I just started making cheese, so I had a few questions. I tried looking around to see if they were already answered, but didn't see anything, also a lot of the wiki and FAQ links are broken.
The recipe I have for cheddar says it's supposed to be a 10 degrees C, while most of the other recipes I have want 13 degrees. Is that 3 degrees going to make a difference? Can I just ferment it longer?
I cloth-banded the cheddar, but the video I saw seemed to show two layers of cloth. I only did one. How thick is the banding supposed to be?
Will the mold that grows on the banding affect the other cheeses if they're all waxed?
I started an Emmentaler a while ago, and there're parts on the rind where slightly orange blotches are - is that okay? I tried removing them, but they seem a little deep. I don't want to destroy the rind to get rid of a non-issue if they aren't a problem. It's at the eye-development stage, and I'm going to wax it in a few days.
I saw mention of oiling these cheeses before - can you always do that before waxing? Can I just use any food oil? Is there any drawback to doing it? I just rinse it off with the brine wash before waxing, right?
A lot of recipes call for something like "mesophilic culture" and some call for specific things like "M11 mesophilic culture" - why can you get away with a generic culture in some recipes, but other ones want a specific one? What do the codes mean? How do I know what a C101 vs an M11 is?
What happens if I cut the curds too small?
Why isn't there a cheese emote?
Sorry if these questions are answered somewhere else.