I just made my first cheese this weekend, a Farmhouse Cheddar.  Everything has gone great up until now.  The recipe says to let it dry at room temperature (about 80-90 here in Florida) for 1-3 days before waxing.  Well, it’s been over three days now and it’s still not dry, which is to be expected given the high humidity.  The thing that worries me though is that some bluish-green pinpoints of mold are starting to form on the rind.  Is this normal?  Is it bad?

for a cheddar it should not be their, blueish-green might tunr it into blue cheese. Suggest taking a cloth dipped in viniger and wipe the surface and coat the surface with a generous amount of salt. Bad mold does not grow in salt, good mold does.

Given the fact that you’ve already had it drying for 3 days, you may want to alter your conditions a wee bit.  I have had success with a small fan moving the air a bit - not enough to be a lot of air movement.  A 6” fan placed 6 or 8’ away should do it.  Others have said this might result in cracking; but I have not had that problem.  Another thought is that the curd may not have been cooked thoroughly enough, resulting in excess moisture.  My first batch was a disaster because of that problem.  Keep us posted, and welcome to the wonderful world of cheese making.

Yeah- what Green Cheese and Neil said.

1. Don’t sweat it.
2. Wipe with Saltwater or Vinegar. Don’t soak the cheese!
3. Put it on a grid of some kind to let air circulate under it. Like a cookie tray, or better yet one of them there bamboo roll up things
4. Be patient.  It’s better than it drying too fast and cracking

I gave it a salt water bath when I first put it out to dry and then last night I brushed it with salt water again hoping that would take care of the mold issue.  But when I checked it this morning it looked like the mold had grown some.  I’ll take some pictures tonight when I get home and post them.  Thanks for the input so far.

What I do is pore sea salt on it and rub it down by hand so i know the whole surface is roughed with salt, that way I know its protected. Salt will also draw out moisture. If it has been infected by unknown bacteria and u want to make sure its fine then pour vinegar all over it and then wash it off with salt water.

Here are a couple of pictures of the trouble (loaded them as attachments, hope they show up in the post).  I cut the wheel into wedges a couple of days ago because I want to wax them individually so I can sample it after different aging times.  The interior of the cheese seems fine.  The mold is growing only on the outside.  These pictures were taken about an hour ago, about 24 hours ago I brushed all sides of each wedge with a salt water solution and the mold spots were nearly gone.  This has all grown today while I was at work and it is the worst I’ve seen it thus far.

Any suggestions?  Should I throw it out or wash it in vinegar?  When you say you rubbed it down by hand with salt, do you mean raw salt or that you rubbed it down with a salt solution?

Edit: only room for one picture in this post.

Here’s the other picture…

To add more pictures just do a prevue and then add another one.
I would wash it down with vinegar. With salt I just pour it on then wipe it all over like im washing it except with the dry salt. I would not bin it since it could still turn out interesting.

I’m with Neil on this - don’t trash it by any means.  When you wash it make sure you use a slightly coarse cloth, like cheese cloth and abrade it until the mold disappears.  You certainly want it eliminated before you wax the wedges.  The problem to solve here for the long term is what caused the mold in the first place?  You might want to redouble your sanitation efforts on your next batch.

Bleach everything that u used.

I usually use about 3/4 cup of bleach in a 5 gallon pail about 2/3rds full of cold water and immerse everything in it for about 10 minutes.  Then when ready to use I rinse the item off in really hot water and drain it for a few minutes.  You can tell by the smell if the chlorine has been adequately rinsed off. 

I use the same process in my beer brewing.

Cheers.

looks normal, do not ever think of trash it

as Neil and Rich said, just remove those spot,
why u slice ur wheel to triangles? this is wrong

Well, I washed it off with vinegar then rubbed it with salt.  24 hours later it was still clean and dry so I went ahead and waxed it.  Quite the learning experience.  Hope it turns out alright.

Hope so too

Its the hard learned lessons that stay with us.