It's the space that adds the most value to your cheese.

Aging room space deserves attention to detail as it offers you an opportunity to maximize the value of your product while minimizing the added costs associated with adding maximum value.

When cheese curd graduates from the vat to the form, it begins a journey that will take days, months, or even years. That metaphorical journey is a deeply sophisticated one that only our most learned scientists and technicians understand well. Molecular science goes deep and has challenged academia for years. We continue to learn and develop the understanding to solve problems and make better cheese.

On the platform of knowledge, we create conditions for this most important phase of development and added value – aging.

Today, we speak about cheese aged on racks and shelves, cheese which spends its critical days in humidity and temperature-controlled environments. Not those cheese vacuum-packed and put away to age without air at a controlled temperature – we can talk about those another day.

A good aging room in a mythically perfect world would be one that is uniform in every square inch. Technically, this is not possible, but practically, we can achieve a space that has minimal variation and produces highly uniform cheese.

Aging spaces are frequently referred to as “caves,” which is odd to me as a cave is defined as “a large hole in the side of a hill, cliff, or mountain, or one that is underground.” Caves are natural formations.

An important note on this topic: most underground installations require mechanical assistance just like above-ground aging rooms. Surprised? Here’s the reason why. Caves such as the revered caves in the Roquefort Aveyron region have a special attribute that is often overlooked: a perfect air supply. Air coming down through the Fleurines has a unique temperature and humidity which promote the unique microflora we experience in Roquefort PDO cheese.

It’s not the cave per se, it’s the air.

Cheese loves perfect air and rots in imperfect air.

It’s the air!

At SDI, we started supplying equipment for aging rooms about 10 years ago. We utilized conventional refrigeration equipment and got excellent results to the extent that we have several hundred rooms in operation. Those early installations continue to run and we get very few calls on maintenance issues.

But cheesemakers want more. We started out with units on the ceiling for one reason only: most budget-minded cheesemakers were purchasing ceiling mount equipment, and the SDI approach simply made it work better. Basic equipment with better controls.

The big flaw: it’s on the ceiling and the room is full of products. How do you clean it?

Most folks don’t have an extra room to move products into while cleaning. Back in the day, a project I was involved in had 9 white mold aging rooms, 8 days for mold growth, 1 day for cleaning.

But in today’s world, a system that allows you to clean it while there is product in the room is the holy grail of sanitation. Systems that allow the heating and cooling coils to be cleaned while the product is in the room are a massive step forward. Combine the attributes of anti-microbial fabric ducting, no hidden ducting, and simplified actions that enable us to be clean. There are two major reasons to adopt these new systems: sanitation and reduced cross-contamination.

The floor-mounted system is more sanitary and, as such, makes safe food easier to produce. However, the real value may be in less cross-contamination of product. The perfect white mold comes from an optimized environment where air movement is gentle, conditions are uniform, humidification is sanitary, and equipment can be cleaned while the room is full of product. The future of air handling systems in aging rooms will be floor-mounted systems.
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The SDI advantage has been very competitive pricing with good control. As we up our game to meet the higher standard, it will be our goal to remain competitive, built in North America, and enabling our customers to be competitive as well.

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