My Goal: Building a new cheese cave that can double as a lagering cave for homebrewing beer.
My Question: Since lagering beer requires a 4+ weeks phase of aging the beer at 33-34 def. F, would holding several wheels of my homemade cheese at this lower temp be detrimental to the cheese?
More detail:
I will basically be augmenting a mini-fridge; enlarging it in order to easily contain a 6.5-gallon plastic bucket for homebrewed beer. One of the beer brewing processes that I would like to do is called "lagering"... i.e. let it ferment at 45 - 55 deg. F and then "lager it" or "store it," at a very stable much lower temp of 33-34 deg. F. (1-2 deg. C).
With beer, and even aging salami and charcuterie at home... I know that lowering the temp to 33 deg. F won't ruin the batch... it will just shut down the yeast and/or bacterial fermentation to almost in not zero. And then once you raise the temp back up to more ideal temps, the yeast/bacteria will simply wake up and carry on. But... I also do a lot of bread baking. Bread doughs are often set aside in a fridge for 2-3 days in order to slowly ferment at low fridge temp, which changes the bread's texture, and flavor. However... you can easily take it too far with bread dough. If you think that 2-3 days in the fridge drastically improves everything about the finished bread, you might be tempted to say, "Well, I'm going to age my dough for a whole week!!!" Don't! Any longer than 3 days in the fridge, and bread dough starts to break down, it can mold, and if you really let it go, it just disintegrates into a mealy mess of grainy strands.
How does cheese do if you age it for say, 2-3 weeks at 50 deg F. "cheese cave temp", then drop the temp down to 33 deg. F for a month, and then raise the temp back up to 50 deg?
It shouldn't be a problem. The cheeses will go dormant until the temperature is raised.