There was some talk a while ago about high humidity in the cave, and I had never experienced it myself.  Well the other day I checked on my cave and found the humidity had zoomed to 99% and a bit of a musty smell as well.  I puzzled over it for a long while, as I couldn’t think of anything I had changed.  Then it hit me.  Its winter weather now and my cheese fridge is in an unheated back room.  Since it was already cold in there, the fridge did not have to run much, if any at all.  Even removing all water didn’t help.  Then I reasoned that if it was the lack of its running that caused the humidity change, I would just add some heat to the room.  So I opened a heat vent into the room.  36 hours later the humidity was back down and the odor is now gone.  I’m hoping that problem is now history and won’t repeat itself.

Any of you have similar experiences?

Well I certainly won’t be any help to you since I am yet to use a real cheese fridge in my process. I have always cured the cheese on a board for a few days and then put in into our regular fridge.
All in all this procedure has worked well but there are certain cheeses I have had to avoid due to lack of proper temp and humidity.
I do have a question though…..
I expect my wine fridge to be in any day now and want to start using it upon arrival. How do you control the humidity within the fridge? Do you just place a pan of water in the bottom of it as I’ve read?
I’m going to be trying my first stilton sometime this weekend and I want to make sure I have a plan for the proper aging of the cheese.
Thanks for your help.
Dave

Here is an idea that I would try just to see if its not over kill. Take a pan with water thats bigger then the cheese and then put supports across it so u can put a bamboo mat or proper cheese mat across it and then place your cheese on top. Theoretically it should wick up any moisture it needs.
My 2 cents

Thanks Neil. That actually does sound like a feasible solution.
I could also set a humidistat right beside the cheese to make sure the level doesn’t go too high.
I’ll let you know how it works out.
Dave

Put the humidistat in and try it before you start actually using it.  You may not need to adjust the level up.  No point providing additional humidity if you don’t need it.  I use the water method, and had to add a towel as a wick in order to get it up high enough.  But now, in the winter weather, I have removed all extra moisture and am still maintaining 84%.

Okay Rich, I’ll give it a try. I’m getting my fridge tomorrow so I’ll know soon enough.
I live in Illinois and our house does get excessivly dry in the winter months. We have to run humidifiers simply to make it liveable.
I currently use a very small closet, under the staircase to age my cheese (and wine) in. It maintains a 60 degree temp during the winter months but again, the humidity is very low.
My solution is to set a house humidifier (which has an auto shutoff feature) in this closet and let it run. Once the level gets up to about 75% it shuts itself off.
So far this has worked pretty well but I want to have a greater control over the temperature for my cheese ripening.
The solution has worked for my swiss cheeses and colby, gouda and cheddars I just put in our regular fridge. They all seem to turn out well (except for my past attempts at swiss) but I’m looking forward to seeing how much better they can turn out with the proper temp and humidity levels.
Thanks again,
Dave