Two weeks from this Wednesday, on November 8, we're running our Workshop: Rind Bloomy Rinds — and the timing lines up better than we planned it. Bloomy rinds are among the least forgiving styles when a cave's humidity drifts, and this is exactly the stretch of the year when that drift tends to show up. If you've been fighting a slick or cracking rind this fall, this session is built for you specifically, not for cheesemaking in general.
The day is structured around the two failure modes we hear about most from bloomy-rind producers: a rind that never quite sets up firm enough to hold its shape, and a rind that sets up fine and then goes slimy two or three weeks into aging. Both usually trace back to the same handful of variables — culture balance, salting, and the humidity and airflow the wheel sees in its first ten days — and the workshop walks through diagnosing which of those is actually the culprit in your specific case rather than guessing at all three at once. It's a useful reminder, too, that this is the same category international judges scrutinize closely; one large overseas competition spent this fall taking entries specifically in the bloomy and washed-rind categories, which says something about how much attention the style gets when it's done well.
Who this is for
This one is aimed at members who are already making a bloomy-rind cheese and running into a specific, repeatable problem with it, more than at someone starting from scratch. If you're newer to the style, our Affinage Fundamentals course is the better starting point and pairs well with this workshop later once you have a rind of your own to trouble-shoot. If you've got a wheel in the cave right now that isn't behaving the way you expected, bring your notes — the instructor session leaves room for members to describe what they're seeing and get a read on likely causes.
The format is a single day, with a shorter recorded portion beforehand covering the underlying microbiology, so you can come to the live session ready to talk through your own cave rather than sitting through the basics live. That's been the most useful structure in past cohorts, based on the feedback we've gotten from members who've taken similar workshops earlier this year. A few members have also asked whether the session covers home-cave setups rather than commercial ones — it does touch on both, since a surprising number of our members are still running a converted refrigerator or a repurposed closet rather than a purpose-built room, and the humidity principles don't change much with scale.
The practical details
Registration is open now through our events page, and space in these smaller workshop formats tends to close before the date itself, so members who've been meaning to sign up should do it this week rather than next. If you're not sure whether this workshop or one of our other fall sessions is the better fit for what you're seeing in your own cave, reach out to our Education Committee — they can point you to whichever fits your specific situation best.
We'll follow up after November 8 with a short recap of what came out of the session, including any recurring pattern worth writing up for members who couldn't make it. In the meantime, if you're already noticing your bloomy rinds behaving differently this fall, our earlier piece on cave humidity swings this week is a reasonable place to start while you wait for your seat to open up.
The International Cheese Federation (ICF) and More Cheese are entirely fictional. This post is demonstration content created for MemberJunction. All people, organizations, events, courses, certifications, figures, and quotations in it are invented, and nothing here represents a real association, a real business, a real person, or real professional advice.