Hello from Melbourne, Australia :)

[litreofstarlight]

Hi everyone,

Joined recently and realised I forgot to introduce myself, oops!

I'm a relative noob at cheesemaking compared to most of you guys. I've made a chevre and some Persian feta before, and I currently have some little triple cream bries considering life because I like to make my own life difficult :P

Next cheese after this might be a butterkase, but I'll need to get the bries out of the esky first because there isn't room until I do!

Glad to be here, cheers :)

[broombank]

biggest problem in Australia with cheesemaking is temperature/humidity control ( my brother who lives near Albury Victoria has been making it for 40 years !) Everything tends to overshoot so work out how you are going to achieve optimal temperatures before you make any . Brie in particular is ruined by any temp more than 7C . You can find you end up with a bag of fluid instead of a cheese. 4C is too cold 10C is too hot . If you make hard cheeses you will have a hard time with cheese mites when it gets humid. Good luck !

[mikekchar]

Rabbit hole for bloomy rinds:

I've done bloomy rinds at 18C and they were fantastic.  I don't recommend it (it's *very* tricky), but it's not impossible.  Traditionally Brie, in particular has 3 key temperatures.  I can't seem to find my notes, so this is by memory, but I think 16 C, 10 C and 6 C.  The initial 16 C is important for draining.  Lower than that and your cheese will hold too much moisture.  Cheese that is too cold will not drain properly.  That temperature also favors geotrichum growth, which is essential for rind preparation.  The next temp is really 10-13, depending on your penicillium candidum strain.  But basically, you want to hold it at that temperature until you get full PC coverage.  Lower than that and you will get uneven growth and poor maturation.  Once you have full coverage (or nearly full, if you have aggressive PC), you reduce it down to 6 C.  This is so slow the growth of the PC. As the PC grows, it produces a lot of ammonia which will soften the cheese too quickly.  If you have too high a temperature, the outside of the cheese will soften before the ammonia can penetrate into the center and you end up with the solid core with the liquid exterior problem -- often called "skin slip".  But all of these problems can be worked around if you are tricky with the make.