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I'm new to the forum, but have been making cheese intermittently over the last couple of years.  I recently found this forum, and am grateful for the amount of information shared.  Nice to see the sense of community.

Inspired by the Bobby Flay throwdown where his opponent made "ricotta" for their vegetarian lasagna, I have been attempting to work my way up to making Stilton-esque cheese following Rikki's recipes. 

My first farmhouse cheddar was an eye opener - I didn't believe that the sanitation requirements were more than just legalisms.  I got all sorts of pretty colors on it.   A stirred curd and a montasio make went better.  I preferred the montasio, my son went crazy for grilled cheddar and homegrown tomato sandwiches.   

Along the way I learned that thermometers go out of calibration when dropped, and wasted a lot of milk before figuring it out.  I moved up here and found out that 100 year old basements are full of all kinds of mold spores.  Taking an inspiration from "drunken goat" I scrubbed the mold off and soaked the two montasios in balsamic vinegar for a couple of days.  One was a big hit at a party, the other tasted like damp basement. 

I recently made a couple batches of Camembert, trying my hand at mold ripened cheese for the first time.  The first batch turned out great.  It was all I could do to keep my son from eating the whole cheese each time I opened one.  I guess I over drained and over salted the next batch.  At 6 weeks I still barely have a dusting of white mold, and the paste is quite stiff.  It tastes like Camembert with a young Parmesan texture.  Maybe it's one of those rare mistakes worth repeating. 

As I type this, I have 2 gallons of store bought milk ripening on their way to becoming a chipotle cheddar.  Using the forum's recipe, I added a half cup or so of the water used to soften dried chipotles, and will add the seeded chopped peppers just before pressing.  I'm looking forward to using some homegrown hot peppers in a cheese later this year.  We are growing a dozen varieties of hot peppers from Ancho to Bhut Jalokia.  My son may be able to handle Bhut cheese, but I usually draw the line at habanero level. 

Cheese making equipment here is pretty basic - stock pot double boiler. Home built lever press using dumbells as weights, dorm fridges for aging and an indoor/outdoor thermometer/hygrometer for monitoring the affinage conditions.  I use a homebrew temperature controller on one fridge.  I adapted a fan control circuit intended to keep audio amplifiers cool.  (audio electronics is my first passion) The other fridge will hold 45 F by turning its thermostat almost off.  One nicety is a stainless commercial work table.  Easy to sanitize and gives me extra work space in my tiny kitchen.  My electronic leanings make me want to build a PID controlled cooker.  PID controlled refrigerators are cool, but not the best use of the controller as the system needs some hysteresis to avoid frequent cycling of the compressor.  Since I can make several fridge controllers using parts out of my bin, I'll keep it that way. 

My cheese adventures have corrected my girlfriend's opinion that cheese is something tasteless useful for eating various mustards.  She now knows what Comte is and notices that store bought cheese is often flavorless or one dimensional.

Happy cheese making and eating.

Hello Bob and Welcome!

I am in New York City, many New Yorkers on here.

I have used PIDs to control my old cave cooling. When the intervals were too fast, I made it wait 3 minute minimum between turning the fridge on/off and that fixed it. I also turned an electric turkey roaster into a digitally controlled cheese vat and sous vide machine which was documented on this forum about a year and a half ago.

Damn cellar is a hard-to-find flavor. Good for you!

Anyway, good luck with everything!

Quote from: iratherfly on July 14, 2012, 11:20:37 PM
I have used PIDs to control my old cave cooling. When the intervals were too fast, I made it wait 3 minute minimum between turning the fridge on/off and that fixed it.

I don't remember that, Yoav. How did you adjust the PID to wait? I have one that had that problem but as I recall it just allowed you to set a swing temp up or down maybe 5 degrees. Seemed like it was ping-ponging.

Welcome to the forum, Bob. Looking forward to following your cheese exploits.

-Boofer-

It's basically the same hardware and connections as using PID+thermocouple+relay for heating stuff. You just choose the cooling program on the PID instead of the default heating one. (turn on the fridge when the temp is sensed above set temp, rather than turning on a heater as long as temp is below the set temp). When you do that, you can set the time intervals. I think I set it to the max which is 199 seconds so it doesn't constantly turn the fridge on/off.

Thanks. It's been about a year since I played with it. I'll have to pull it out and check it again.

-Boofer-

Welcome mate,
my first cheeses are aging slowly and I have only tasted the feta which was beautiful!
It's gonna be a while before I make some again sadly...

Thanks for the PID hints and of course the warm welcomes. 

When I saw some of the PIDs will allow you to program a ramp up time and temperature, I decided that I need to make a cooker that way.  Especially now that I've figured out that my large burner on my stove will heat the pot 2 deg/five minutes when I set it at 2.5   

Hi Bob, welcome to the forum, if you use the search function you can find several threads on PID controllers. Me I keep things simple. Have a great adventure, sounds like you have the bug!

Thanks, John.  I'd never heard of PID controllers until I found this forum - my electronic experience has been mostly in analog audio.  Quite a wealth of knowledge here.

And, Yes, I have the bug. And my daughter thought she was insulting me calling me a cheese head.