Little Green Cheese

Cheese making at home with Gavin Webber the Cheeseman

Cheese Fridge Tips

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Most semi-hard and hard cheeses need a constant temperature of between 10-14°C in which to mature correctly.  So let’s answer some reader questions on the topic and dispense some cheese fridge tips.

Cheese fridge

This is the subject of today’s reader email.  Sandra wants some information about cheese (aka wine) fridge issues.

Hi Gavin,

Could you please tell me the Brand of Wine Fridge you purchased for your Cheeses?

Have you had any problems with the thermostat in it holding a constant temperature – summer and winter?

I have been having lots of problems with the Tempo 16 Bottle Wine Fridge I bought. I am on my second Tempo Wine Fridge in two years. After 6 months the thermostats start floating all over the place – mostly too hot – hence ruining my cheeses.

I mostly make Camembert, Blues, Farmers and Swiss cheeses.

I would appreciate your help.
Sandra

Well firstly, thank you Sandra for your email.  I enjoy answering each and every one of them from my readers.

The model of my cheese fridge is a 28 bottle wine fridge, similar to yours.  It is made by PAVO (I have no association with this company).  I have no idea if it is good, bad, or otherwise.  It has worked tirelessly for the 3.5 years that I have owned it.

That said, I have discovered some interesting things about how to maintain the temperature of these devices.  They are not really fridges at all, and do not employ normal refrigeration techniques.  This type of fridge is a thermoelectric wine cooler and only uses 70 watts.

These type of fridges need a room temperature of below 75°F to function correctly.  They also need adequate ventilation, and lots of room behind it so that it works effectively.  My cheese fridge has about 30 cm (1 ft) clearance all around the sides and back.  It is also located away from any heat sources like other fridges, ovens, stoves, etc.

I also keep a remote temperature and relative humidity sensor inside the fridge, just to keep an eye on it when I am at my desk.

The final tip is about humidity.  These sorts of fridges normally keep the air inside at about 40-50%  RH, which is far too low for cheese making.  I have found that by filling a 4 litre plastic tub with water and placing on the floor of the fridge, it brings the humidity up to about 75%RH.  This is still a bit low for most cheese, so I keep blue and mould cheese in a separate container to ripen which ensures a much higher humidity.

I can ripen cheese like Caerphilly and Farmhouse for the first month, then wax them before they split.

You can also repurpose an old kitchen refrigerator using an external thermometer device.  A long time reader sent me through this information.

Hi Gavin

I don’t know if you’re familiar, but there is an item that can transform a normal fridge to a cheese cave level. I’ve read blogs from people here in the US who use them and they say they work well. I haven’t read enough of your blog to know If you’ve seen them before, if so I’m sorry, but I thought if not, you might be interested. I got this off of the Cheesemaker.com website:

JC Thermostat
Turn your refrigerator or freezer into a cheese cave.

This thermostat makes it easy to convert your refridgerator or freezer into a ‘cheese cave’. Just plug the thermostat into your wall socket. Then plug your freezer or refridgerator into the thermostat and adjust the thermostat anywhere from 20-80f degrees.(6.6 to 26.6c).Accuracy: +or- one degree F. 110-120V AC. UL listed. This thermostat does not work with 220v.

I’ve attached the picture that went with the description in the attachment. Perhaps you can locate it’s Australian equivalent and share it with your readers. Thanks again. Look forward to reading more of your blog!

Sharon

Here is a picture of the thermostat.

Hopefully, I have given you and all other readers enough information to make your cheese maturation a reality with one of these fridges.

If anyone else has any other tips for maintaining the correct temperature in your repurposed wine fridge, please leave a comment.

Addendum: Since writing this post I have moved to a better method for maturing cheese.  You can read about my new cheese fridge here!

Cheese Cave

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I had a request the other day to show my cheese cave that I talk about quite often.  Well, I dug up this old post (June 2009)  from The Greening of Gavin, when I wrote about the day I received this vital piece of cheese making equipment.

Up until now, I have not been able to make rind cheeses like Parmesan or Gruyère.  Nor have I even thought about making mould ripened cheeses like Camembert, Stilton or Gorgonzola.

That is until now!  After a fair bit of discussion on my part, and much research on Kim’s part, we are now the proud owners of a Cheese Fridge.  OK, I confess.  It is really a wine fridge with the racks replaced so that cheese will sit on it flat!  I believe that we paid $295, and unfortunately had to buy it new because we couldn’t find a cheap, economical one on eBay or in the trading post.  Freecycle did have a normal fridge but it would have been too hard to change the thermostat to get it up to the temperatures required to ripen cheese.

That aside, it has the right temperature range, it is very economical using about 0.4 kWh per day (yet to measure a full day so this may be lower), and it has a nice light.  I have set it to 12°C (nice cheese weather), and will check the energy statistics tomorrow night.

Being on Solar PV, I don’t expect it to be much of a strain on our resources.  Kim found some powder coated racks that were laying in the cupboard which fit very well.  I had to bend the ends so that they fit, but at least I can lay sushi mats down for the rind ripened cheeses and plastic mats for mould-ripened cheese to rest on.

This will allow us to make and ripen cheese all year around, and to be able to make all types of cheese and not just waxed ones.  So far in the fridge we have two wheels of Pepper Jack, a Pyrenees with green peppercorns, a Wensleydale sage, half a wheel of Gouda, and a quarter of a wheel of the original Wensleydale.

As you can see I left in two bottle racks just in case I find some local Red Wine worth storing.  The image below is taken without the flash on.  You can see the temperature and the little LED light that you can turn on/off when necessary.  I placed a normal thermometer in the fridge just to see if it was reading accurately.  It is about 1 degree higher, but that could be my crappy thermometer as well.

Once the other types of cheese matures and I get a few friends to taste test, I will investigate what it will take to sell some at a local farmers market.  I know I have to get a food handling certificate, but other than that I am clueless about the procedure.  Of course I won’t sell it all, but it might be a bit of extra pocket-money in the future.  I have a mould-ripened cheese making course on the 21st June, so the fridge arrived just in time.

Who knows where this may lead?  Wallace and Gromit might come over for a visit and a nice piece of Wensleydale!

I now have a hygrometer in the cave so I can tell if it is humid enough. It works well, as does the method for increasing the humidity, but that is a post for tomorrow!

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