# hard cheese question



## catdance62 (Mar 2, 2009)

My second attempt at hard cheese did a little better than the first. I used the colby recipe I found on here--the one where you just wrap it in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for 8 weeks. Well anyway, I was having a slight surface mold problem off an on that I just remedied by scraping the bit of mold of and rubbing the surface of the cheese down with vinegar. It ended up getting out of hand, so I just scraped all the mold off it and cut it to see how it was. Although it was a bit dry, it was moister than the first batch and no mold inside (which was also a prob in the fist batch). I was VERY careful in preparation--cleaning everything with bleach solution etc. I flipped the cheese on a very frequent basis too. The fridge is the only place that is even remotely cool enough to age cheese. 
SO, here's my idea: if, after letting the cheese go through it's air-drying process, I vacuum-seal it before putting it in the fridge instead of just wrapping it, will that eliminate the mold problem plus make it a bit moister inside?


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## catdance62 (Mar 2, 2009)

No one knows? If I can/should vacuum seal?


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## buckrun (Mar 7, 2008)

I would not Sandy- I lost a bunch of cheese that way. I think it needs to breathe thru the wax to finish off. It got very nasty slimy and smelled like ammonia.
Didn't work for me.
L


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## Sondra (Oct 25, 2007)

would be best just to use cheese cloth and turn daily


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## Leo (Mar 10, 2008)

Ditto, wax works really well at keeping the humidity right(creates a microclimate), mold at bay, and rind paper thin. Either cheesewax or beeswax, beeswax tends to break easily over time, where as cheesewax is more pliable but still allows the cheese to breathe. I haven't tried the vinegar wipe on natural rinds, but have success with a brine wipe, well up until I had an outbreak of blue. :nooo I commiserate. What type of mold did you have outbreak? If you leave your moldy cheeses on the bottom of the fridge I find that the mold/spores will spread less to those you don't want moldy, say when using a white mold like p.candidum.
Megan


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## catdance62 (Mar 2, 2009)

It was a bluish-greenish mold. When i used wax last year it was worse. I dunno...maybe I'm destined not to make hard cheese......My soft cheese is really good though!


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