Well spent the day cleaning out the root cellar and removing all the shelves and cupboards. As the last people here seemed to think its a good place for canned goods. So moving shelves for can goods into the regular basement. Stays 55- 60 there year round. Should work out great. Now i have this dirty approx. 12 x 12 room. Has an out side vent. Pretty damp and im going to dry it out. Get it all painted so i have a nicer root cellar. But a lot of room their and thinking, may make a great place to dry my meats and age and keep my homemade cheeses. Either will take a fridge or use the whole or part of the room to make it temp and humidity controlled. So thought before i get to deep. And suggestions or ides any one wants to share?
Sounds like a busy day, root cellars are great to have.
Viper
Not saying not to do it but a 12x12 room is very large for dry curing if thats what you want it for. Root cellars are cold and damp for a reason. My parents and grandparents had root cellars for their canning goods. It keep them out of the light and cool enough so they kept for long periods. Trying to control temp & R/H in a 12x12 room will be a challenge. If you take on this venture I wish you luck and would like to see pictures as it progress's
Well going to be more weeks then day.;( We work when and how we can. Right now cleaning the shelves painting and moving. These will be the canned goods. My basement stays 55-60 all the time but the root cellar stays even lower at most times.
My plans are to still keep produce there. But Use a large cabinet for my cheese and meats if possible. If not then I'll make two. Figured on maybe an air condition if it seems a little warm. Cold shouldn't be a problem. I will monitor humidity and temp with a controller. a humidifier hooked to the controller should work good.
But i will try the whole room first. Thinking 45-55 temps with a 60-75% humidity would work for both. Or am i wrong?
Viper, I seen that you're planning to use a separate cabinet for your meat and cheese. I think that's a good idea. It would isolate what you are drying/aging from the stray molds that produce and outside air are going to drag in. Sure would stink to lose a batch or more of sausage to bad mold.
You might also think about what you can do to sanitize your root cellar once a year, to further reduce the risk of developing high levels of undesirable molds in an area where you want to control the type of molds you have.
Cool, damp areas make great mold farms. When I worked in a yogurt manufacturing plant, we used a three stage filtration system (the final stage was HEPA filters) to clean the mold out of the air that we brought into the building. Keeping out stray mold spores and allowing only a specific blend of bacteria to come in contact with the milk was critical to developing the flavor profile we wanted in our yogurt. And, it prevented you from finding green fuzzies when you opened your yogurt.
Truth is i have found a small dorm type refrigerator I think will work for cheese. The meat I may go to a full size refrigerator or cabinet. But the root cellar will keep perfect temps so its humidity i got to get right.
I think it was 3Rensho who posted the pics from a trip he made to Switzerland or scandahovia somewhere where they use there whole cellars to dry meats. Those were some great pics and I would love to check one of those out. If you have the right humidity and conditions and the good spores you can do it, but I don't know what the conditions need to be. But I am sure someone will set you straight soon.