Saturday, November 24, 2012

Winter and Refrigeration

So I started doing the 365 days of photos thing and I have fallen way behind! The stomach virus we got kept us down for two weeks! Yuck! Now we're just trying to get back into the swing of things.

I'm working on a design for a cheese aging shelf to put in my cooler. After doing some reading, I found that though the optimal aging temperature is 50-55°F cheese can be aged at cooler and slightly warmer temps. Cheese can even age in the 20-35° range! However, it takes longer to ripen and the flavor turns out fine but the texture is grainy. I have a bit of difficulty keeping my temps super regulated but I tend to range from 38-47°. I've decided I can live with that. And it's always a little warmer in the top of the cooler.

Maybe I need to explain the "cooler" a little further... We use a deep freezer for our refrigerator. We buffer our temperatures with ice jugs we freeze at a friends house for the time being; at least until we get our complete off-grid system up and running. I look forward to that day... The cooler outside temperatures make this much easier to do but it's pretty difficult to do in the heat of summer. We use the generator to run the freezer to help keep it cool. So this is our current refrigeration situation and we're plugging along to improve it. I also look forward to the day we have a root cellar... I get to have a cheese aging area in it! I'm pretty stoked about that!

Winter seems to be approaching... the weather cycles are getting colder. It's getting colder faster this year. Our grazing is getting dire for the cattle. It's looking like we may have to disperse the beef herd to keep the dairy herd fed. We purposely haven't been selling milk and are looking at having to return to doing so in order to keep the dairy herd fed. The drought has put us in a pickle this year...

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