Hard Cheese Preservation

Great way to preserve all of the extra cheese, from the holidays 🙂

Have you seen all of the videos, spanning each social media platform, that teach cheese making? Have you tried it yet? Have you attempted to make a hard cheese?

I'm sure you've seen, or perhaps even purchased cheese with a wax rind. There are those cute little cheese balls, coated in red wax that kids find irresistible. Did you know that rind is paraffin wax? It's used to preserve the cheese. Once you've cracked it open, your cheese will spoil within a week or two. Paraffin wax is a petroleum by-product, that can actually leach into your cheese, and who knows what harmful effects it has on us in the long-term. It can't be good though, because paraffin isn't biodegradable, can't be composted, and is known to have have cancer causing agents, such as benzene in it . No, thank you!

Let's get back to cheese making preservation 🙂

Did you know that once your cheese is your desired firmness, you can dip it in vinegar to prevent bacterial growth, then paint it with a couple layers of beeswax to preserve it and age it for up to 25 years? You read that right!! If you want to taste test your cheese, simply crack the seal of beeswax, remove desired portion of cheese, and repeat the above steps with vinegar and a few layers of melted beeswax.

The wonderful thing about this method, besides its thousands of years of tried and true preservation, is it's lack of petrochemicals. Natural beeswax allows the cheese, a living food, to breathe and age. Once you've broken the original wax, the aging process ends, but the cheese still changes and is loaded with beneficial microbes and good bacteria.

Beeswax coating is also a great way to keep store-bought cheeses from going bad too. I bulk buy when it's on sale. Just remember the vinegar dip, first!

I'm not going to get into the whole process, however, there's a lot of interesting and useful information on the web. Check it out, because it's a fantastic preservation method and can keep precious cheese from going bad and molding.

Thank you bees 🐝❤️

*not recommended for soft cheeses, as bacterial growth may occur, due to high moisture content