Author Topic: questions about aging cheese without refrigeration or electronic controls  (Read 2327 times)

Offline eric1

  • Medium Cheese
  • ***
  • Location: Iredell County, North Carolina
  • Posts: 28
  • Cheeses: 0
  • Default personal text
Obviously, there are good reasons to want to take advantage of refrigeration and electronic controls, but I'm interested in the alternatives.
 What are the possibilities for aging cheese without refrigeration or electronic controls?  I'm thinking cheese was made in lots of places prior to refrigeration and electronic controls.  What are the old school ways of getting by without the aid of modern inputs?  I'm hoping if I work around outdoor temperatures, limiting myself to starting my cheeses at certain times of year that I can get by aging cheeses in a cheap, simple, low-tech way.  Maybe I could just bury some kind of box or barrel to moderate against temperature fluctuations.  Maybe I could place some kind of box at grade and bury it in a whole bunch of straw, basically build something like a hay stack around it for insulation.  Maybe I could add a "solar chimney" for daytime ventilation if that would be helpful.  Any thoughts on what's possible, what challenges I'd have to work around, or ideas for how to make something like this work?

Offline rsterne

  • Old Cheese
  • *****
  • Location: Coalmont, BC
  • Posts: 528
  • Cheeses: 54
  • Too many hobbies - too little time!
Re: questions about aging cheese without refrigeration or electronic controls
« Reply #1 on: December 06, 2022, 06:24:14 PM »
At most places on Earth if you go deep enough underground the temperature is pretty stable for most of the year.... Basically, within reason, the deeper the better.... There is a reason they call where they age cheese a "Cheese Cave"....  We have a cold cellar where most of it is below the frost line.... It is a concrete "bunker" that we use to store our preserves, flour and sugar, and root vegatables.... In the coldest part of the winter frost appears on the upper foot of the walls, and in the summer you can feel the warmth there, because that part is above the frost line, not deep enough for the best stability.... It varies from about 40*F in the winter to 65*F in the summer, which IMO is too big a swing for a Cheese Cave.... We use a converted bar fridge in our Utility Room for maturing our cheese....

Bob
Cheesemaking has rekindled our love of spending time together, Diane and me!

Offline eric1

  • Medium Cheese
  • ***
  • Location: Iredell County, North Carolina
  • Posts: 28
  • Cheeses: 0
  • Default personal text
Re: questions about aging cheese without refrigeration or electronic controls
« Reply #2 on: December 06, 2022, 08:15:16 PM »
Thanks for the feedback!  Some follow-up questions:

Would temperature fluctuation between 40 and 65 (as with your "bunker," for example) be at all workable, even if less than ideal?  Maybe even just for some types of cheeses but not as much for others?

I've never aged any cheese before, so I don't really understand what the issues are.  Are there issues with temperature fluctuation apart from issues with the temperature itself?  In other words, are there issues that come from temperatures fluctuating within a range that could be avoided with a steady temperature at either end of that range?

And even if temperatures fluctuated between 40 and 65 over the course of a year (as in your "bunker"), they'd probably fluctuate a lot less over the course of just a month or two.  My poor understanding is that some hard cheeses can be stored fine even at room temperature after some amount of initial aging time.  Would it be possible to pick a time of year when your "bunker" was as close to the idea aging temperature as possible to make your cheeses, and then after then initial month or two of aging would they tolerate the greater fluctuations well enough?

I assume some types of cheese -- I'm assuming basically the harder the better -- would be more tolerant of less-than-ideal aging conditions than other types.  Is that true?  And is it also true that aging conditions would be less critical after the first month or two?

I know in my climate the constant ground temperature is warmer than would be ideal for aging cheese, so I'm thinking my best bet might be something like a very shallow "cave" that I would only use in the late fall or winter when temperatures just a few inches the surface level would presumably be about right for aging cheese and would stay steady enough for a month or two or three.

Offline rsterne

  • Old Cheese
  • *****
  • Location: Coalmont, BC
  • Posts: 528
  • Cheeses: 54
  • Too many hobbies - too little time!
Re: questions about aging cheese without refrigeration or electronic controls
« Reply #3 on: December 06, 2022, 08:20:21 PM »
I will defer to those more knowledgeable than me to answer your questions.... simply because I have never tried it....

Bob
Cheesemaking has rekindled our love of spending time together, Diane and me!

Offline mikekchar

  • Old Cheese
  • *****
  • Location: Shizuoka, Japan
  • Posts: 1,015
  • Cheeses: 118
  • Default personal text
Re: questions about aging cheese without refrigeration or electronic controls
« Reply #4 on: December 06, 2022, 10:30:39 PM »
I can give you some insight from natural rind cheeses.  That's all I ever do.  I have no idea about waxed or vacuum packed cheeses.

Humidity control is more important than temperature.  There is a certain maximum temperature that you generally don't want to get above and that depends on the cheese.  It's my understanding that some Parmesan producers age at around 21 C, for example.  Queso Cotija is traditionally aged in outdoor sheds with an average temperature of 18C.  I've aged a variety of cheeses at 18-20 C in my peltier wine cooler in the peak of summer.  For a lot of cheeses, that's totally fine.  There is also a certain minimum temperature.  You can age most cheeses just fine at 4-6 C (especially if you get them started at a higher temperature first).  It just takes a long time.

People often think that cheese is aged with nothing growing on the outside.  That's very rare and actually is almost never the case in the first 4 weeks.  It's important to get the correct organisms established on the rind.  What those are depends heavily on the cheese, but normally geotrichum is what you are going for.  It's easy to establish geotrichum at temperatures between 12-18 C, with 16 C being a bit of a sweet spot.  If you go colder, you risk preferring blue mold and/or mildew depending on the humidity level.  My normal strategy (which is common for a lot of traditional producers) is to do an initial  1-2 weeks at about 16 C (if it is convenient) and then reduce the temperature to 12 C.  But that's optimisation, not necessity.

The main thing that will get you is humidity.  Humidity will affect what's growing on the rind more than anything else.  As the temperature goes down, normally the relative humidity goes up.  As the temperature goes up, the relative humidity goes down.  I usually try to tweak my humidity by pushing the temperature up or down a bit.  For people who are doing cheese making as a hobby and have 20 or less cheeses on the go at various stages, I personally think that maturation boxes (read Tupperware...) are the only sane way to go.  It's cool to have a bunch of cheeses sitting out on shelves, but it's always going to be second best.  If you have 100 cheeses at a time all at the same maturation level, then it makes sense to do it, but otherwise making individual micro-climates is always better.

While I say that temperature is not as important as humidity, aging natural rind cheeses is a skill.  It takes practice, experience and knowledge to do it.  One of the reasons why there are very few good descriptions of aging natural rind cheeses is because it's a very touchy feelly thing.  You can't just dial in a humidity and a temperature and say, "It will go well".  It depends on a huge number of variables, many of which change from cheese to cheese and from day to day.  It's not actually particularly difficult, but it's good to assume you'll need to practice for a year or so before you get good at it.  Some experienced people are good enough at it that they forget that it was ever difficult in the first place (or they just had more sense about it than I ever did :-) ), but generally people struggle with natural rinds at first.

I'm at my parent's house right now and they keep their house at 19 C.  My dad and I have been making a fair amount of cheese and aging it for the first week or so at that temperature.  Then we're putting it out in the garage which is currently trending around 10-12 C.  The cheeses are aging *very* well.  The only cheeses you really want to be careful about high temperatures are bloomy rinds, washed rinds and blues because they can seriously get away on you.  After getting the mold started, you're *always* better off aging at too low a temp than too high.  Essentially they will produce a huge amount of ammonia very quickly and basically liquify into a stinky mess.  Other cheeses are fine if you know how to handle the humidity and to control the growth on the rind.

It's actually fairly important to avoid temperature swings when aging natural rind cheeses.  If you put the cheese in the box at 12 C and it suddenly rises to 20 C, the humidity will fall dramatically and the cheese *will* dry out.  In the other direction (20 C to 12 C), the cheese will literally be covered in condensation and you will make a washed rind whether you like it or not.  So while the actual temperature is not that important, it's very important to keep it consistent and only vary it slowly over time.

In the past, I've had lots of success aging cheeses in picnic coolers, cooled only by ice packs.  Normally I'll put in a big bottle of water to moderate temperature swings as well.  If you have a cool environment that sometimes gets warm, I would go with those picnic coolers (or even just styrofoam boxes if you are on an extreme budget).

Offline eric1

  • Medium Cheese
  • ***
  • Location: Iredell County, North Carolina
  • Posts: 28
  • Cheeses: 0
  • Default personal text
Re: questions about aging cheese without refrigeration or electronic controls
« Reply #5 on: December 07, 2022, 01:15:30 PM »
mikekchar, thanks for all that very helpful advice. 

I was assuming that some amount of air movement/ventilation would be desirable, but your recommendation of something like tupperware has me questioning that assumption.  Is air movement/ventilation not important or not even desirable?

And when you talk about individual micro-climates, how would you keep the microclimate in one tupperware container different from another?  I'm assuming the only differences one could control would be in humidity, not temperature, but do different cheeses or cheeses at different stages of maturity benefit from different humidity levels?

Offline B e n

  • Medium Cheese
  • ***
  • Location: Colorado
  • Posts: 92
  • Cheeses: 3
  • Default personal text
Re: questions about aging cheese without refrigeration or electronic controls
« Reply #6 on: December 07, 2022, 06:41:52 PM »
Lots of insulation or lots of thermal mass, both take up space.

Look at very world ways of storing things: The romans would build deep shafts, lined with stone and in the late winter cover them with snow, they could use them for preservation well into the summer. They would also build boxes of flagstone, in the earth, and cover it in snow to keep things refrigerated in the winter time but not frozen, lift the flagstone top and you have a cold chamber. In Orvieto ancient Italians would dig into the soft Vulcanic tufta, harvesting the tufta for bricks to build their homes, the holes left behind became basements or cellars and were used for food storage and aging wine and cheese.

Unless you only want to make cheese in the winter, and only have that short aging period you need to tap into the earth, maybe a root cellar dug in, built then covered with earth. Depending on your location this will hold a given temp within a few degrees.

In Colorado depending on the altitude old mines are between 42° and 52°, humidity of 95%+... They fluctuate less than a couple degrees over a full year. Got an old mine handy? The deeper you go the moister and colder it gets.

In Moab, UT there were a few homes blasted from the slickrock in the 20th century, and a huge egg farming operation did the same thing to give their chickens a cooler place to lay and a temp more suitable for storing the eggs, they stay right around 53° all year.

Running a fridge seems easier.
« Last Edit: December 07, 2022, 07:05:23 PM by B e n »

Offline eric1

  • Medium Cheese
  • ***
  • Location: Iredell County, North Carolina
  • Posts: 28
  • Cheeses: 0
  • Default personal text
Re: questions about aging cheese without refrigeration or electronic controls
« Reply #7 on: December 07, 2022, 08:58:31 PM »
Constant ground temperature in my area is around 62 degrees.  A neighbor has a root cellar that's probably as close to constant ground temperature as I'm reasonably going to get with anything I'd build/make, and it fluctuates between about 75 degrees in the summer and 55 degrees in the winter.

Unless you only want to make cheese in the winter, and only have that short aging period

How impractical would that be?  If I had some kind of shallow earth-sheltered space that maintained a pretty steady 50 degrees in the winter, if I made all my cheese in late fall/early winter (when I also happen to have the most time for cheese making, and the grass is also good in late fall/early winter) would my cheeses be more tolerant of less-than-ideal aging temperatures after they had aged for 2-3 months at closer to ideal temperatures?  Or is 70-75 degrees just totally too warm for further aging of any type of cheese even if it's already matured at better temperatures for 2-3 months first?

Yes, running a fridge definitely seems easier, but I do a lot of things the hard way and enjoy that.  And I'm also just curious what would have been feasible prior to refrigeration.  Old ways of doing things interest me.

Offline Nancy

  • New Cheese
  • *
  • Location: Belleville, ON
  • Posts: 1
  • Cheeses: 1
  • Default personal text
Re: questions about aging cheese without refrigeration or electronic controls
« Reply #8 on: February 24, 2023, 05:55:13 PM »
How is this for low tech.
I have a cold room built in the basement under the cement front steps. I insulated the above ground portion with rigid insulation. It maintains 55F very well. For humidity I cut a square out of the top rim of a 5 gallon pail to fit a muffin fan. Across from the fan I have hung paper towel to act as a wick that drips the water out of the pail onto a 36" long boot tray. I have had it going for two days the humidity has gone from 55% to 70% I am hoping the humidity will continue to increase.  Now if I could just stop shattering my curd ( 4 gallons of raw milk 2 lb cheddar) I'll have a pretty good spot to age cheese.