Pit Washed Rind

[Howard]

I’m doing a rather outrageous experiment with my latest cheese, washed rind cheese, one round from a gallon of milk. Using kefir as an innoculant as per Ascher, I’m loosely following the taleggio recipe from cheesemaking.com. I’m cutting back the room temp ripening phase a bit, as kefir is very aggressive. The outrageous portion is the rind wash, which will attempt to harvest the microbes from my own arm pits. Needless to say, I’m a very clean individual, bathing at least once a day, and use NO chemicals on my body except soap. It will be interesting to see if I can get a culture of B. linnens started in that way. The same microbes used to ripen washed rind cheeses exist in the environment everywhere, and thrive in the moist salty places like arm pits. I’m not too concerned about pathogens for a couple of reasons. One being the incredibly aggressive nature of kefir, and another being the fact that we are all exposed to these microbes in various ways all the time.

Anybody here ever try something like this before?

My next cheese will be a cambazola.

H.W.

[Punkin]

H.W. I have used several ways to harvest good bacteria but not self-harvesting. I would like to know how that works out for you. Please report along the way.

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