Advice needed on planning cheese cave

[Seagullcheese]

Hello all. First time poster long time lurker! Brilliant resource this forum I've spent many happy hours reading so firstly, thanks to everyone! 

I'm taking my first steps into cheese making and would really value some advice on planning my cave. I was lucky enough to find someone giving away a wine fridge however it is narrower than a standard fridge and space will be at a premium. It has space at the bottom approximately 220mm wide by 150mm high by 300mm deep and a further five shelves above it which are the same width but 70mm high and 420mm deep. Sadly the shelves arent adjustable.

I would like to try my hand at a variety of cheeses over the coming year; hard (Caerphilly, Cheddar, Tomme, Gruyere, Grana), and soft (Brie, Camembert) and I may even try a blue later in the year if I feel bold enough! I've bought Paul Thomas's book and from a first read most of the recipes are 11.4l/3g milk yielding approx1-1.2kg cheese depending on the type of cheese. I've haven't purchased any moulds yet but have my eye on a couple:

• 90mm (3.54") inside diameter with a height of 130mm (5.19"). The cheese that this mould produces will fit our medium wooden cheese box too and should produce a 1.5lb (750g) cheese.
  
  Internal diameter of 135mm with a height of 65mm enabling it to produce a relatively 'flat' round cheese of over 1/2kg.

I think the main issue for me will be height as I will be limited to 70mm on five shelves. I'm thinking the smaller 90mm diameter mould would be ok for the soft cheese. Would 4 be enough? Would the 70mm height be an issue for these?! The second mould is only 65mm tall so will be fine height wise but not sure about suitability for all the cheese types? Seems a bit small for cheddar, caerphilly,  Would it be better to go for a taller mould and if so what sort of diameter/height would be suitable for the given shelf height?

I intend to shrink wrap the harder cheeses but the soft and blue would presumably need to be in ripening boxes. I've found a nifty one here that I could possibly fit 2 on one shelf https://sistemaplastics.com/products/microwave/medium-plate. A larger blue cheese could fit in the bottom space in a larger box (need to find something suitable).

Anyway, any help would be much appreciated. Happy to post pictures of the fridge if it helps.

Cheers
Mike

[mikekchar]

I don't have time to respond properly right now, but I think your math is wrong with the moulds.  Cheese has about the same density as water, so you just need to calculate the volume of the cheese in ml to determine the weight of the cheese in grams.  a 90 mm (9 cm) mould has an area of 63.62 cm2.  That means that each cm of height will weigh 63.62 grams.  A total height of 13 cm would result in an 827g cheese *but* it would be taller than it is across.  That would be OK for some cheeses, but not for others.  Also, you need about twice the height in the mould to accommodate the drainage of whey.  So that means that generally you can have about 6.5 cm high cheese weighing about 413g (You can probably up that a *bit* for a cheddared cheese, but probably not that much).

For a Caerphilly you *definitely* want at least a 1:1 height to width ratio if it is going to be a natural rind (with geotrichum on the outside).  Well, it's really about the surface area to volume, but I'm still trying to figure out optimal ratios so I'm mostly talking out of the hole in my head ;-)  But anyway, if it's not tall enough, you will get softening of the paste *all the way through* the cheese.  The main problem with this is that you won't get that classic cheddar-like, acidic core that's important in a Caerphilly.  I would try to find a mould that's at least 2 times and maybe 2.5 times the width high.  Also, another quick piece of advice if you are doing cheddars is to find a low flow mould (less holes).  I have a high flow one and the main problem is that it's hard to make a cheese without marks.  This leaves it vulnerable to blue mould.  You can work with it, but you'll probably wish you didn't have to.  If you are not going natural rind, then the shape and size doesn't matter at all as far as I can tell ;-)

[Seagullcheese]

Hi Mike, that's interesting regarding Caerphilly and confirms what I had suspected regarding the dimensions of the cheese effecting texture and paste etc. Caerphilly and cheddar are first on my make list so if necessary I'll just remove a shelf. I've seen another couple of cheap as chips wine fridges come up on gumtree near me so hopefully it won't be a problem for long!

[awakephd]

Seagull,

Welcome to the forum! This is an addictive fattening lovely hobby!

I do think you are quickly going to outgrow that wine cooler. I suspect there will be no substitute for personal experience - each of us tends to focus on certain types of cheese more than others, each of us tends to do different make sizes, and each of us has our own (sometimes rather random) collection of molds ... so I suspect you would find that we all have somewhat differing preferences when it comes to our "caves." So I'd say jump in, make some cheese, and you'll quickly begin to figure out your preferences and needs.