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GENERAL CHEESE MAKING BOARDS (Specific Cheese Making in Boards above) => EQUIPMENT - Aging Cheese, Caves => Topic started by: Joanna on August 20, 2009, 11:10:23 PM
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Hi, My name is Joanna and I live in Jamaica where I have a small herd of Nubians. I make and sell chevre, feta, mozzarella, ricotta, yogurt, quark and a bloomy rind cheese. (I have named my bloomy rind cheese after the little hamlet we live in and call it the Tom's Hope.)
I have been ripening it in an old fridge regulated to stay at 54 degrees. I have to put it in plastic boxes to keep it humid enough but can only fit in 3 dozen at a time, not enough to keep up with the demand since it takes 3 weeks to ripen. Next season I want to use a 20 cu ft freezer instead and am debating whether to get a humidifier or just go with a small towel in a bowl of water. I'd like to eliminate the boxes because caring for the cheese would be easier if I could have it on racks. But I'm worried about getting a build-up of condensation on the lid of the freezer which would drip onto the cheese.
Any ideas or experiences with this? It would be greatly appreciated.
Joanna in Jamaica
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Hi Joanna
I know where many posts are so dug out a couple links for you:
- Here is DaggerDoggie's (http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,166.0.html) negative experience with small chest freezer and here's my experience (http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,166.0.html), gave up and sold it the other day.
- Here's Carter's experiences (http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,655.0.html) with an upright freezer and another try here (http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,923.0.html), got condensation dripping on his cheeses.
- Here's Wayne's good experience (http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,1485.0.html) with a commercial sized fridge.
- Lastly, there's a bunch of more detailed Cheese Cave Report (http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,1780.0.html) type info in our Library from linuxboy.
Hope helps, lots more info in this forum!
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Thank you so much John. That'a a BIG help.
Joanna
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Welcome, actually, it is such a popular and important topic that I just created a Board just for Cheese Caves, Humidity & Temp Measurement and Control Devices and moved most of the ones I could find there ;).
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The easy part is making the cheese the hard part is aging and caring for it properly!
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Hi Joanna-welcome to the forum. You certainly live in a beautiful country. I haven't been there since the 70's so I am sure that there have been many changes since then. You sound like you are already quite accomplished in you cheese making with the variety that you make. I won't add to the plethora of information that John has placed in the new cave board, I'll only add that Debi is correct, it's all in the aging!