[Sca-cooks] Re: Thoughts on Cheesemaking

Kathleen Madsen kmadsen12000 at yahoo.com
Mon May 1 15:31:46 PDT 2006


Gianotta commented:
  >>>
He may have made cheese in my grandfather's house;
Grandpa had built
his home into the side of a hill, Calabrian style, so
he had a proper
cave for aging wine and vinegar and storing cheeses.
Tony lived on
the "nonhill" side of the street.
<<<

Stefan responded:

Isn't there a concern about cross-contamination
between the three of  
these storing them all in the same location? Or is
that only a  
problem with currently fermenting items? Although I
thought all three  
of these might still have some fermentation going on,
just slower  
than in the earlier phases of their production.

*****

The only problem you'd have would be with wild spores.
 Typically by the time the cheese is ready for aging
the fermentation process will have slowed down
dramatically - and you overpopulate the starting
ingredient with the yeast/culture that you want to use
to create the dominant flavor.  What you are doing
from that point on is developing the molds or spores
on the outside or through channels spiked through the
paste.  With cheese, if you have one predominant type
of mold innoculating your product it will get into the
air and will breed throughout the aging area.  These
are molds that anchor onto the surface and reproduce
by spreading spores to float through the air or get
moved about through contact.  You will generally find
that a cheesemaker will culture their milk for flavor
with a different type of yeast/culture for each
different recipe they make, but they will tend to only
grow a few different types of mold on or in the cheese
(I hope this is clear).  The reason being that it is
very difficult to control cross contamination.  Blue
spores are particularly difficult to control.  It can
be done, but it is not easy.

I age my cheeses in the same area that I have my meads
aging.  There probably is some minor cross
contamination of yeasts occuring, but that's why you
innoculate - to make that yeast the dominant one and
give the product the final flavor that you want. 
Wine, vinegar, and other liquid based fermented
products don't seem to be all that affected by
airborne mold spores in the aging room.  Probably
because they are usually air-locked or protected in
some other way from them.

My thoughts,
Eibhlin



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