Cheese should be aged at about 50 degrees, I think (don't have my book right by me) but the refrigerator is much colder than that. I don't have a second fridge to age cheese in, so what can I do? hang it down the well in a bucket? Seriously, what do all you cheesemakers do? I suppose I could buy a dorm fridge and keep it at the ideal temp, but that would raise the cost of producing my own cheese. Could I keep it in the regular fridge until winter and then set it in a shady windowsill to age? Hang it in a tree? I'm not joking; there's gotta be a way. Maybe a root cellar. I must add that I'm in east Texas and winters don't get very cold here. Usually about 3 days of ice and/or snow all winter. And if that makes you want to trade places with me I'll do it!!! I'd rather have the snow and ice than the heat.

-- Elizabeth in E TX (kimprice@peoplescom.net), July 17, 2001

Answers

Try burying it in a food grade plastic drum with a screened ventilation tube if neccesary. Five feet down will have a temp of about 63 to 65 degrees.

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), July 17, 2001.

65 is too warm. A dorm fridge is too small and uneven in temp. Get an old used fridge and a thermometer with the sensor on a wire so you can put the sensor INSIDE the fridge and the readout on the outside. I know (I think) New England Cheesemaker's sells these but the one's I've seen specifically for cheesemaking are expensive (as I recall).

I know I've seen something similar that was not too expensive, but can't remember where. Try:

Mellingers
Lehman's

Try beer and wine making suppliers and specialty kitchen shops.

You say "I suppose I could buy a dorm fridge and keep it at the ideal temp, but that would raise the cost of producing my own cheese."

Well, yeah, Elizabeth, I suppose that's one way to look at it. But its a necessary tool, especially in your climate. Would you try to build a house without a hammer? If you're going to get serious about cheesemaking you need to have a reliable way to keep the temp down while you're aging the stuff. A good sized used fridge shouldn't run more than $100 or so. Or try picking up a commercial cooler at an auction. At any rate, think "tool".

-- Sojourner (notime4@summer.spam), July 17, 2001.

I think if you look around, Elizabeth, you'll find that traditionally folks in your part of the world didn't make aged cheese simply because of the heat problem you mention (there were cultural differences, too, of course). That didn't stop them from making & eating fresh cheeses, however, and there are many kinds of those.

But if you do decide to go into aging cheese, a used fridge would be much less expensive than building a root cellar, and work better in your climate anyway. Be sure, though, to either purchase a non-self defrosting fridge (the very old or cheap ones are this kind) or to disconnect the self-defrosting unit on a modern one---they cause the humidity inside the fridge to fall far too low to age cheese, and just placing pans of water inside (or other tricks) will not increase the humidity sufficiently.

I'm afraid that Jay's charming idea of burying the cheese doesn't take into account the fact that you have to turn green cheese at least once a day for a long time, or for the fact that aging cheese lets off a fair amount of heat and moisture as it cures. Ventilation is very important,and I don't think a barrel would have enough area to work, even with a vent.

-- Julia (charmer24@juno.com), July 17, 2001.

Cheese is not my area of expertise, but could you settle for less than ideal, if it was good enough? Seems to me cheeses in France used to be aged in caves or cellars, and they worked well enough, even if not ideal. The temperature would have been more like 60°F (give or take) than 50°, but they seemed to learn a lot about cheese that way.

-- Don Armstrong (darmst@yahoo.com.au), July 17, 2001.

How about a cooling tower? A tower of concrete blocks (salvaged, of course!) could be built (do it yourself for most savings - you can learn the basics off the net or at the library) to age the cheese in. I'm thinking about 6 or 7 feet sqare, with racks (salvages, again) for the cheeses put up on the walls. The tower would be fairly high (one or two stories, could be built against the house, using the house wall as one of the four sides) and the trick is to take one of those pond water pumps (or a large-ish aquarium pump) that you scrounge from a flea market and set up a system whereby water is pumped from a basin or trough inside at ground level, up through tubing to the top, and dripped or run slowly down the wall or walls (depending on your recovery system) behind the cheeses, or along different walls than what the cheeses are on. In this manner, the slowly flowing water cools the air and the thick masonry walls insulate the temp. You can also put a small roof turbine at the top of the stack (which should narrow at the screened top to cut out sunlight and animals) to force air down the tube and across the water, increasing the evaporation. You'd have to experiment with the turbine to see if enhanced evaporation would be offset by the hot air or not. A cooling tower half-buried in the ground would get the added advantage of the earth's own coolness.

Sound expensive, but with scrounged and salvaged materials, it really wouldn't be.

-- Soni (thomkilroy@hotmail.com), July 17, 2001.

I live in a cool Mediterranean climate and tend to make Mediterranean cheeses. My kitchen ranges from 65 to 75 degrees throughout the year and I have peccorino caprino cheeses wrapped in parchment paper stacked all over the place! Smells good in here. I keep my tubs of fromage blanc/chevre in the frige and I brine my feta at room temp. and store the fully brined feta in the frige until I use it. My "jacques" is also a room temp. cheese.. the only one I fuss over is my bleu which ages in a back room during winter when it's generally 55 degrees, and in the frige during summer. I would love to make cheddar but not enough to put my hardworking spouse onto an involved cheeseroom project. We are considering turning the hall closet into an ageing room with a grid on the floor and a vent into the attic just to have a place for all that yummy peccorino! I buy cheddar when I crave it.

-- Ellen (gardenfarm@earthlink.net), October 31, 2001.