Author Topic: Oxy-San  (Read 2535 times)

jwwbrennan

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Oxy-San
« on: July 08, 2012, 03:29:21 PM »
After monitoring this site for a couple of weeks I made two cheeses this week - Mozzarella and Cambozola. The Mozzarella worked very well and will work better with an extra bit of sea salt. The Cambozola is looking good. This, of course, opened up many questions both general and specific which seem best asked on this forum.

Oxy-San is readily available in this area for making wine. I have searched the site and asked the supplier but remain uncertain if this product is good for milk handling equipment. The label says it contains hydrogen peroxide, disodium salt and magnesium sulphate. Is this good for sanitizing cheese equipment and should it be rinsed off before use? Ordering Star San for international delivery is the next obvious and less appealing option.

How effected is cheese by mildew? I will be cleaning a small amount of it off a wall in a room sharing a corridor with the cheese cave. I never thought of it until the humidity shot up but then realized it has a life of its own.

Great site
Jim Brennan

linuxboy

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Re: Oxy-San
« Reply #1 on: July 08, 2012, 03:57:35 PM »
Interesting you ask about oxysan for dairy from a brewing application, because it was developed for dairy applications originally as a no rinse. This is a classic blend of dry peracetic. Use as normally would for sanitizing.

When you say mildew, do you really mean mold? Think about natural caves, do they have mold?

jwwbrennan

  • Guest
Re: Oxy-San
« Reply #2 on: July 08, 2012, 05:02:17 PM »
I read about oxysan but was uncertain if it is the same as the branded Oxy-San available in Canada. As you were able to identify it by contents I will stick with the readily available Oxy-San. 

I now mean mold. I meant mildew until I looked it up just now to learn "The term mildew is often used generically to refer usually to mold growth, with a flat growth habit." from Wikipedia.

Actually I developed concerns about contaminants making sourdough bread over the years. The kitchen is full of yeasts that could be good sometimes and bad others (commercial yeasts getting into wild yeast sourdoughs) so I thought caves in France might have ideal molds while my basement attracted less desirable types. Obviously not a concern.

Thanks for your help and quick reply.

linuxboy

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Re: Oxy-San
« Reply #3 on: July 08, 2012, 05:38:43 PM »
Well you are absolutely right, there might be undesirable molds. But yeasts/contamination is not the same as molds.

Think about it like this... your goal is to take milk and remove all the water necessary to form a condensed version of the milk, which due to the protein and fat, takes the form of cheese. If you have airborne anything in the air, such as yeast or mold spores, they will land in the milk and that may ruin a cheese. However, after a cheese is formed into a mass, the only thing to concern yourself with is the surface contamination. Here, your level of care matters. If you form the cheese and it has cracks going inside because you did not press cloth well enough or hard enough to form an even surface, the mold can ruin the inside paste. If the surface is conditioned properly, then the mold stays on the outside and its enzymes break up the cheese paste.

There are many molds that will create off flavors. Those are no good. And the difficulty is knowing what you have naturally. That's why many will inoculate with commercial strains to begin with.  And another difficulty is that some molds work fine on low0moisture cheese because the proteolysis rate is slow, and work poorly on high moisture cheese.

Tomer1

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Re: Oxy-San
« Reply #4 on: July 08, 2012, 07:16:01 PM »
I've been making sourdough weekly for two years now and I havent had any contamination which I can associate to it.

jwwbrennan

  • Guest
Re: Oxy-San
« Reply #5 on: July 08, 2012, 08:51:15 PM »
linuxboy: Thanks, that puts it in perspective.

Tomer1: No, I must admit I haven't knowingly either over the years, (frankly I wonder if I would notice if a little of the regular sourdough invaded the rye) but I like to be aware and cautious. I develop my own film (less now than years ago). It has the same time/temperature/contamination thing going so it is probably conditioning. It's tough telling someone the only photographic memories of their special moment were lost in the soup so one tends to err on the side of caution.