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Hi all,

Last Sunday I made a Jarlsberg. It has been in the cheese cave for the initial cool phase and will be due to move to the warm phase mid next week. All is going well so far (photos and other details to follow soon) thankfully.

At the moment it is quite hot down south, so I have concerns for trying to maintain the correct conditions for the 4 to 5 weeks of ripening in this phase. Our inside temperature would get up to 26°C (79°F) during the day on a hot day. That is too warm from reading.

What would be the best thing to do in my situation? I was thinking of putting a cold our frozen bottle of water in the ripening container with the cheese and exchanging it daily. I also thought about putting the ripening container in a foam box. Do you think this is sufficient or is there a better way to approach it?

Thanks all for your help.

Shane

Here are some promised photos and info. The recipe I followed came from here.

http://www.cheesemaking.com/learn/recipes/norwegian-style-cheese.html

It was my largest make at 16L.

The photos are unfortunately not in the right order. I suspect they will be in inverted order. :-)

Shane

Really really nice! :-)


I think that it's a good idea with the foam-box, but I have no experience myself...


Did you think that it was hard to do a make that size? Each time I have upscaled, I have been surprised how much it affects the process - everything has to be larger...



I haven't made cheese with larger holes yet - but I just received some propionic bacteria... Today will be the day... :-)


:-) Danbo

Thanks Danbo. Actually scaling up wasn't too bad. Probably a bit more stressful from the point of view of it's a lot of milk to waste if it goes wrong. At the end of the day the cleanup is the same whether it's a big batch or a small batch. :-) The cheese does feel a lot more substantial when flipping it. I did use my prototype stirrer for stirring the curds while cooking them. It's not at a stage where I'm happy with it yet though. Still it saved my hand though.

One thing I didn't point out is that I didn't actually have a decent mould for this amount of curds. I actually used two brie moulds. I pre pressed the curds in two moulds and then combined the contents for the heavier presses. I'm not convinced I pressed heavy enough though, so I guess I will find out in time.

I forgot to add that I also made whey ricotta after the cheese and that ricotta went on to become a plum and ricotta cake and a beef lasagne. Both were yum. :-)

I'm now considering my next make. I think the next make will be a bit smaller.

Shane

You deserve a big cheese! :-)

Eighty degrees should be absolutely, fine, given it doesn't stay there all the time. Actually, I think 70-75 is ideal... someone here was saying that. 

I made a Jarlsberg a few months ago and had a hard time maintaining proper temp during the warm phase. It averaged between 18-19 and sometimes 20C. I opened it at 3.5 months and the was a bit of eye formation, but the flavour just wasn't as good as my previous makes where the warm phase averaged 22C.

From experience, I'd say 22-24C is optimal. Anything above that will probably accelerate mould growth and maybe too much propionic activity, but I'm not sure about that.

That's one beautiful cheese you've made.  I always get a kick out of reading the recipes in these books that are specific down to a tenth on PH and such and then say "set out at room temperature".  "Room temperature" has a very wide range.  Which room?  Which country?  Which season?  With that said I would think that 80° would be acceptable but you may want to cut back on the time at that temperature a bit.

What Al said.

If you want to use an ice chest (foam box) read some of H-K-J's posts. He has made a lot of cheese using only that method.

Larry

Quote from: Stinky on February 21, 2015, 04:40:45 PM
Eighty degrees should be absolutely, fine, given it doesn't stay there all the time. Actually, I think 70-75 is ideal... someone here was saying that. 

Maybe it was Sailor.

QuoteRe: Emmentaler Rezept, auf Wunsch!
« Reply #3 on: March 04, 2013, 02:06:12 PM »
Quote
In the production of Swiss-type cheese two successive fermentations occur. First, lactic acid bacteria (LAB), particularly convert lactose to lactate. Then, during ripening, propionic acid bacteria (PAB) convert lactate to propionic acid, acetic acid and carbon dioxide. CO2 is responsible for eye formation and propionic acid produces the typical nutty/sweet flavor of Swiss-type cheese.

There are different subspecies of Propionic available that have different temperature and environmental requirements. Typically though Propionic needs at least 62F to do its thing. The sweet spot for optimal growth is usually between 77F and 95F. Homemade Swiss can easily fail to produce eyes or much propionic flavor because of a warm room ripening that is too cool.

And

QuoteRe: Emmentaler Rezept, auf Wunsch!
« Reply #7 on: March 05, 2013, 08:00:34 AM »
Quote
Alp - In a laboratory environment, the optimal temperature for Propionic is 77-95F. However, I did not mean to suggest that is the temperature you should use for the warm room/eye formation phase. IMHO it should be 70-72F or "normal" room temperature (about what you suggested). The low 60s can be really problematic and may not produce good results. At the lower temperatures the CO2 production is much slower and will tend to produce smaller and fewer eyes.

From https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,11069.0.html

Larry

Thanks very much all. That is good to hear about the elevated temperature. Yesterday we had a day of 38°C (100°F) and our house didn't get below 25°C (77°F) all night. It is going to be just as warm today.

With that in mind I think some cooling is required. I remembered last night that I have a 3 way (12V/240V/LPG) camping fridge that isn't in use at the moment (nor will be any time soon). I also had a spare temperature controller and RTD. I have reassembled my prototype temperature controller and will give that a go. It is the perfect size for this job and I'm guessing there won't need to be much cooling.

So what target will I aim for? 23°C seems to be about middle of what has been suggested.

I'll post photos later of the porta cave if I get it working.

Thanks again.

Shane

It's always nice to have extra "stuff" around.

23°C 73°F sounds good to me.

Larry

Yeah, it is always handy. :-) I'm running out of "stuff" though now.....

Shane

Port-a-cave. Seems to control alright. :-)

Shane

Perfect! That should work well.

Larry