Humidity is too high. Temperature is a bit too low (raising it will help with humidity). You don't have good yeast coverage. Also, eventually the poor knit of the cheeses will almost certainly be taken over by blue.
Left to right: You've got a lot of mildew and a big spot of bread mold. The yellow stains are from where you washed off the blue previously (no idea why it stains blue). The bright red is probably b.linens or related (vibrant color). However, it may also be a red yeast. I sometimes get that in the fall when the humidity is too high. The box is too big for the cheese, but you haven't dried out the box which is causing most of your problems. The white may be geotrichum, but it looks like the cheese has been over washed, so it never got established.
In the second box again a bit of mildew. Stains from washing the blue and that red again (hard to say what it is without knowing a bit more history of the cheese). The cheese should never touch the side of the box. Probably the box is a bit too small for the cheese, but hard to say because I can't see how tall it is (the box should be 2/3 empty). The brown mark is a stain from where you washed off mildew previously.
In the third box, got some nice geotrichum going there, I think. Looking positive. The grey spot looks like mucor to me. You'll want to brush it off. Box is *way* too small for that cheese.
That's kind of generic advice. It's really common for people to ask "What did I do wrong", but not say what they did :-) It makes it hard to answer. However, I've been in that situation. It's hard to even say what you did because when you are starting out, it's really difficult to know what's important to mention. If you knew what was important, you probably wouldn't be having trouble in the first place!
Let's back up a bit and talk about what makes a good environment for a natural rind. This is actually a big topic and there are many viable strategies. I'm only going to talk about one strategy (the one I use). I feel confident with it because many people have followed my advice and make much better cheese than I do. So I think the advice is sound when followed by someone with more sense than me
The first thing to understand is that stuff grows on cheese. You can never have a "clean rind". It just doesn't happen on a natural rind. Maybe if you vacuum pack, or wax or PVA coat your cheese, but never when you are doing a natural rind. Think of it like a garden that you just freshly ploughed, but didn't add any seeds.
At first nothing grows. You didn't plan any seeds. Also, you've either just dunked it in salt water or actually covered it in salt. Very little wants to grow on that. Usually it's also fairly acidic. This, again, limits what will grow on it. Finally, there is very little food. Most of the lactose (milk sugar) was consumed by the acidification culture. The only thing that a micro-organism can readily eat is lactate (essentially lactic acid, but that's more chemistry than I want to get into). That also filters down the things that will want to grow.
The main things that will grow are yeasts (geotrichum being one, but there are a few other salt tolerant yeasts), and some molds (penicillium, bread mold and mildew are common). But that's about it. Some of these things are super common: geotrichum, bread mold and mildew. Others are not. Penicillium candidum is not going to show up in the wild unless you live in Brie and probably not even then
Some forms of penicillium roqueforti show up, but are super rare -- to the point where finding a new location tends to be celebrated in the newspaper. So typically when you first start off, unless you added seeds, you are going to get greotrichum (which is white/beige), bread mold (starts white and turns blue) and mildew (black with grey edges). There are a few others, but they tend to show up later.
Trying to keep your rind clean is always a mistake when doing a natural rind with this strategy. There will always be something growing on your rind. Again, imagine leaving your freshly ploughed garden. It will be empty for 2 weeks and then it will be filled with weeds. If you pull all the weeds, it will be filled again in 2 weeks. If you dump herbicide on the garden, it will stay clean until the rain washes the herbicide away and then it will be filled with weeds. Trying to weed your empty garden is a waste of time. You can't win.
But, why aren't gardens always filled with weeds? It's because other plants are living in the garden. They compete for water, nutrients and sun. They continually give off chemicals in the soil that stop other plants from growing. They are there 24/7 working for you to keep the weeds away. This is exactly what we want when we are doing a natural rind.
So you kind of have this choice when doing a natural rind. Do you want geotrichum candidum, bread mold or mildew covering your cheese?
It's not much of a choice. The other amazing thing about geotrichum is that it actually alters the surface of the cheese and makes it more difficult for other molds (especially bread mold and other blue molds) to hang on. It is absolutely ideal for protecting our early rind.
There is a problem, though. We have to plow the field appropriately to allow geotrichum to get started. Geotrichum likes fairly warm environments (16 C is perfect). It likes humid, but not *too* humid environments. It likes flat, straight, unblemished surfaces. It does not like too much salt.
Bread mold (and other blue molds) like lots of humidity, cool (8-10 C) environments and lots of crags and cracks. Mildew (the black spots) likes even more humidity and cool temps.
Another problem is that Geotrichum can tolerate about 3% salt, while blue molds can tolerate 8% salt. It's commonly advised to wash natural rinds to get rid of mold. Often people use a strong brine because it will keep all the mold at bay. But... geotrichum can only grow in 3% salt while that bread mold is happy at 8% salt. So the more you wash with lots of salt, the more you are selecting the bread mold to grow.
Knowing all that, the first thing you need to do is to make a perfectly smooth cheese for aging. And that's the first part of what you can improve. Honestly, I would just keep making a lot of cheeses and eating them young until you master your acidity control and pressing technique (another log post...). Even a few cracks are enough to rob the cheese for long term aging potential.
The next thing is to ease into the cold storage. After you salt, make sure to leave the cheese to dry at warmer temperatures, but also consider putting it in its maturation box and leaving it in a cool, but not cold place for a few days just to let the yeasts get started. You'll know when it happens because it will start to smell like something is fermenting -- wine, or bread yeast smells will show up. Also, often the rind will feel kind of slippery or slimy even if the cheese is not too humid.
The next thing is to try to keep your cave quite as cold as you are. It's not the end of the world, but if you do it at those temps you really have to back off on the humidity.
Next, flip your cheeses every day without fail in the first 3-4 weeks. If you have to go away, wrap your cheese in paper towels, put it in a zip lock bag and put it in the normal fridge to slow everything down as much as possible. Then bring it out, warm it up to room temperature and then back into the cave. This will allow the yeasts to wake up.
When you flip your cheeses, wipe out your boxes so that they are bone dry. It's great to have a *little* condensation build up on the box over night, but they need to be bone dry each day. The cheese itself should also be dry to the touch at all times.
When (not if) you get something growing: If it's white, leave it alone. If it's blue, brush it off immediately and consider trying to lower the humidity a bit. If it's black, wipe it off as best you can and lower the humidity a lot. One way to lower the humidity is to add a paper towel in the bottom of the box and replace it if it gets damp. Another is to go with a bigger box. But the main way is to flip every single day and wipe out the boxes every single time.
Always look at your cheeses closely when you flip them. Smell them and smell the box. Geotrichum has a very particular odor. It starts out very yeasty and often gets kind of like broccoli and sometimes like farts over time. So yeasty, farty broccoli? Sounds, delicious, doesn't it? Look closely at the surface of the cheese. Can you see a little bit of white fuzz growing? You can sometimes spread it around with a cloth if you are sure it's geo.
If the mold can't be moderated by brushing it (it happens), then give the cheese a wash with a 3% brine (3 grams of salt in 100 ml of water -- yes, I know that doesn't actually sound like "3%"... w/v is traditional
). Leave the cheese out at room temperature until it is dry to the touch. You might want to just dry it off with a paper towel to speed things up, but leave it out for a bit anyway to help the yeasts get going. Be careful that it doesn't dry out and split, though. Then back in the box and into the cave.
Around about 3-4 weeks in, blue mold may grow rampantly. You can usually ignore it at that point because as long as geotrichum has been doing it's job, the rind is established and *nothing* is getting in to that cheese. Fairly quickly afterwards (within another 1-3 weeks) you will notice new molds growing. These are the succession molds. Eventually all of the lactate runs out and the early rind organisms die. These are replaced with molds that feed on their carcass. These may, in turn, be replaced with new mold later, or they may just go on forever depending on their type. You want to brush this off every few weeks so that the rind doesn't get too thick, but otherwise as long as water doesn't drip on the rind it's basically invulnerable at this point. Keep wiping out the boxes frequently to make sure water doesn't build up, though.
The other thing that can happen when aging is brevibacterium linens (or related bacteria). This shows up when the rind has some salt, when the pH is high enough (usually 5.8 or higher) and when it is humid enough (somewhere a little more than geo likes). This is orange usually, but can be red or pink or beige. It smells like old gym socks. This is what we use for washed rind cheeses.
As geotrichum (or other yeasts and molds) grow on the surface of the cheese, they bring the pH up. Even if you are starting at a pH of 4.8 or so, it only takes about 3 weeks for it to get up to the 5.8 magic number. If you are starting higher, it can take even less time (possible after a week or so). If you get this by accident (and it happens to all of us), it's because it's too humid. Dry every thing out. Make sure to lower the humidity in the box. It's fixable if it doesn't go too far, but if it does, you'll have a washed rind cheese :-)
There is much more to this, but that's kind of the basics.
