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I'm going to be trying to make some brie in the next couple of weeks and notice that my salami mold (Bactoferm Mold 600) smells a lot like the mold on Brie. Does anyone know if you can get decent results if you use it for the mold in brie?

Bactoferm 600 is Penicillium Nalgiovense.
Penicillium Candidum is the proper mold for Brie.



~Martin

I've used Penicillium Candidum in the abscence of any other, but some mould off a bit of bought salami is better.

Penicillium Nalgiovense is not readily available in the UK.

Doh! I've just noticed that this is in Cheese Making - Just ignore me!

HTH
Phil

Martin,

Do you know of any reason why you can't get away with using the Penicillium Nalgiovense for brie. I'm not a mold expert so I dont know how it would affect the cheese. All I know is that it looks and smells pretty close on my salami.

I guess that you could try it, I have no idea if the ultimate flavor would be the same.


~Martin

I don't see why it would be a problem, If it works you may have created a completely new cheese and we will let you have the honour of naming it.

When I tried Brie many moons ago I simply took a piece of skin from a brie and lay it fluffy side down on the naked cheese overnight, within in a couple of days the cheese was covered in brie mold.

I would hazard to guess that the finished flavor would be different. I have read reports on the internet that the finished flavor of salami finished with p. camemberti differs from those finished with p. nalgiovense so I'm sure that the converse is true.

Richierich wrote:When I tried Brie many moons ago I simply took a piece of skin from a brie and lay it fluffy side down on the naked cheese overnight, within in a couple of days the cheese was covered in brie mold.

Hmmm, brie recipes call for the mold to be added directly to the liquid milk. I bet i could just scrape some mold from another brie wheel, mix it with the milk and blend until smooth.

bwalt822 wrote:

Richierich wrote:When I tried Brie many moons ago I simply took a piece of skin from a brie and lay it fluffy side down on the naked cheese overnight, within in a couple of days the cheese was covered in brie mold.

Hmmm, brie recipes call for the mold to be added directly to the liquid milk. I bet i could just scrape some mold from another brie wheel, mix it with the milk and blend until smooth.

I scraped the skin of the middle of the brie and then as best I could mixed the cheese with buttermilk before adding it to the whole milk. To be fair there was some growth of a skin with that, but no mold, so I laid a piece on top. Worked a treat, sadlt I was a bit of a cheese chicken back then and the smell was quiet strong, I threw it away.

Just wanted to give an update.

I attempted a Brie/Cam a couple months ago using the correct bacteria cultures using info found on a cheese equivalent of this website: http://cheeseforum.org/articles/. Prior to my research I didn't know that the white mold on the outside of brie also did work converting the curds to their "brie like" state on the inside. Not sure that Mold 600 would do this so I bought the proper bacteria cultures.

Anyway the humidity on the first attempt got too low and while it turned out an edible product with pretty good flavor it wasn't what I was aiming for. I bought a small fridge to use as a cheese cave and had hoped keeping the door all the way closed would keep the humidity high enough. But the temp in the garage was high which caused it to cycle on often and dehumidify the air too much through condensation on the element. I now have the second batch inside a plastic container which should keep the humidity higher and keep it from drying out too much like the last batch. Humidity will be monitored via a humidor Hygrometer.

Anyway, if you have a working salami fridge it doesn't appear too hard to make cheese although I still haven't had true success but batch two seems to be going well knock on wood.

After I achieve success on soft ripened cheeses I may buy a press of some kind and move onto gouda. Or maybe try a stilton, who knows.