My first blue cheese. Got some questions.

[TheBlackbird]

Hey everyone. This is my first attempt at making blue cheese. I used fresh goats milk that I pasteurized to make this cheese, with the milk taken straight from my goat farm.

This is a picture of my cheese as it is 3 weeks (roughly) in and I was wondering if this looked normal? I have no prior experience with blue cheese and have very little knowledge of the finer points in cheese making.

To describe the cheese itself, it has a fine layer of white mold on the surface threaded with patches of blue/green mold. I haven't been able to take pictures of its progress so I can't tell if it's stopped, but it does have a strong smell. The cut in the corner is when I checked if there was mold growing inside (there was none, at the time of bisecting).

This is only one side, but the other side has more blue/green mold since I turn it over semi-regularly.

I take it out of the fridge every two days to breath for 30 minutes to an hour before replacing the lid on the container and placing it back inside.

What's your opinion on how it looks?





Here's the other side of the block of cheese. The camera makes the blue/green mold look gray.


Thanks for any and all input!

[hoeklijn]

Hi Blackbird, have you used PC or Geo in the recipe? The outside of the cheese seems to be covered mainly by white mold. When you cut it, deed you see any development of blue where you pierced it?

[george]

Also, if you want to get more blue coverage on the rest of it, instead of just off to one side like that, try petting it.    

Pet the blue bits first to transfer some of the existing blue to your hand(s), then pet the areas that don't have much blue.  I've done this before, and it works pretty well. 

[TheBlackbird]

Hi hoeklijn, I'm not sure what PC or Geo is but I took some Jindi blue and used that as the innoculate for this one. When I cut the cheese I did not see any blue mold, but a few days after I cut it white mold began to grow in the cut and cover up the holes I poked into the block which I clean regularly.

Hey George, I literally chuckled when you told me to pet my cheese. I did just that and spread some of the blue mold around to the areas that aren't covered. Hopefully it'll start to grow faster and cover most of the cheese instead of just the white mold. 

How I inoculated this with Jindi blue was I mixed some in with cold whey I stored and mashed mixing the inoculate with fresh curd before pressing and draining. Then I set the cheese into a large plastic container with a small cup of water to keep the humidity up. I didn't rub or mix any salt since I wasn't sure if I needed to.

[H-K-J]

Hi Blackbird,
How high is your RH and at what temp are you ageing the cheese at? the white mold is normal, unless it is very fluffy fuzzy , what does it smell like? dirty feet or ammonia ?
My first Stilton style blue was very scary lookin and had a strong ammonia smell
all of this was caused by to high RH (100%) and to high a temp (60º +) after we got them down (RH 89-91%, temp 51-55º) the smell went away and the mold started to age differently.
how old was it when you pierced it? how many holes? 3 weeks is a very young cheese, I found that using an inoculate of another blue cheese mold will take a little longer for the mold to grow on the inside of the cheese 
 

[TheBlackbird]

Hey thanks for the reply H-K-J, I'm not sure how high the RH is, since I just placed a small cup of water in the aging box. There's condensation forming under the lid so I guess the RH may be a bit too high? I read somewhere to just put in a moist towel so I think what I'm doing may be overkill. The temp is around 40 degrees fahrenheit, but won't be above 50 since it's inside a chiller.

I poked about 10-15 holes in the cheese at about 2 weeks of age. As for the smell, I've never smelled ammonia before, but if I had to take a guess it sure doesn't smell anything like dirty feet.