Problems in the Cave

There are already two symptom tables in this section — the numbers has the six failures a cave produces, and troubleshooting has the full diagnostic list organised by when a fault shows up. This page is deliberately not a third table.

It is about the thing those tables cannot express, which took me years to work out and which changed how I think about the room:

A cave is an ecosystem, not a container. And nearly every organism you will call a contaminant in your cave is somebody else’s deliberate flora.

That is not a nice way of saying “relax about it.” It is the practical fact that determines what you can and cannot do about any of it. You are not going to sterilise a cave — you would not want to, since a sterile cave makes a dull cheese — so every problem here is a population you are managing rather than an enemy you are eliminating.

The same organism, a fault here and a method there

This dive keeps running into it, so it is worth putting in one place.

In your cave it is	Somewhere else it is
Cheese mites eating your rinds	The method for Mimolette, whose crater-pitted rind is the record of their grazing — and for Milbenkäse, which is ripened by them and eaten with them still on it
Blue appearing on a cheddar you did not inoculate	The entire blue family, where P. roqueforti is added on purpose and the wheel is needled to give it air
An orange, sticky, smelly patch spreading on a hard wheel	B. linens, which people spend fortnights coaxing onto washed rinds and mostly fail to
A wrinkled, brain-like white growth you did not ask for	Geotrichum candidum, the organism doing the real work in the first fortnight of every washed rind and on a good crottin

The useful consequence: when something appears on a wheel, the first question is not “how do I kill it” but “is it in the wrong place, or is it in the wrong quantity.” Those have different answers, and neither answer is bleach.

The genuine safety line — which growths mean the cheese goes in the bin rather than gets brushed — is on rinds and moulds, and I would rather you read it there than have me summarise it loosely.

🔴 Mites, which are the one I would warn a new maker about

Everything else in a cave is intuitive once you understand humidity. Mites are not, they are extremely common, and they arrive in a way that feels unfair.

What they are: several species, the usual one being Tyrophagus putrescentiae — “putrid cheese eater,” which is a name doing a lot of editorialising. They are microscopic, they eat mould, and they turn a rind to fine brown dust.

And here is the trap, which is the whole reason they are a problem for us specifically: they prefer 45–55 °F. That is not near your cave’s window — it is your cave’s window, exactly. Every condition you have carefully engineered for your cheese is also the condition they were looking for. So this is not a hygiene failure. You built them a house.

They also show up late. Fresh cheeses never meet them; it is the long-aged wheels — the alpines, the cheddars, the goudas, the ones you have already invested a year in — that get found, a couple of months in.

Where they live: the dark, hidden places, and specifically where the cheese meets the shelf. Which is one more argument for turning, and for standing wheels on edge if the shape allows.

What actually works, and what does not

The honest structure of the advice is that it is prevention, not cure. The guidance from the cheesemaking-supply literature is blunt about the endpoint: the goal is to stop them reaching the paste, “because, at that point, there is nothing we can do.”

Prevention — deny them a surface:

Wax, vacuum bag, or oil the rind. A sealed wheel is not a rind they can graze.
Which is a real argument for waxing a wheel you intend to keep for a year, and one I had not appreciated when I first read the rind options.

Management on a natural rind, where sealing is not an option:

Brush regularly — and do it over a sink or in another room, never over the cave floor, or you are redistributing them onto everything else.
A dedicated vacuum, kept for this and nothing else.
Wipe with a salt-and-vinegar solution: the recipe given is 1 tablespoon salt, 1 tablespoon vinegar, 1 cup water.
Drop the cave to about 46 °F if nothing else on the shelves objects — the cold end of the window is less comfortable for them than the middle.
Food-grade diatomaceous earth, dusted through a fine sieve.

⚠ And the limit, stated rather than glossed: these measures buy time. A female lays hundreds of eggs, they are already in the air and on everything, and removing all of them is not realistic. Any source that promises eradication is selling something.

⭐ The perspective that keeps this proportionate: the FDA detained half a tonne of Mimolette in 2013 for exceeding six mites per square inch, with some samples reportedly around four thousand — and Mimolette is a cheese whose rind is supposed to be worked by them. There is a real line between a grazed rind and a ruined one, and it is nearer “has the paste been reached” than “are there mites.”

The three categories, which is the decision you actually make

When something is wrong with a wheel, it lands in one of three places. Most of the anxiety in a home cave comes from not knowing which.

1. Fix it — a condition problem showing up on the cheese. Cracking, an over-dry rind, a slimy surface, one permanently damp face, mould in places air does not reach. These are humidity, airflow, spacing and turning, and the fix is to the room, not the wheel. The wheel usually recovers if you catch it early, because a rind can be brushed back and a gradient can be re-established.

2. Live with it — the cave being the cave. A natural rind that is greyer or fuzzier than the picture in a book. A wheel that picked up a bit of the blue you keep on the next shelf. Some mite dust on a year-old wheel you have been brushing. This is what a natural rind is: your cave’s air, written on the outside of your cheese. Trying to make it look like a photograph is how people end up sterilising the room and making dull cheese.

3. It is over. The paste is affected rather than the rind; the smell is wrong through the cut, not just at the surface; ammonia in a bloomy that has gone too far; a wheel that has cracked deeply enough to admit air and growth into its middle. A rind problem is nearly always recoverable. A paste problem nearly never is — you cannot un-ripen a cheese, and you cannot brush the inside.

That is the most useful thing I know about troubleshooting a cave, and it is not on either of the tables: ask whether the fault is on the surface or in the body, because that answers whether you are working or grieving.

Cave hygiene is a schedule, not an event

The counterweight to “you cannot sterilise it” is that you do still have to clean it.

Take the shelves out and clean them several times a year. They are part of the ecosystem, and eventually the wrong part of it — this is the numbers page’s advice and it is the single highest-value habit in the room.
No standing water, ever. A pan for humidity is fine; a puddle is a habitat. Wipe condensation off the lid or the underside of a shelf when you turn.
Space between the wheels, and away from the back wall. A face that never sees moving air is where every one of these problems starts.
Separate brushes for blues and everything else, as the previous page says, because a brush is a vector.

None of that is a deep-clean. It is a rhythm, and the rhythm is what keeps the population where you want it instead of where it wants to be.

What I have actually had go wrong

Being straight about the register here: my cave problems have been ordinary ones. Humidity that drifted before I had it properly controlled — which is the whole reason the fridge went through three humidity designs — and the usual argument with condensation. The three-attempt hose saga on that page is a cave problem in disguise: a low spot in a hose is standing water, and standing water is a habitat.

The specific failure I have written about at length is not a cave failure at all — the Swiss that came out with no eyes is a warm-room and culture problem, decided before the wheel ever reached a shelf. Which is the point the previous page makes: the cave develops the cheese you made. It does not repair it.

Next: when is it ready — the trier, the plug, and the fact that ready is a decision rather than an event.

Sources

Cheese-mite species, their preference for 45–55 °F, their appearance on longer-aged cheeses, the cheese-meets-shelf hiding places, brushing away from the cave, the dedicated vacuum, the 1 Tbsp salt : 1 Tbsp vinegar : 1 cup water wipe, dropping the cave to 46 °F, food-grade diatomaceous earth through a sieve, waxing/vacuum-sealing/oiling as prevention, and the “once they are in the paste there is nothing we can do” limit: New England Cheesemaking Supply Company, “Why Cheese Mites” — https://cheesemaking.com/blogs/fun-along-the-whey/why-cheese-mites
The Mimolette detention and the six-mites-per-square-inch figure are covered with their sources on the France page; Milbenkäse on the Germany page.
Which growths mean discard: rinds and moulds.
Shelf cleaning, spacing, standing water and air movement: New England Cheesemaking Supply Company, “How to Make a Cheese Cave” — https://cheesemaking.com/blogs/learn/how-to-make-a-cheese-cave