Lighting the AMNPS in 3 different places was your biggest issue besides placing it farther away from the cheese without any cooling in there. I live in South Florida and can smoke cheese in the middle of summer when temps are in the mid/uppper 90's. BUT, you got to do it with your smoker in the shade, the AMNPS in a different unit and then "pipe the smoke" to the cheese. I also put some frozen water bottles up around the cheese to be sure it stays cool in the smoker.... Actually, if you had just put some frozen water bottles in there and lit the AMNPS on one end, you would have been fine!
Don't give up man! Give it another try! I plan on doing it here in a few days. I plan on taking some as gifts for the holidays.
Cheers.
EDIT: LOL! Yea, no snow down here anytime soon!
When I started the therm was reading 85* before I lit the AMNPS. After it had run for 30min it was at 90*. After another hour it stayed at 90*. I lit 3 spots because my plan was to only do 2hrs and in the past it was too light with 1 or 2 spots lit. I thought about the frozen water bottles after the meltdown. Next time the frozen bottles might be needed.....
I am ready for a bit of snow......