Aging Cheese in a small space

Equipment and ingredients suppliers and plans for home made cheese making equipment.

Aging Cheese in a small space

Postby gsevelle » Sat Apr 14, 2018 8:13 pm

While living in SoCal has its advantages one thing it does not have are houses with basements or places to cure cheese. I needed to come up with a solution and did some out of the box thinking. What you see here is an igloo Iceless cooler which is connected to a Thermostatic controller. I had bought this cooler a number of years ago and had it stored up in the far corners of the house. When I decided to make a small batch of cheese that needed to be aged at 52-56 F. for three weeks I needed to come up with a solution. Since I already make sausage I have a refrigerator that doubles as a drying/aging room but the temps are in the low 40's so I needed another solution.

The Igloo cooler runs on 12 volt with an AC converter (sold separately)
https://smile.amazon.com/Igloo-40375-40 ... 4061ZSRCX1

Since I had probably tossed the original shelf years ago I used a couple of pieces of 1/4 inch scrap Plexiglas purchased from a plastic sheet provider which I cut to size.

The Temperature controller
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00 ... UTF8&psc=1
This an inexpensive unit and works well in maintaining the necessary temperature spread by turning the cooler on and off. The only additional item needed is an extension cord to be used to provide current to the controller and plug receptacle to receive the cooler. I basically wired the controller into the middle of the extension cord.
Note: The instructions on how the wire the temperature controller are limited to the wire diagram. If you are not familiar with these types of diagrams or are not handy having some experience with wiring I'd suggest you barter a couple of bricks of cheese for someone to help you wire it correctly if you choose to copy this solution.

Cheese is fermenting on the counter now. I'll let you know in a few weeks after it ages how it turned out.
The smoke is rising and the butt is brining
gsevelle
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Location: Mission Viejo, CA

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