The number is the rate times the delay
Two makes a week, four wheels each, ten weeks in the cave. Eight wheels arrive every week and nothing leaves for ten weeks, so the room settles at eighty wheels standing at once. That is the number to size a cave against, and it is nowhere near what a single make looks like on the bench.
It also does not care how the makes are split. One make a week of eight wheels fills the same cave as two of four. What changes is only whether a rack fills tidily, which is a nice-to-have rather than a constraint.
Week four is not the test
The room fills in a straight line for the whole aging period and only then levels off. At week four of a ten week aging the cave is at forty percent of its eventual load and feels roomy. The crunch arrives in week ten, and you can put the date in a diary the day you start. Every cheesemaker who has run out of shelving has run out of it on a date that was predictable from the first make.
Shelves, and what falls off the back
An eight inch wheel with an inch of air round it needs nine inches of spacing. A 36 by 18 inch shelf takes four across and two deep, so eight wheels, with nothing much left over in either direction. Four shelves to a rack is 32 wheels, so eighty wheels wants ten shelves and three racks — and three racks at 4.5 square feet each, plus forty percent for aisles, is 18.9 square feet of floor before anything else goes in the room.
Take that as an upper bound rather than a plan. Real caves stagger rows, lose the back of a deep shelf to whatever nobody can reach, run boards under the wheels, and keep a rack near the door for what is going out. Each of those costs a wheel or two that this grid does not know about.
The turning nobody costs
Eighty wheels turned every three days is 186.7 turns a week. At forty-five seconds each that is two hours twenty a week, every week, forever. In one wheel it is 23 turns and about seventeen minutes, which at eighteen dollars an hour is 5.18 dollars of labour in a wheel before the room, the racks, the boards or the electricity.
The part worth sitting with is what happens when somebody decides to age it longer because it tastes better at fourteen weeks. The standing inventory goes up by forty percent, the shelving goes up by forty percent, the turning goes up by forty percent, and the money is tied up forty percent longer. None of that is a reason not to do it. It is a reason to know what it costs before deciding, which is a different thing from finding out in week fourteen.
Questions people ask
How many wheels will be in my cheese cave at once?
Multiply the wheels arriving each week by the number of weeks each one stays. Two makes a week of four wheels aging ten weeks gives eighty standing at once. It does not depend on the size of a single make, which is why sizing a cave against one make day is the mistake that catches almost everybody the first time.
How big does an aging room need to be?
Work the standing inventory first, then divide by the wheels a shelf holds. Eighty eight-inch wheels at nine inch spacing on 36 by 18 inch shelves is ten shelves, three four-shelf racks, and about 18.9 square feet of floor once forty percent is added for aisles. That is the shelving footprint only, before doors, a work surface or anything else the room has to do.
How much time does turning cheese actually take?
On the figures in the form, two hours and twenty minutes a week, forever. Eighty wheels turned every three days is 186.7 turns, and at forty-five seconds each that is 140 minutes. Per wheel over a ten week aging it is 23 turns and about seventeen minutes. It is a small number multiplied by a large one, which is why it disappears from plans and then shows up in the week.
What happens if I age for longer?
Everything scales with it. Going from ten weeks to fourteen puts forty percent more wheels in the room, needs forty percent more shelving, takes forty percent more turning every week, and ties the money up forty percent longer. Change the aging field and the page reworks all four. Whether the cheese is worth it at fourteen weeks is not something a calculator has any view on.
How long should I age my cheese?
That comes from the style you are making and, for some milks, from the authority over your dairy — minimum aging periods for cheeses made from unpasteurised milk are set by regulation and differ by country, state and county. This page holds no aging period of its own and states none. Put the figure your recipe or your regulator gives you into the field and the room arithmetic follows from it.