Ambient bacteria in the make room

[RobJP]

I'm currently having a few occaisional problems with ambient bacteria present in the make room.
Can anyone reccommend positive bacteria to add to the milk before rennetting to "get in there first" and restrict the potential for opportunistic bacteria to take hold?
Thanks.

[Cheese Head]

Hello Rob and welcome!

I'm really a starter Cheese Maker and only on my 10th cheese making batch, so maybe others here are better able to help than me. That said, I understand that your problem is that your cheese is occasionally not turning out - tasting well as you believe the bacteria are airborne "opportunistic" rather than from the starter culture bacteria you are adding.

Three possibilities I believe:

• Your "Make Room" is not sanitary enough, can you describe it and level of cleanliness & possible airborne contaminants?
• Your starter culture is too weak, either out of date or not enough?
• Your milk is not sanitary before you start, where are you getting yours from?

What type and volume of cheese are you making and roughly what steps would also be helpful, also why do you think it is the bacteria and not a ripening problem (ie too cool or warm, too humid)?

FYI, to give you a reference point, I am using standard household kitchen with medium normal cleanliness, store bought Pasteurized and Homogenized milk and homemade, not store bought, starter cultures using one of the two recipes in the Recipe Board, and todate have not had a problem.

[RobJP]

Ok. The problem is not failure to make cheese, it's unwanted moulds appearing on the young cheeses.

I'm making cheese everyday using fresh goats milk, thermalized at 65 celcius for 30 minutes and making fresh chevre cheeses.

After about the 2nd day of affination at about 25% humidity 22 celcius (nowhere near ideal I know, it's the amient temperature/humidity in the room, but I'm workiing on an aging closet now) black hairy moulds or a sort of slimy pink spot appear on the cheeses.

The hygene in the room is not ideal, but the reason for this is that built in sinks and desktops are spaced just off the walls, but cannot be moved to clean the space behind.

So I have.
1.Less than perfect hygene conditions.
2.Ambient moulds living in the room.
3.No way to completely remove them

and I am trying to find a way to give them less of a foothold in the cheeses.

Anybody with any good ideas?

[reg]

morning Rob. just curious, what part of the country are you from ?

is there any way of cleaning up or spraying a strong brine solution behind the sinks ? i know that we should stay away from bleach solutions but until you have killed off the bad molds you may have a continuing problem. just a thought

was checking out a site the other day that was building a finishing/aging room and noticed they finish all the block walls with an apoxy paint. i know that mold will grow on basement walls that are painted with regular latex paints. maybe there is something to the epoxy paints that inhibits mold growth



reg
 

[Cheese Head]

Hello again RobJP, OK that helps, last night I spent over an hour reading through books trying to identify the root cause of your problem. Sadly I found nothing describing your unwanted molds. But from what I'v read, I think your problem may initiate with the with the raw milk, which I assume you are using, and that to minimize those problems, it is best to super cool it as soon as possible. I am sending you a couple emails with info that may help.

Also, there are a couple of new members with much more experience that I am hoping will advise.

Pictures of course would always be useful, I've posted a how to resize and attach pictures FAQ here or you could just email them back to me.

[haemish762]

 If you get that black whispy hairy mould on your cheese please do not eat it. In sudfficient doses it can be quite toxic. I am not entirely sure what the mould is called but i was warned to look out for it. evidently it can infultrate around an inch into your cheese. So wiping it down is not sufficient.
 Normally if the ripening temp is too high or the brineing is not salty enough rogue mold can attack.

[RobJP]

Oooh, good point Haemish.

That's probably it.
I'd been having some problems with salt clogging in the holes of my salt shaker (I'm direct salting), I've subsequently changed the salt I'm using but a few cheeses must have gotten through undersalted.

The temperature issue is another one which I'm not satisfied with at the moment, but you have to work with the kitchen you've got..

Oh, and I'm in the Japan part of the country.
Just coming into the rainy season here in Hakuba, so I've got about 3 weeks of constant rain and the 80-90% humidity that comes with it.
Wish me luck everyone.

Cheers.
RobJP

[Cheese Head]

Morning RobJP

I've found that cheeses that I've direct salted the outside by patting with salt have either come out too saltly or not enough and have not made an even rind development. Thus I am now only going with a timed saturated brine bath. The beauty of a saturated brine bath is the salt concentration as it is at maximum (for given temperature), is a standard that I can refer to for all future cheese making. Many cheese making recipes have different brine % solutions and times which gives me no abaility to benchmark. The only caveat is that a saturated brine as per recipe for my first Feta cheese where bathed for 1 week gave way to salty a cheese.

Have fun in Japan, I'm in Houston where it's subtropical and as now summer, we are also very high humidity except I make cheese indoors with AC where my humidity gauge only reads 50%!

I flown through Narita several times but never stopped in Japan, just googled Habuka, wow ski village in mountains of NW side of central Japan with hot springs etc, very nice .

Good luck!

[velward]

I'm confused. If you are making Chevre, there should not be any aging process as it is a fresh cheese and only needs to be wrapped in cheese paper and refrigerated. That is how I treat mine anyway. I have been making Chevre for about 7 years and never had that problem.

[RobJP]

Progress has been made.

I've changed a couple of things and had a marked improvement.
1. Switched to a salt that doesn't clog in the shaker so the salt % is more or less consistent
2. Improved air circulation by directing a small household fan onto the cheeses. This obviously dries out the cheeses a little more than I would prefer, but slightly drier cheeses is far preferable to whole racks of cheese lost to mould.
3. Included EM1 (Effective Microorganisms) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_microorganism in my cleaning routine. Where I can't get somewhere spotlessly clean or shouldn't be using sanitizers like bleach, I'm using a 500 to 1 EM1 solution.
The reasoning being twofold, EM does have a certain amount of cleaning ability just via application, and if there are going to be moulds living in the room (and there always will be) then I'd rather they're EM which I know are non toxic rather than the many nasty alternatives. I'd welcome any opinions or experience on the EM side of things.

As for the aging of the cheeses Velward, It's just for 2 days and what I'm calling Chevre for lack of a better name is 65 gram crottin-esque shaped cheese.

[Lachevriere]

Hi Rob,

Don't know if you are still there...  It sounds like you had mucor, or poile de chat, which means 'hair of the cat' (I should really check the spelling),  I had this quite a bit ten years ago when I started to try to age cheese.  It does give the cheese a bitter taste, and it's true can be dangerous though in some countries they kinda' like some of it on the cheese.  I found that better draining, and then several days of drying in a fridge took care of it.  Proper draining and drying is necessary before aging in high humid conditions.

[DeejayDebi]

Welcome aboard Rob.

[RobJP]

Hi Lachevriere.

Thanks for the reply.
I'm still here and I agree with you on your prognosis.
Things have improved since my last post.
The core of the problem was uneven salting, I am still direct salting, and now I measure the amount of salt into a small flat bottomed sifting cup, and distribute that way.
Humidity was also a problem
I currently try to maintain 20 degrees celcius with around 50% humidity in the make room (I'm using a household dehumidifier during the sweaty summer months), and also have a small electric fan keeping the air moving over the cheeses for a 2 day "drying" period to avoid humidity building up too much.

Hope this helps people out

Cheers,
Rob.

[jackdag]

UV lamp are very effective for unwanted bacteria and germ its called Germicinal Ligth, but care must be taken from direct exposure, and never have UV C ligth near ur Rennet or Culture lolol that will distroy them too