My first hard cheese (Lancashire)

[mikeradio]

I finally have my cheese cave home and running.

After 2 days of air dry I placed the Lancashire in the cave.

I am still working on the humidity control, I am not sure if the one I am using will work that well.
It seems to have no differential , I set it to 80% humidity and either the humidifier is on or the duhumidifer is on,
there is on time when both are off.  So it is like they are fighting back and forth.  Does anyone know of a better control?

[kookookachoo]

To say that I am jealous would be an understatement!   It's at the top of my Christmas list.    

[darius]

Why do you have both a humidifier and a dehumidifier in that unit?

I plan just a humidifier, and an occasional open door if the humidity gets too high.

[mikeradio]

I am also planning to cure meat so I thought when I load it up with sausage it would need to remove moisture in the begging and then
as it dries out start adding in moisture.

[darius]

That makes sense. But if you just have cheese in it now, why run both?

[MrsKK]

Okay, I'm drooling over that cheese cave!

[mikeradio]

Thanks everyone

My thinking of running both a humidifier and a dehumidifier is that on rainy days the humidity will reach 100% and the dehumidifier will lower the % humidity.  My cheese cave is in a unheated garage, so it is really affected by our weather.  I m still learning and monitoring the temps and humidity, I
may have to make changes as I go.

I did find a really neat temp/hum logger.  You plug it into your computer USB port and configure all the settings, then place inside your cave and it will log the temp and humidity at the intervals you set like every 5 min, then you plug it back into your computer and down load the data.

Heres a screen shot of the graph from last night, set at 30min intervals, Red is Temp and Blue is humidity.



Heres a link to the logger

http://www.thermoworks.com/products/logger/usb_loggers.html

[9mmruger]

Wow, that looks wonderful.  Where did you get your PID for the Rival.  I have two of those cookers and would be interested in trying this method rather than my sink bath and canning kettle, which works okay anyhow.

[OlJarhead]

Very nice -- I noticed no cheesecloth.  Is this because of the mold type?

[mikeradio]

The PID is working very well to control the temp of the milk.  It is a Sous Vide controller from Auber Instruments, it is designed to heat to the set temp and then hold it there for hours, so when I need to increase the temp I have to keep bumping up the temp on the controller.  Other PID you can program to rise the temp by 15 degrees and take 30mins to do it in.  The Sous Vide one is in a nice plug and play package, no wiring needed.

Here's a link

http://www.auberins.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=13&products_id=44

Yes the Kadova molds have a built in netting so you don't need any cheese cloth, they are expensive, but a very good quality

Mike