So I got my new cave up and running about a month ago. All my cheeses are cream coated. Temp is steady at 55F and humidity is staying a little high at about 92%. All my cheeses are getting a white powder accumulating on them. It is worse on the newer more moist cheeses. The powder is not on any of the inside walls, racks, etc. I do have a couple of partial cheeses vacuum bagged and they are clean of the powder. The powder feels like slightly damp wheat flour.
Thinking it may be Geo that just can't grow or whatever, I placed a few small pieces of unwrapped cheese in the cave to see if anything would grow fuzzy on them. It may take about a week to find out.
I am open to any discussion on this. Totally baffled!
So why can't it be Geo?
-Boofer-
Quote from: Boofer on March 10, 2017, 01:59:56 AM
So why can't it be Geo?
-Boofer-
Maybe it is. But should it be attaching to a cream coated cheese? I would think the inhibitors in the coating would prevent that from happening. I did forget to mention that during the first week of getting the cave going, I put some rinds from two high end artisan cloth bound cheddars in to innoculate my cave. The idea was to have some good microflora in there for my natural rind cheeses. Maybe this is from that?
If you want "natural" rind then you shouldn't use a coating with inhibitors. ;)
I think John wants to be able to do both in the same cave - which is what I have to do since I have only room for one cave.
John, it looks like geo, but I don't know enough about the cream coating to know why it would allow the geo to grow.
Quote from: awakephd on March 11, 2017, 03:33:19 PM
I think John wants to be able to do both in the same cave - which is what I have to do since I have only room for one cave.
John, it looks like geo, but I don't know enough about the cream coating to know why it would allow the geo to grow.
Exactly. I do both natural rinds as shown in many of my posts but also like to do cream coat. The cheeses I have right now are cream coated because I had a pesky PR problem in their old cave.
The Geo on the cream coat is still a puzzle to me but I think they are just attracted to the moisture coming out of the cheeses. My 1 year old cream coated Parm has no Geo on it. At this point I am just figuring this is normal unless I find evidence otherwise. I just put in a 5 lb. Gouda going for a natural rind (without coating) and we will see what happens.