My first butter bandaging attempts

[timsumrall]

I bandaged my Winter Solstice cheese at 3 layers of butter and 2 layers of 50 weigh cheese cloth. About 2 tbsp of butter for a 2 pound cheese.

At 30 days I saw blue mold and unwrapped to see what was up. The blue was sandwiched between 2 layers and not on the cheese. I regret it but I had to know. I won't unwrap again.

I re-wrapped with one difference. I used a heavier weight cloth (120?)

At the same time I wrapped a 3 pound Leicester (make 1/26/2018). It was my 3rd one so try a different aging method.

I'll take a quarter of the Solstice on the Equinox and the Leicester will be 6 months mid-Summer.

Image showing blue on the Leicester was today.

I'm digging it ...

[RayJ]

Unless you have a lot of blues around that blue you see is most likely yeast blooming. Not that it's that important what it is  but just for  curiosity. I had the same looking growth on a cheddar I have but in doing more reading on the forum I'm fairly sure it was yeast not mold.

[pastpawn]

Unless you have a lot of blues around that blue you see is most likely yeast blooming. Not that it's that important what it is  but just for  curiosity. I had the same looking growth on a cheddar I have but in doing more reading on the forum I'm fairly sure it was yeast not mold.

It's almost certainly mold (penecillium roqueforti).  I'm not a molecular biologist, but I do ferment a few things and I've never heard of any blue yeast. 

Not that that's bad, but on many cheeses you'll want to wipe it down with vinegar/salt to remove.  I keep blues and other cheeses in my cave, and if there's any transfer I wipe down.  I keep cheesecloth over my blues to try to inhibit blue travelers. 

[timsumrall]

I've been running roqueforti ops for several months so that was my guess. Plus it smells like roqueforti.

The mold is in between the layers or at least it was on the Solstice that I unwrapped. It's certainly not on the outside. Nothing to wipe... yet.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll update.