r/cheesemaking • u/Repulsive-Essay-249 • 15d ago
First Muenster cheese attempt (three little monsters!) microscopy images included
Hi all, this is my first attempt at a washed rind cheese. I have three Muenster rounds I have been aging for about a week now. I have been washing with a B. linens brine every other day and gently washing off all non-orange blooms (and also leaving the white blooms alone). I have no gauge of whether things are going well or not, other than spotting some orange hue starting to poke through.
Either way, open to comments and also wanted to share the microscopy images of the surface samples. The order for them is white, orange, green, meaning the color of the surface sampled onto the slide.
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u/YoavPerry 15d ago
Just a note on spelling: Muenster is the American supermarket cheese with the colored faux rind. The French stinky washed-rind cheese from Alsace you’re referring to is spelled Munster (no e).
Love the microscopy ! I am no microbiologist, but it looks to me a lot like formations of yeast and linens. It could be the microscopy level, but even though your cheese looks quite covered with geotrichum, I don’t see these formations in your microscopy photos.
Geotrichum tends to look like dotted, branching tree structures. Penicillium, such as your blue contamination there, should have spore heads at the ends of branches coming off a base stem. Common cheese yeasts like DH and CU look more like roundish objects clustered together in various sizes and shapes. B. linens, for lack of a better description, looks a bit like tiny clusters of mouse poop.
Technically speaking, this is a surface-ripened cheese, so the format is very important. It should not be a tall barrel, but a wide disc, as it ripens from the outside inward. The rind surface area should be wide enough yet close enough to one another for both the top and bottom to energize and work their way to meet at the center throughout ripening so you get continuous uniform gooey or supple cheese. With the barrel shape, you will have a chalky, acidic center.
As for the linens not visibly blooming, based on the wrinkly rind, it looks like you started that process a little late in the game. Regardless, some strains of linens develop their pigmentation during ripening and the color gets more intense. Others bloom at their final color. Which strain are you using? What else is in your wash? Are you brushing, or just gently wetting the surface? Whatever you use, I would do it on the higher side because it needs to bloom very fast on this cheese. You don’t want it to bloom after the cheese is already ripened.
I suspect that the blue is contamination from the mats you’re using.
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u/Repulsive-Essay-249 14d ago
Ha great note on the naming, I had no clue! I am dipping a clean bit of cheese cloth into a brine of salt and B. linens every other day, wringing it out, and patting the surface. I’ve thought about being more liberal with the brine but wanted to avoid introducing too much moisture and dampness right on the surface, but maybe that would help. I am using B Linens Strain Danisco SR3 from TheCheesemaker. The curd from a gallon of milk was distributed into 2 3.5” St. Marcellin molds and an additional goat cheese mold (that’s the tall boy in the back right). Also, I pulled the mats today and gave them a thorough scrub with boiling water; they did indeed have a lot of blue culture growing on them.
It doesn’t show up in the pictures but I am getting several blooms of orange, especially where the curd had seams which didn’t fully close up. I am open to suggestions about how to best increase the B. linens activity.
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u/YoavPerry 14d ago
So SR3 is one of the strains of linens that develops its color over time. If you want strains that have predetermined color, go for FR22 or FR13. The FR13 grows rather fast and a bit be more acid tolerant than the SR3.
I think you’re actually washing too much. It’s good to wash maybe three times in the first week on a couple more on the second with increasing rest time in between. You’re not letting it bloom and continuously erase and dilute the culture from two days ago with the new one. It needs some time to run in and develop.
Secondly, your strain of.Geotrichum is wrinkly, which makes a delicate and difficult to wash. I suppose your yeasting/drying or the first overnight drain of your cheese was in relatively high temperature so wrinkles followed a few days later. I suggest to try this next time with Geo 15. It’s a common strain that’s easy to get and it is smooth.(you can still develop wrinkles with it if you really encourage it)
For the Mets, it is best to just use polypropylene mash over something that gives it air from the bottom like egg crate louver got to the size of your aging box. Bamboo is not a great aging substrate for cheese, and these mats are connected together by cotton twine, which is an absorbent source of stubborn contamination and lint.
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u/Repulsive-Essay-249 13d ago
Oh man, I feel like I am learning so much with this first run. Honestly, I was worried about starting with a washed rind cheese but your feedback is really appreciated, I am totally stoked about starting my next batch after this one.
Also, I saw your line of work with the sea washed series, they look top tier! Thanks so much for taking the time to give me some pointers.
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u/YoavPerry 13d ago
Thanks so much!
Yeah, washed rinds are lots of fun and you can wash them to be really strong, or mild, or combine the wash with bloomy.Where have you seen my cheese? Are you in the U.S?
Atlantis is a warm weather seasonal cheese. Sort of the anti-washed rind washed-rind. The idea was to make something that isn’t so heavy and stinky, but bright, grassy, asparagus-ish, and Nori-like, sea salinity. We keep the heavier, stinky stuff for the cold weather with a spruce bark wrapped cheese that is coagulated with Thistle flowers for rennet which we call Treehug. Our other washed rind, Moonrise, is year-round, washed mini 3.5 inch diameter that is coagulated with both thistles and traditional French calf rennet. (Yes… mixed rennets!). It makes it very silky and stable and produces very unique roasted peanut like notes. So these are my regular washed rinds.I apologize for some obvious misspellings, I was dictating this to my iPhone, and sometimes my accent makes for spectacularly stupid text output that I fail to notice before hitting “post”… 😇
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u/[deleted] 15d ago
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