First off, if you could have all these things grow at once on your cheese it would be bland and confused in character.
But these things don't grow all at once on a cheese, any more than they do in nature, or any more than they do when using a blend - your ARN, for example. I think that's a bit of a leap to say that just because we use multiple species on a cheese, it will all be a jumbled, confused and bland mass; ecological succession takes care of that, for the most part. Yet they are found, together.
Basically, I
am using a blend - my own. Instead of PLA or ARN, I'm using DH, geo (yeasts, aromatics, de-acidifiers), SR3, FR22, FR13 (linens, with different properties), MVA (micrococcus), LBC (B. casei) with some thought on desired ends, and using what information Danisco provides to make my best guess.
My 5 cents are less is more.
I agree - it's been my cooking way all my life. This represents a departure for me. That said, if we're using blends of things, then none of us are really minimalists, are we? At the end of the day, my cave is going to balance out to some complex mix of a ton of stuff, anyway.
Not only would you not need so many types of geos, yeasts and b.linens growing on your cheese but also it will not allow you to figure out which are responsible for whatever characteristics you desire or not. They will blend not only in their appearance but also in the flavor and aroma. The best practice is to create a clean and focused cheese and go as simple as possible. Then, switch only ONE thing on your next batch such as the yeast or the B.Linen strain until you find your perfect combination. Using all of them at once is a bit like trying to find a melody by hitting all the keys of a musical instrument simultaneously if you know what I mean.
I do understand what you mean, Yoav, and I had thought of that - in fact, see the beginning of the thread. I do think the only issue with the above - and this has been hard for me to accept, as I love strict methodology, to a certifiable fault - is that it's impossible to do a strictly scientific method, to isolate out each variable, since so much of the character is derived from the interplay of these flora; they don't exist in vacuo.
You are right, in that a morge, rind, etc. are never pure strains, and are made up of tons of strain variations. But again, we do the best with what's available. Eventually, I'll probably just end up in the Savoie. Till then, you like ARN, and I'm monkeying with making up my own ARN, in a word.
Pav did make a great suggestion, which will help to pin down some things - find the specific proteolytic properties of each strain, their specific peptidolytic and amino-peptidolytic properties (e.g., b. casei has known properties...and I'm playing sleuth, only going on what I can find; Fox et al, mentions b. casei "has an active aminopeptidase and a proline-specific peptidase with debittering activity..."). I'm working on getting more detailed info along these lines, so I'm not flying so blind.
This may have been missed - you asked why I was using MVA, and not PLA, and I didn't see the reasoning, since one is a micrococcus, and one, a blend. Did you want to go into this more?