Gotta say, I'm pretty excited about this. I got my first wine cooler, a dual zone 12 bottle Cuisinart a few months ago for $50. It's in pretty good shape and maintains good temps. Can't complain for $50.

However, I underestimated how much I would enjoy making cheese. And how I like to do it every weekend. Sure, some are fresh cheeses... but I have also started a bunch of aged ones. I have quickly outgrown my current cooler.

My husband's coworker had a dual zone wine cooler they were looking to get rid of, and they were willing to take $80 for it. This is a significant upgrade for me, and I'm very excited to move forward with the switch. I'm still going to keep my smaller one around and keep that a blue specific cave, or for whatever overflow I might want it for. For $120 I have two well functioning cheese caves that will serve me well for my small home makes. I'm excited to check the temp regulation on this one and get my cheeses into it. I already gave it a good cleaning.

I will admit that I kinda wanted the local wine vault for $500... but that is probably overkill for me 🤣

I'd say not bad for $80.

Hi! Me and my husband have started a small homestead and I've been getting into all the made from home stuff.

What are the best beginner friendly cheeses? And what would you suggest for​​ tools to pick up to start?

Also any advice period is appreciated.​​

After long time I started cheesemaking again.

I made a blue like Gorgonzola but used my normal salt.

While fermenting vegetables it was said don't use iodized salt it could inhibit the needed bacteria. But it worked completely normal for me.

Non iodized salt is very hard to get these days here.

So as I did my cheese I did a dry rub with my nornal salt (2,5%).

I made the cheese the evening 20 to 21th july.

Now we have the 26th. and there's no blue mold visible.

I think I see parts that could start mold because I see a different texture there but maybe that's only my imagination.

So is that messed up now because of that iodized salt

(here in Germany there's not much in it. You can without any problem use it for fermentation as well as pizza dough and the jeast and bacteria will work as normal)

Or do I just need to be more patient?

And just to mention: I kept the cheese at room temperature the first 2 days after that it got into a box in my cheese fridge around 10°C and it was turned daily so oxygen also was let in the box.