Little Green Cheese

Cheese making at home with Gavin Webber the Cheeseman

Cheese Fridge Video and Update

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Rejoice fellow curd nerds!  I have just completed my latest video, this time about my cheese fridge set up, which complements my recent post titled My New Cheese Cave.

So without further ado, here is the video.

Oh, and don’t worry about my dog Holly and her glowing eyes.  She is not that scary in real life!

If you liked this video, give it a thumbs up on YouTube or use the share button to tell all you cheese loving friends about how easy it is to make cheese at home and mature it in something simple like this.

I need your help to make each episode a roaring success.  I need voice-mail or email questions to use in the show to keep it interesting. Please use the Speakpipe tool below, to leave me a message or question.

Looking forward to your questions!

My New Cheese Cave

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The cheese drought has broken, and I am back in business!  I have a new cheese cave.

I mentioned this in my last podcast or two, but finally I saved up enough money to replace my ailing cheese fridge with a brand new small bar fridge with external thermostat.

To recap, this is the old cheese fridge.

It was just a wine fridge that worked using a thermoelectric system, which performs best in homes that are not kept much warmer than 24°C (75°F).  Unfortunately, my home get well about that, that the temperature of this unit would drift at least 10°C above what I had it set at.  This was not satisfactory for cheese making, and some cheeses even started to weep oil.

So I had to place the two cheeses I made in early December into the normal kitchen fridge, until I saved up for a replacement.

Thankfully, that day was today.  Last week I purchased a small bar fridge for a couple of hundred dollars, and found a suitable external thermostat for A$21.

New cheese cave aka bar fridge

The fridge has three racks inside and room for about 30 wheels of cheese.  More than enough, I think.

external thermostat for cheese cave

The thermostat is very basic.  Plug it into a power socket, then plug in the fridge.  Set it to cool by holding in the centre button for 4 seconds, then set your desired temperature with the SET button.  Pretty simple, although I have noticed that it sits about 1°C below its setting.

This shot shows the probe, which is the grey cable with a white probe on the end to the left.  I placed my normal hygrometer next to it to check if it was reading true.  This the display was still cooling down at the time.  I have just dangled the sensor probe through the fridge seal and tied gently to the middle rack.  Nothing too technical like drilling holes through the side of the fridge.  I wanted to keep it simple.

This method does not seem to be affecting the temperature, as it is sitting at a comfortable 13°C now, and has been for the last hour with the fridge turned off.

new cheese cave

Once the temperature had stabilised, I placed the two cheeses, a Romano Pepato and a Cotswold, that I had stored in the kitchen fridge.

Speaking of temperature, the weather cooled down sufficiently (24°C) on Sunday for me to make two wheels of cheese.

It was glorious.  I felt so, so, so refreshed.  It had been over six weeks since I made cheese, and it was starting to get withdrawal symptoms. 😉 More about the cheese I made in the next post, but suffice it to say, it was great fun running my fingers through curds and whey once again!

Have any of you recently set up a new cheese cave?  What did you use to control the temperature?

Cheese Temperature During Aging

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Is temperature absolutely critical during the aging of your cheese?

Well that is today’s question about cheese temperature during aging is from Albert from Catalunya (Spain).

Albert asks;

Hello Gavin

I’m Albert, from Catalunya (Spain, for the moment…) and I read your
cheese blog since one year ago (sorry if my English is not correct).

I’m trying to age my cheeses as correctly as I can, so I bought recently a
little wine cooler http://www.carrefouronline.carrefour.es/noalimentacion/TemplateProduct.aspx?itemMarcado=catalog310010&strands=true&itemId=117701082(it
works with a compressor, is not a thermoelectic with fan ) and I think there is
a problem.

Example: When I put their temp. to 9º C it starts to cool until 9º
C, ok, but after it doesn’t starts cooling again since the temp. arrives to a
14º or 15º C. In this case I don’t have a constant temperature, I only have a
temperature going up and down again and again from 9º to 14ºC.

So, the question
is: is it a serious problem? Do I need an exactly constant temperature? Do I
need an external thermostat who gives me a more accurate range of temps?

It’s a shame, the wine cooler was so cheap…

Thanks for your help and congratulations for your e-book
—
Albert Campsolinas
http://foratgatiner.blogspot.com/

Well Albert, I believe that the answer is quite a simple one.  No, your minor temperature range will not matter at all for maturing semi-hard and hard cheeses.

My Cheese Fridge shut down for the Summer

Cheese has been made for many thousands of years without refrigeration, in various temperature conditions, so I don’t think it will matter much.  As long as it stays cool, the cheese culture will do its magic and convert the remaining lactose into lactic acid and give the cheese whatever the desired flavour is and get stronger with age.

With that said, if the fridge gets above 14º C and if you do not want to buy a new one, try an external thermostat as you have suggested.

I recently had to move all of my maturing cheese into the normal refrigerator, because my thermoelectric wine fridge could not keep it cool enough due to the extreme heat we are having here in Australia at the moment.  I may need to convert an old kitchen fridge with the aid of an external thermostat as well!

So, if you want a consistent result and want each cheese to taste almost exactly the same, you would have to emulate factory like precision and keep the temperature constant with very little variation +/- 1º C.   But then, what would be the fun in that, as people would just buy store-bought cheese and not make their own.  Making cheese at home is all about the excitement, anticipation, and experimentation–within reason–so if it tastes good, then there is no problem.

The only exception regarding temperature range, that can think of and that I could be cautious about, would be mould ripened cheese like Camembert, Brie, Roquefort,  Stilton, and any other type of blue.  From experience, these types of cheese need very specific low temperatures (around 7ºC) or the mould gets out of control and you do not get the desired taste.  I prefer to ripen these in a normal refrigerator at around 4ºC.  Much lower than recommended I know, and it takes a bit longer to age this way, but it does work and I get a much better result.

Remember that this is just my opinion gained from experience, and cheese purists may answer your question differently.

Hope that helps you and other amateur cheese makers out there trying to make cheese for the first time.

Has anyone else had a similar experience they would like to share and add to the answer?  Feel free to leave a comment as your views will be more than welcome.

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