BGKYSmoker
Nepas OTBS #242
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I been doing this for years. 30+ and never been sick with anything.Hi Nepas - I am sure you know what you are doing but be somewhat careful about keeping certain cheeses that long - even/especially vac packed and chilled.
A traditionally made, well aged, cheese with a low moisture content and relatively high acidity is likely to remain safe (smoked or un-smoked) for several years however some of the supermarket mass produced cheeses these days have high moisture content and low acidity and are not designed for keeping - the use-by date on these should not be ignored. There are always a number of pathogenic bacteria that survive the pasteurisation process when cheese is produced and in a high moisture content cheese these will continue to multiply even at fridge temperatures. The act of vac packing will keep out oxygen and prevent some of the aerobic pathogens from multiplying however it will also keep the moisture in and encourage the growth of the anaerobic beasties. Under ideal circumstances it is recognised that many bacteria will double every 20 minutes. At refrigerator temperatures this will be a lot lower but even if we say that they double once per week then after a single year, starting with a single live bacteria, you could end up with over 2 thousand million billion bacteria (2.25E+15). Almost too many to comfortably try to imagine!
Cheese is a wonderfully versatile product and one that also freezes VERY well. Once the smoked cheese has matured for several weeks I have found that longer maturation does not seem to significantly improve the overall flavour. I therefore usually freeze a proportion of it if I have smoked a large batch. Once subsequently thawed blind taste tests have shown that people cannot actually tell the difference.
Even supermarket cheeses usually have quite a long use-by date and following my re-processing (by smoking) I extend the final use-by date by 50%. Once it has mellowed for 3 weeks, any cheese that I don't think will be used by the new use-by date immediately gets vac packed and frozen. I sell some of my cheese so I have to be a little more careful than if it were all just for personal consumption.
Once you have opened and tried your super matured cheese please let us know so that we can be sure that you have survived :-)
LOL
Wade
The 2 year aged cheese was eaten earlier this years and was Havarti.
I have 1.5 year aged gouda that will get opened in May