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GENERAL CHEESE MAKING BOARDS (Specific Cheese Making in Boards above) => EQUIPMENT - Aging Cheese, Everything Except Caves => Topic started by: artemis on March 06, 2013, 08:03:39 PM
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I live in a an apartment that doesn't allow me to have space for a real cave. I am pretty new to cheese making (only made 4 so far).
I'm wondering- once my cheese has dried out (couple of days on the counter, then a couple of days naked in the veggie drawer in the fridge) I vacuum seal them up. But now what? It will take WAY longer to age these cheeses in the fridge- is it ok to pull them out in the evenings to hang out on the counter at room temp? Then back in the fridge overnight...
Is it better to have constant, even temperature- or to give them a break from the chill and a chance to get to the temperature they should actually age at... Or do I have to just give up on making cheese that needs to age?
Thanks for any ideas and help.
Adele
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A cooler, a bottle of ice, a bowel of water with papper towels to wick moisture, cheese mats and pooooffff yuh gotta cheese cave ^-^
I can keep my temp at 50 to 55 deg. and a humidity 85 to 90%
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Wow! So a bottle of ice is enough to keep it fairly steady? I guess you'd have to replace once or twice per day?
I'm drying it out and vacuum sealing- so hopefully that means humidity would be less of an issue...
I actually have a cooler that I could use for this... I'm going to try tonight and see if I can't get a fairly constant temp going.
Thank you for the inspiration... nice thing is that I can move it around as needed as well, or keep it in the storage locker.
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I replace my ice (at the moment) once every other day, in the summer you may have to change once a day, or just add more ice.
I keep mine in the coolest room of the house which helps keep the temp down a bit.
If you need less RH just remove the bowel of water and damp paper towel's :)
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Artemis, if you are vacuum bagging then there is no need to worry about humidity.
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I congratulate you for looking for a method that will work in your situation. I think that shows a lot of initiative in a person, "I want to do this and this is what I have to work with". I appreciate that in a person.
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Improvise, overcome and have fun ;D
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Well it's not perfect, but we'll see how it goes. I've got ice packs under a tupperware barrier here in this image. It got the temp to 57 degrees. This morning it had gone up to 61, so I replaced the ice packs with a larger frozen container from the bottom of my freezer. Again separated so it didn't touch the cheese. I'll check the temp again when I get home, but I have a feeling it will cool it down a bit more than the ice packs.
Thanks for the encouragement! Making cheese is too much fun- gotta find a way to keep it going ;)
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When I'm not ageing a Stilton and have other cheese's, the R/H isn't such a factor, the cooler/cave still stays at circa 70 to 75%
if they are vacuum bagged the temp stays the same (50 to 55 deg.) and I am still able to age my blues over the bagged cheese's at the higher R/H.
Yes you have a slight labor intensive thing happening with the changing of the ice bottles, I have been using this for over a year and have never lost a cheese yet ;D
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This is a great idea! I'm going to fill up some 2 liter bottles and freeze right now. Thanks!
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I had one of these containers really a large plastic one with a mat and still use it for some of my smaller cheeses what I did was get a pc fan and a USB cable cut of the end of the USB cable that would go into phone/devices and strip the red and black wires, then strip the red and black wires on the pc fan once that was done just pinch the ends of each to corresponding colour so black pc to black USB and red pc to red USB and then twist them to get a good connection plug into into the wall and there you go the fan works. All you have to do then is some how attach the fan in the box (up to you how) and then depending on the fan you could get some nice cool temps. With a £2 fan I managed to get down 6c.
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I've just converted a hi-fi cabinet into a cheese cave, by fitting a 12 volt Peltier-plate on the rear, in a cutout, with an external PC fan to blow heat off the hot side of the plate. It is switched on and off by a thermostat inside the cupboard. The cupboard has three shelves, with a rectangular section removed from the ear of each shelf to allow air circulation.
The Peltier plate is actually in a vertical duct on the cabinet's rear, open into the cabinet at the top and bottom, so the chilled air sinks through the duct and re-enters the cabinet at the lower shelf. The cabinet is in my garage. I've tested it out with a thermostat to monitor it, but at the moment our temperatures here are very cold so it hasn't switched itself on yet.
I've got three waxed Cheddars in it, and two new Stiltons in a plastic box to keep them moist.
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Do you have pictures we want to see ^-^
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H-K-J loves him some pictures!! ???
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Do you have pictures we want to see ^-^
Here's a view of it.
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How is this working? It looks interesting. :o
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How is this working? It looks interesting. :o
There's a vertical wooden duct at the rear of the cabinet (On the exterior). The top and bottom of the duct open into the cabinet. The duct is otherwise sealed. A 12 volt Peltier Plate is fitted into the rear side of the top of the duct. You can see the cooling fins in the interior shot. I ripped the Peltier Plate out of a water cooler unit.
The plate is switched on and off by a thermostat. Obviously, the COLD side of the plate is on the inside and the HOT side vented to the air behind the cabinet. The Peltier Plate already had a fan attached which removes the heat from the HOT side and blows it away. The fan only runs whilst the Peltier Plate is running.
The couple of solid shelves have a small cutout at their rears to allow circulation of air, and a half inch gap at the front between the shelf edge and the glass of the door. As the Peltier Plate cools the air, the air sinks down the duct and re-enters the cabinet at the bottom.
Warm air (well, not so much "Warm", as less cold than the air entering at the bottom) rises to the top and is drawn into the duct's inlet at the top and re-cooled and a slow circulation of air is set up.
I built it two months ago and did some running tests on it with thermometers and it seems to work, but since building it, the weather has been so darned cold that it hasn't switched itself on because of this. It's kept in my chilly garage.
It will be interesting to see how it performs when the weather gets warm.