# your cheese cave



## kuwaha

Does anyone have a real cheese cave... as in a large hole dug in the ground?? (Not demeaning the building types, just interested in ground caves)
How does one go about it? any advice for/against???
thanks


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## Ozark Lady

If you find any information on this subject, even off site please share it, cause I have wondered about cheese caves and the cultures that occur naturally there, and if there is a way to make your own, and innoculate a small cave the way you would like for it to be.


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## NubianSoaps.com

Two words...ground water  The coolest cheese cave belonged to two friends of mine who had moved a mobile home near the side of a 'hill' they put supports around it with rebar and cinder blocks, sealed them and moved the earth all around it, burying all but the one front. The walls inside were replaced because the particle board contained formaldehyde. Cool in the summer and warm in the winter and held a ton of cheese. Another cheese cave was quite literally a cave and was damp and dank and had mold, not the good kind, I could not stay in it very long because it triggered and asthma attack, their cheese was not very good and they are no longer in business. I visited about 12 places back when I was seriously considering making cheese commercially to fill a need, but I could not give up the goats. Vicki


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## linuxboy

kuwaha said:


> Does anyone have a real cheese cave... as in a large hole dug in the ground?? (Not demeaning the building types, just interested in ground caves)
> How does one go about it? any advice for/against???
> thanks


Don't have one (yet), but have seen them. Check out http://www.silverymooncheese.com/ for some ideas, it's on the right, the SARE study.

You have to control humidity, temp, and air exchange. Those are the technical challenges. Lots of ways to go about it, one of the most common ones was invented by Kris, who's now in New Zealand, used to run a goat dairy in Maine. He used geothermal cooling and exchanged air 5-7 volumes per hour. mist for humidity and running water on walls.



> and the cultures that occur naturally there, and if there is a way to make your own, and innoculate a small cave the way you would like for it to be.


Not easy, it's a real challenge. Even the speed of air movement makes a difference. Big caves are easier to inoculate. You can do many cheeses by treating the milk or the wash, though. Just need more babying.


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## linuxboy

> cave and was damp and dank and had mold, not the good kind,


Happens more often than not. People try to imitate the Europeans and be all natural. Well those Europeans use lime on the walls, which kills a lot of stuff because it's caustic. And they use dirt floors to prevent temp fluctuations. And their natural caves have air exchange. And they've been around a while so the mold populations are stable. And And And.

Most commercial caves need to be conditioned and start out rather sterile.


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## kuwaha

Ooh thanks for that link - I guess I could google all this but DGI is the only site I really have time for  
I have some ideas fermenting now


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## Ozark Lady

Airflow, air exchange?
Okay, if as close to a cheese cave as we can get is a refrigerator that is totally for our cheese and not other foods, do we need to rig up a fan inside it? How often should we open the door just to exchange the air in the frig for cheese?


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## linuxboy

Ozark Lady said:


> Airflow, air exchange?
> Okay, if as close to a cheese cave as we can get is a refrigerator that is totally for our cheese and not other foods, do we need to rig up a fan inside it? How often should we open the door just to exchange the air in the frig for cheese?


IMHO, you will not be able to do very complex, multi-species rinds successfully in a small environment. Say you open up the fridge, well, anything inside will go out, like all the mold spores in there. Or say you rig up a fan to circulate air. Even passively, the volume is so small it would remove molds, yeasts, and bacteria. Caves are big, air exchange happens gradually, and there's more room for molds and yeasts to grow on the walls and cheese and constantly resupply the populations.

You can still do most cheeses, or settle for uncomplicated rinds. Like bloomy rind cheeses, those aren't complicated, usually 1-3 species. Or blues. Or a washed stinky rind with b linens, or a rind washed with salt water. In those cases, open up the fridge enough to vent out ammonia. Cheeses differ here in rate of ammonia production. If you open it up once a day and the smell is really bad, well, open it up more frequently or put in a small fan.

Fridge aging design is different from caves, although you still need to maintain temp and humidity for the inside of the cheese to age well.


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## Nana

Well my refrigerator definitely wouldn't work because my 4 children are opening it all day long. It is probably full of more than I want to know from all that. I need a cave. I will have to check the zoning here. I think I already have as many outbuildings as they will allow. I was looking at building a sandbag, or dirt building in the side of a hill. They look pretty cool. There was information for that on the mother earth news website.


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