I’ve only been making cheese since December. I’ve had several nice batches, a few tasteless ones (perhaps not aged sufficiently) and lately several failures. I’ve been sticking to farmhouse cheddar to try and get some consistency, but I’ve been having a problem that I think is called blown cheese. Gas develops between the wax and cheese and the cheese becomes wet sometimes leaking though the wax. The smell is slightly fruity and the taste is blandly sweet ranging from edible to unpleasant. I recently bought a ph meter to get better process control and it seems that the pH is low. I took readings of the derby (2 1/2 mths old) of 4.67 and a farmhouse cheddar (1 1/2 mths old) of 4.87.  I recorded the pH at various stages of the last cheese I made and it was very close to the target levels throughout the process until after pressing when its reading was 4.96. I’m afraid it’s heading in the same direction. Any advice?

I can’t come up with anything definitive at this point.  But a couple of possibilities come to mind.  First, you may be using too much culture.  That would cause it to acidify more quickly.  The second, and more likely, is that you may not be using enough salt.  Salt inhibits bacterial growth, and so slows down the action.  If, on the other hand, the flavor is what you want (not bland and not overly salty) then I’d be looking in another direction.  Sorry I can’t be of more help.

In any case, welcome to the Forum.  Perhaps others will have further suggestions.

Welcome to the forum, NSCheese.
There’s a distinct difference between “early blowing” and “late blowing” cheeses.
When it happens before the cheese is a week old (early blowing), it can be caused by coli bacteria. If you are using raw milk, it can be that the milk contains to much bacteria. Other reasons can be: The tools you are using are not clean enough or your starter culture is too less or not active enough.
When it happens during aging (late blowing): too much activity from butyric, propionic or lactic bacteria. How is the temperature in your cave?

Thank you both for your advice. The culture I’ve used is not old and the batches made so far came from individual packets (bought in Dec) for some, and measured amounts from a bulk package (bought in Feb) for latter batches. I’ve alway had a good clean break at the expected time, suggesting the culture worked OK. I haven’t seen any coorelation between bad batches and the culture used. I’ve been using pre-pasturized milk and have experimented with skim and whole milk, and also added cream to some batches as well. Again I’ve seen no correlation there either. I used to sterilize my equipment with boiling water prior to use, but the last few batches I tried bleach. Again, no obvious coorelation. I have some starsan on the way now to give that a try. I’ve been drying my cheese at room temperature, but all aging is done at 10 - 12 deg. C (50 - 54 deg. F). In my case it seems to be late blowing that’s happening. I had decided to up the salt (from 1/2 Tbsp / gal milk) on the next batch to see if that helps. I also realized that after switching to a larger diameter mold to make 3 lb cheeses, I hadn’t adjusted the weight to maintain 4 psi pressure on the cheese. I’m planning to build a new press capable of the necessary pressure. Does the 4.96 pH sound reasonable after pressing?

Welcome !
Looking forward to your cheeses

I don’t have a PH meter, so I can’t give you any advice on PH targets. When I start making a certain cheese I stick to the recipe the fist time, make notes about temps and times and learn from that. But even then the results may vary, due to diffences in milk, in quantities and missed temperature targets. But it ain’t rocket science…
About the press, I don’t know what kind of press you have, but when you have a lever on it, you can use pulleys to double the pressure with the same weight.

Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll see if I can incorporate pullies into my design.