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I started making cheese no so long ago - about one month. These are my first 6 cheeses (see image below). All went perfectly, at least I assume so,  until a few days ago when I updated my cave (fridge) and added a humidity controller. In essence, a controller with a sensor and a humidifier. I need to say that the humidifier was turning on quite often. Each 5 min it was running for 1-2 min. Taking into account that it is a small humidifier, but still, in such a small space, to me, it was looking like it was producing too much humidity. The sensor was set to 85% RH. There were a lot of water droplets on the fridge walls.

I need to say that I was also washing each cheese on one side each day with brine (salt, water 2/3, and wine 1/3). No B. linens, yeast, geo or anything like that.

After 3 days of ''controlling'' the humidity and washing the rinds, my oldest cheese (15 days now) a Gouda, started to develop some pink colored strains on it which were smelling like yeast (see image). That night I just salted the Gouda. The next day the same. I considered that the medium was too wet and decided to stop the humidifier.
The next day, more cheeses started to have the pink strains on them and the yeast smell.

Yesterday I washed the cheese mats (the mat on which they stay in the fridge) with brine, added salt on the mats and salted the cheeses. This was a bit of a disaster too. They started to crack in different locations and be too wet in others (see image). As a result of this, I got them all out of the fridge and let them dry in the room (15-18 deg. C and 70-80% RH) for about 12 hours.
Now I washed them with brine and placed them back in the fridge. There are not a lot of pink spots, but now they all have the spots and smell like yeast (but not very powerful).

My questions:

1. What are the pink spots on the surface of the cheese?
2. What is the yeast smell?
3. Why it appeared just on one cheese?
4. What can I do to stop this?
5. What can I do avoid this from happening in the future?
6. Is it this brine (salt, water, and wine) good for washing the rind? Should I use water, vinegar, salt, and CaCl2?
7. What is your advice on rind washing?
8. Any further advice?


Any advice would be highly appreciated.

Regards,
Razvan

Yeast is commonly a component of a natural rind but too much yeast can certainly make a cheese taste like a loaf of bread. The yeast likely came in with the wine in your brine mix but the wine also brings in some nice b linens too. If you were starting over probably a little more salt in the initial brine wash would help to keep the yeast from developing as much.now that it is there if you want to get rid of it probably your best bet is to spot treat the yeast areas with vinegar and maybe add a little more salt to your brine wash to help prevent more from forming. You have some nice looking cheese there!

Why are you washing these cheeses every day , when they are over a month old? 

What recipe are you using?

Thanks, Ray! I just smelled the wine brine today and it was having exactly the same smell, yeasty.
I stopped using the wine brine, and also stopped washing them that often. They are looking better now. The yeast growth is under control.

What should I do to continue the B. linens growth? Use the same wine brine? How often to wash?
Can you grow B. linens without really buying the culture?


Gregore, I was washing them that often because they were no more than 2 weeks old, but probably I reached a stage at which I started to over wash them.
Regarding the recipes, they mainly form the forum.

All the best!

B linens will show up on their own just from environment just takes a couple days longer before they show without the wine and might be a different type than you get with the wine so you don't have to have the wine if you want to avoid it. Wine is just an easy way to ensure you get them into the cheese before anything else shows up. Now that you already have them on the cheese you don't need to keep adding more just give them the environment they like to grow in (moist and a little salt) and they will do their job

If there is too much sugar left in the wine and with your heavy washing then that could be causing the yeast to grow.   I would let then start to dry off and  only wash the outside again if you see blue , but do the wash rather dry so you are smearing the surface around

And if you have the room in the fridge / cave , then get them into boxes  to control humidity rather than trying to control the whole fridge .  it is easier for a begginer .