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I am a new cheesemaker and am now aging my first batches of Beaufort-style cheese in our cheese room. The problem is, I was told to keep the cheese very moist (stick-to-the-shelf moist) and now things have gone very wrong.  The b. linens are lobster red and the aroma in the cheese cave is more of meat than of cheese. I spoke to a more experienced cheese maker and he suggested removing the 1/4" of goo that's accumulated on the cheese and shelves beneath, scrubbing the cheese with 5% saltwater solution, scrubbing and bleaching the shelves and going forward with confidence. My concern is the anaerobic bacteria that are (probably) causing the smell: Am I in danger of harboring listeria or other dangerous bacteria? Should I just throw this cheese out (about 70 wheels) and start over or will exposing the bacteria to air and keeping things drier get me back on track?

Welcome to the forum, woodswoman27!

Questions....

• A new cheesemaker and you're making 70 wheels?
• A Beaufort with a b. linens smear?
• You're operating in a commercial cheese room. Has this recipe been made successfully before?
• What recipe are you following?

Just a couple observations: Beaufort is a hard, swiss-style cheese and doesn't have any sort of a smear, IMHO. If you're a new cheesemaker, wouldn't you be testing your skills on a smaller scale...like one wheel?

-Boofer-

Old thread, but because I am focusing on tomme and beaufort, this is of interest to me.  My investigations have shown that it is actually more common than I initially thought, to wash beaufort with a cultured brine containing b. linens (and a ton of other species).  The practice seems to be all over the map - some do an entirely natural rind, some do a low-salinity brine with b. linens, many do a morge solution containing the pureed rind of old beaufort, whey and salt. 

I'm flying more blind than I'd like to (and am having issues, I think, with my cave in general), but c'est la vie.  I know hand-rubbing salt on one side of the rind daily, allowing it to rest, then rubbing it in and repeating the process the next day on the other side, is a common practice, but I'm aware these are for the standard, monstrously large beaufort wheels. 

I'm going to try this, after a fashion, and see what happens:  I will lightly rub pickling salt all over the wheel, and lay it back on my whitewood (spruce, as I understand it) shelf; next day, turn it over, do the same thing. 

I will do this for a month - descriptions I've seen say " a month or two, until the rind is ready for the morge" - but I have no idea what I'm to be looking for as a "ready" point for a cultured brine solution.  At that point, I will be doing a 3% solution of PLA, twice weekly, to the end of aging, which I plan to be a minimum of 8 months.  I'd prefer to get the b. casei (and its beneficial effects) of OFR9, but OFR9 is unavailable to me.

When I posted that second bullet point, b. linens on a Beaufort was somewhat of a foreign idea to me. I have a different perspective now. My horizons have been broadened.

At this point I am inspired to try other combinations for rind treatments. Paul, your driving interest in rind development has pulled me in.

-Boofer-

I'm stepping into dark waters, for me, Boofer, and I find it can be treacherous.