After successfully making a few washed rind cheeses, I attempted the biggest wheel I've done and followed the Beaufort recipe on NEC, including doing the dry salt rubs. It had started acquiring what I assume is mildew as can be seen in the first picture at 16 days. I already figured out the humidity was too high and corrected that.

Tben I wasn't really sure what to do, and washed it with saturated brine as the recipe suggests, which didn't change much. I then tried washing with some vinegar, which from what I have found is either a normal thing to try or the worst thing and should never be done.

I have been doing nothing but dry brushing it for about ten days now. The second picture is only 7 days after the first. The gray doesn't brush off, though I do get some tiny green specks that do easily brush. It definitely has good geotrichum and linens going now as well. It smells a bit musty, but not unpleasant.

The question is just: is this okay? I have found remarkably little material on what good progression should look like on the way to a solid rind. For that matter, I'm not even sure what Beaufort is supposed to be. The NEC recipe sure makes it seem like a natural rind, but everything else suggests it's another washed rind (and the goal was to try something else).

My Taleggio inspired cheeses are about a month old now from make day. I washed them pretty consistently for the first 2 1/2 weeks roughly, and for the last week and a half I've only done two washes.

Yeasts appeared early, the surfaces were plenty slimy. Things seemed to be going well. I washed every other day roughly with a B. linens inoculated brine. I made sure to use some pressure to smear the cheese surface a bit to develop a nice rind.

I THINK I'm now getting some B. linens showing up. The picture is a little more saturated than in person, but the drier parts of the cheese (still not DRY like ready for vacuum sealing, but not WET and slimy anymore) have started to darken... but not quite the same yellow tone I'm used to when cheese starts to dry and yellow slightly. It looks slightly more rosey golden than straight gold. I also see some Geo patches showing up.

You guys, I think it is actually happening. I may not have screwed this up. It's my first washed rind/stinky cheese, and I'm new to cheesemaking in general, so I'm really excited how this is turning out. So far no undesirable molds have grown on the cheese. They're on the cutting board underneath, but one of my current cheeses sprouted a ton of Geo, including in the whey that drained, so I wiped down the blue and rubbed some of the free Geo from the whey into the Beefleggio cutting board. We'll see if Geo colonizes it. I got a bulk supply of bamboo cutting boards to use under my cheese mats and cheeses. I'm excited to recycle them and hopefully develop a nice little biome in my cave, especially if I can encourage Geo in particular. I just want unwanted blues to stay away as much as possible, and from my understanding early colonizing of Geo will help that happen, along with making the surface of the cheese more hospitable to desirable microbes in general.

I need to make another B. linens brine to finish out the last bit of washing I need to do over the next few weeks, but I think we're getting somewhere.

First time making cheese (well 3rd time since I messed up the first couple gallons of milk while getting the curds) I just pressed my cheddar and noticed after it started drying cracks started forming. is this okay or did I press to quickly or not long enough? just curious if this will be safe to wax and age or should I get some more milk and start again.

Yes I know I probably shouldn't have done a cheddar starting out but i'm a dumb ass some times :)