I've got two cheeses ripening now, only a few days away from a white fluffy mold rind over most of the cheeses, except that one cheese has a flat side that is mostly blue mold rather than white. I don't have a problem with the appearance but I wondered if this will affect the final ripening, or cause problems with structure. Should I scrape off some of the blue and let the white mold move in? On both cheeses a really beautiful marbling of green and white molds has mostly given way to fluffy white, as I expected, but if the blue rind will have no negative affect on the aging of the cheese, I am happy to leave it, I love blue rinds. Any thoughts from experiences with this kind of mixed mold cheese?
Never done a Cambozola, but my limited experience is that usually PC will beat PR in a fight. I have a camembert that I'm eating right now and when I first started aging it, it got some blue (seems to be a seasonal thing in my cave). As an experiment, I completely ignored it and as expected the PC completely overran it. Apparently there are strains of PC that will coexists with the blue mold, but the more traditional ones tend to take it out. Having said that, Gavin Webber failed to make a Cambozola and instead made a blue cheese, so I guess it can happen.
I suppose there's no advice in there, but hopefully my musings were interesting :-)
Thanks for the reply, I think you are right about PC being the stronger, it seems to be moving in and covering up the blue. I think I'm mostly worried a bit that having both on the rind will lead to skin slipping, which I haven't had before when making PC cheeses. I'll probably wrap them a bit sooner than I usually do and age them in the fridge rather than more days in the cave. I saw your post about having to turn over the box to remove the carbon dioxide, I would not have thought of that lol, so I will be doing that from now on too.
Cut into first of the two cambozolas, the one where I was a bit worried that so much of the rind was blue. This is 5 weeks after the make, 15 days after being wrapped and put into the fridge, and warmed up to room temp for a few hours. Its gooey but not runny, the taste is fantastic, better than any I've bought anywhere. Blue, mushroomy, creamy, no ammonia, super happy. I used Caldwell's recipe although I added all cultures except blue at the start rather than later spraying. I skewered holes three times before wrapping, and the blue layer is visible in the center of the cheese. I probably under stirred and the curds going into the molds were very soft and pillowy and large, but that does not seem to have harmed the final cheese.
A C4U. That looks absolutely delicious. :P :D
Susan