RH down to around 90%, that should allow the b. linens to grow okay but will not foster out-of-control geo.

-Boofer-

Hey Boofer, not to jump in, and certainly not to provide inaccurate information on Linux's help, but my memory of it is that high 90's will yield b. linens predominance, 90-95 geo and linens will duke it out, but in the high '80's, others - Kluveromyces, mycodore, mycoderm- stand a fighting chance with the geo.  So that if the concern was too much wrinkling from geo., perhaps 85-88 would be a better strategy?  (Not sure if LB is available, as I understand he's traveling - if so, I deign to him, ever and always, of course).

Sorry, just found it, don't recall where I saw it (lord...been up all night, if it's in this thread, that's my excuse), but from lb:

High 80s means b linens will grow, but slowly. Other molds easily outcompete with it. when you're at 90-92%, the b linens and geotrichum go back and forth in the first 10 days, fighting for dominance. But at 85-88%, b linens will be slow and spotty, makes for a mottled kind of look.

Here's a good rule of thumb... in the mid to high 80s, yeasts, mycodore, and mycoderm can compete with molds. When you get to 90-95, they don't compete as well. When you get to 95, they can hardly compete with b linens and geo. When you get to 98, even geo can't compete well with b linens

[linuxboy]

right, what happened here is that you got that great geo bloom right away, and right away the humidity got up to full saturation, or thereabouts. It's true that b linens will outcompete at 98%, but if you have a huge geo bloom first, then the b linens shows up a bit later because geo is consuming all the food. That's why I have such difficulty with explaining rinds, it's because it depends on the amount, method of inoculation, air exchange (cave is not the same as aging container), etc. It all makes a difference.

Now that you already have the wrinkly rind, that means a really huge geo bloom. So you can either let it die off and let other molds colonize the geo over time, or you can scrape it off and start over. You can also try to kill it off with salt, but there's already a thick mat of the geo on the cheese, so it's not that easy for other species to penetrate it. If you want to avoid this in the future, use less geo (or none at all, rely on yeasts to de-acidify the surface), and keep the humidity down to 85%, maybe 90 max. That first week of rind formation is rather critical. After it, it's more of a maintenance job.

[Boofer]

What if I were to stop using the geo-SR3-KL71 wash and just began misting with SR3? Would the b. linens be able to re-establish superiority?

It's out of the minicave now, on the cave rack. The humidity seems to be down to 87%(55F).

With the Tomme out "in the wind", so to speak, my Beaufort in its minicave is no doubt subject to additional rind culturing that I hadn't intended. Perhaps with the simple brine that I'm giving it, it will weather the abuse.

-Boofer-

[Boofer]

Okay, I've taken the cheese out of the minicave and placed it on its rack on the cave shelf. The humidity is resting around 88%, down from 97%. I believe the wrinkles aren't too severe presently. Hopefully I've arrested the geo growth at this point.

Last night before going to bed, I put a knife-point of SR3 in a small spray bottle with distilled water.
 
This morning I wiped the wheel down with a light brine, dried it, and misted it with the SR3. I do see some b. linens color coming through and I hope to help it get the upper hand in the geo-SR3 struggle. For me this is all new territory. I have no clue what I'm doing, truthfully. I am starting out with guidance from linuxboy, but then I'm trying to figure out what to do next. Having never been here before, there is some apprehension-trepidation-fear factor.

But what the heck, might as well try something. If it doesn't work out down the road, I'll have a better sense of what NOT to do the next time I pass through here.

If you learn by making mistakes, I have to be one of the better-educated cheesemakers.

-Boofer-

[OudeKaas]

Wow, so you basically wiped it back down to the rind, if I read your photos correctly? Is this standard practice for this process, I wonder, or are you just looking to knock back the geo as much as possible to give the b. linens a better chance?

[Boofer]

This is only the second washed-rind cheese I have done. Even though linuxboy gave me a box of matches to light my way, I'm still pretty much in the dark. Where does the geo start and end? It apparently is the reason for the wrinkles. I guess I let it get a little too far along. I started out wiping with a broth of geo, kl71, and SR3 with humidity around 97%. Once I was clued in, I took the cheese out of its box (minicave) to reduce the humidity. Then I stopped wiping with the broth and began emphasizing the SR3 by misting it every other day.

Today I wiped it down with a straight salt brine, dried it off, and sprayed it with the SR3. I returned it to the shelf in the cave where the humidity has maintained at 88%.

The growth on the rind has not been that thick so when you say "wiped it back down to the rind", there wasn't much to knock back. As linuxboy has said numerous times, there are a lot of different ways to build Tomme rinds. I am trying to develop a quiet little rind that is predominantly b. linens. I am hoping that I can move past the initial geo wrinkling problem, dry the rind out a bit, and have the rind contribute decent flavor and character to the paste.

It's a learning experience.

-Boofer-

[Boofer]

I've continued to mist the b. linens exclusively every day or so. The temp/RH has been consistent around 53F/88%.

The pics are from Feb 2. Yesterday I asked my wife to "smell my cheese", please. She has better olfactory sense than me. I then asked her to characterize what she smelled. When she seemed perplexed about what she was smelling, I tried to gently give her a sense of direction: dirty socks, body odor, etc. She didn't jump in with that description, but instead said "It just smells bad...like something rotten." Whoa! Eh, what does she know?! 

I'm sure, down the road, she'll be knocking me down to taste this Tomme. Just you wait. Hey, there's a line here!

I think I've managed to curtail the wrinkle growth. I think the combination of the reduced humidity and changing to only SR3 as a rind treatment is working.

I've got some good red color coming out now. The rind (except for the wrinkles, of course) is pretty close to the ambiguous rind I was trying to achieve. Low in depth and not plain crazy.

-Boofer-