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CHEESE TYPE BOARDS (for Cheese Lovers and Cheese Makers) => ADJUNCT - Lactic Surface White Mold (Penicillium candidum) Ripened => Topic started by: kairos on December 17, 2012, 08:00:25 PM
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OK, so my third (or is it fourth) go at St Marcellin.
Last few have been too thick so have not ripened completely in a reasonable time (4-6 weeks).
Ripened with MA011 for about 12 hours.
Geo inc.
Drained for about 24hours at room temp.
Salted and then dried for around 48 hours and then into C10deg.
After about 7 days you can see the result.
I picked off one or two green spots and dabbed with brine/vinegar a couple of days ago and then after 24 hours untouched this is the result.
I am confident that all my equipment was clean - no other batches of cheese are showing this.
I can only assume they were too wet, but they don't & didn't feel it.
Any thoughts??
Very disappointed as these were destined to be Christmas gifts...
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You may find that the white will overcome the blue. Happens a lot with cambozola apparently.
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I feel sorry for you, I know the feeling and I hate it too when something goes wrong. But I have to agree with Al that sometimes the white is so strong that it overgrows and kills the blue. I have wrapped a previous batch of Cambozola even when some of them had blue spots and when I unwrapped them after a couple of weeks they where all clean...
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Really?
I don't think this is a useful blue mold.
When I opened the cheese box it did not have that 'fresh' mold smell (if you know what I mean). Rather, it smelt like damp, rotting carpet!
I am afraid i have given up with these St Marcellin - it was just spreading and growing too fast for me to keep up with.
I found one spot today in another box of completely different cheese. Aaaargh!
I suppose I should not complain - these are my first disasters in 6 months of cheesemaking.
Thanks for the comments.
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Good luck. Maybe you have to clean your cave very well. I clean mine on a regular base with a chloride solution, followed by a vinegar solution to get rid of most of the chloride smell and then I rinse it well with water and keep the cave open for about an hour. The cave itself is placed on a clean and warmed loft, so there won't be much molds drifting around...
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Hi Kairos
Do you make other white mould cheeses, and did these come out OK? I have had that sort of contamination problems you have. It happened when I bought small batches of PC culture that (I later discovered) had been split up from larger sealed containers in poor conditions (like in a kitchen with bread crumbs). So there is another area to check - your starter cultures.
Regards
Alison