Just anecdotal, but for some reason washed curd cheeses seem to be prone to gas production. I have no idea why (or if I'm even correct). Additionally, alpine cheeses are famously prone to late blowing and its the source of much research. Why is late blowing a problem for alpine cheeses and not for cheddar, I wonder... I'm sure late blowing happens in cheddar, but it's not considered to be a big industry issue as far as I can tell.
My first alpine cheese has blown. It started expanding after about 2 weeks and after about 6 weeks it was about as big as it was going to get. It's the first cheese that has ever blown on me to that extent. I over pressed that cheese and I think that's the reason. But why this cheese and not other cheeses I've over pressed? My washed curd cheeses also often have evidence of gas production (small eyes). My non-washed curd cheeses almost never do. Why?
I have a bit of a theory. I think it's partially due to the consistency of the paste. Washed curd cheeses and alpine cheeses are high calcium cheeses. The paste is very pliable. Caldwell says that the reason you need to make big cheeses if you want good eye production is because CO2 escapes from cheese. In order for eye development to happen, you need to trap that CO2. I think the paste consistency is a big part of that.
However, I think there is more to it than that. Because even if the cheese doesn't blow, if it were producing CO2, you'd see the plastic blow up in vacuum packed cheeses. That isn't that common. I've also been doing some experiments with yogurt. The pH that milk coagulates due to acid is dependent on temperature. So I realised that if I make yogurt at a high temperature, it should have a higher pH. So a thermophilic yogurt made at 50 C will have a pH of around 5.3 or 5.4 if you catch it right when it coagulates. A mesophilic yogurt made at 39 C will have a pH of about 5.0. I've been playing with that and... I discovered that my high temperature mesophilic yogurts produce gas, while low temperature ones don't. It *could* be that the higher temperatures favour the gas producing bacteria, but I actually think it's the pH. I can actually completely kill off gas producing bacteria if I make acidic yogurt 10-15 times in a row (one of the problems I've had in maintaining complex mesophilic mother cultures).
And then couple that with my recent realisation that starter cultures *survive* and *grow* in cheese (which blew my mind)... And I think I have a decent working theory. High calcium cheese have a pliable paste that traps CO2. They also maintain a high pH (due to the buffering capacity of the curds), which favours gas producers. And the result is that they sometimes blow (especially if you intentionally add a gas producing starter culture -- but probably it can just get cross contaminated from time to time). This will happen more often if the cheese has a high moisture content (and therefore high lactose level). Thinking about it, I suspect this is the reason for the traditional overnight ferment before salting in Gouda style cheeses. If you completely ferment out the lactose early, it won't blow later.
Of course, like I said, I actually have no idea. This is just my current internal working model of what might be going on.
