Coolbot - Air Velocity a problem, retarding rind development

[ArnaudForestier]

Hello all,

I'm just trying to start up again, considering different cave options.  I have a coolbot which worked well in cooling down my 600 s.f. dedicated cheese cave.  Candidly, however, I'll admit the Abondances in the cave were sluggish in rind development.   They approached where they should be, but it was long past the expected affinage time.

I'm reminded of Oude Kaas's experience.  He was getting good growth in his sub-Brooklyn-basement cave, but called it "sterile" once he had gotten the coolbot to work properly.  From his photos, that seems accurate.  I think he took these latter cheeses with him when he and his wife headed north to Upstate NY.

So, just asking, for people who use a coolbot, what has been your experience in this area? 

Ideally (like all of us don't dream of it, probably), I'd love passive cooling and a fully underground cave, but that's not going to happen.  Next would be a low-profile/low-velocity cooling system, or radiant piping and a coldwater or water/glycol mix reservoir.

[TravisNTexas]

It would seem you could put a wall in front of it or box around it from floor to ceiling with only the very bottom and the very top open for airflow.  If this were just a cold plate that would work to cause flow of cold air down to the floor before entering the cave proper and warmer air to flow into the top.  Unfortunately most window airconditioners are built "upside down" for some reason, with warm air being brought in through the bottom of the face of the unit and cold air exhausted through the top of the face of the unit.  You might need to duct the cold air output downwards below the face of the unit to get something like this to work.  Is should signifacantly reduce the turbulance in the cave, but not sure that even that reduced air movement would not impede rind development.  Just thinking outloud here

[ArnaudForestier]

Still thinking on this, thinking probably crazily on a radiant cooling for at least my natural rind, mould-based cheeses (primarily, tommes).  I'd thought about this with brewing, building an A/C DIY cooling loop for insertion into a home-based "Yorkshire square" fermentor.  That's relatively easy, however, as I'm not building a network of pipes, and in addition, this would be for smaller "caves."  The dehumidifying with each compressor cycle still bugs me (though my cave in the pic below did achieve 97% RH, fine), but more the air flow over the cheeses is a sticking point.  Maybe some kind of linen or cheesecloth over the cool air inlet?  Anyway, yes, late, and yes, monomaniacal is long my nature, lol.

Realized I never posted this pic, Travis.  I think it might be in the vein you mentioned?  OVC duct up to a horizontal duct, covered by....yes, ridiculous - a literal sock.  The horizontal piece had several holes in it, and this sock diffused the incoming air more.  My thought was that by mounting this on the ceiling, and using a distribution piece like this, I had a better chance to air issues to work (it was very oversized, the A/C). 

At any rate, as it was.  First one is hard to make out as it's really foggy, but you can see the vertical piece coming from the A/C.  The Crane Teardrop US humidifiers were in place first, before I went with John's/Perfect Cheese's fogging system (which rocked - happy for his retirement but bummed I can't work with him now).  The last one better shows the ceiling piece.  And the awesome, sanitized, em, "cheese cave sock":