Maturing cheese in a cheese fridge

Aug 02, 2013by Farmer Liz

When our cows first calve, we have to milk them daily and end up with so much milk, we nearly have to make a cheese daily to keep up! The occasional cheese can be matured in the back of a normal fridge. Sure the temperature is a bit low for proper maturation, but there's no point turning on another fridge just for one or two cheeses. But when we start to have 10 or 20 cheeses, we need the cheese fridge so we have somewhere to put them all!

Fortunately for us, we had a spare bar fridge, that wasn't being used for anything and wasn't really worth selling. We set that up with a thermostat and can easily adjust the temperature to suit cheese maturation. Ideally cheese should mature at around 8-12degC, which is warmer than a normal fridge temperature of 5degC. We just plug the fridge into the thermostat, and the thermostat into the socket. The temperature sensor goes in the fridge and we set the temperature on the dial to about 10degC. A second thermometer in the fridge is a double-check on the thermostat. The cheeses are either vacuum sealed, or more recently I've ventured into waxing the cheese. There's also jars of feta in olive oil in the door.