With my cheese making ingredients arriving today (thanks Country Brewer) and a Mead in the keg which I am about to bottle for very long term storage, I started thinking about waxing, both for the bottles and my cheese. There is premade cheese wax which I did find, but it is rather expensive so I went looking to see how I could make my own.
From what I could find online, cheese wax is made from Microcrystalline Wax and Paraffin Wax. My limited understanding is that the Microcrystalline wax is used to add some 'elasticity' to the final product which helps to reduce/stop cracking the wax with age.
I found an online candle making supplies shop which sells both. http://www.candlemaking.com.au Be sure to grab a beer first to man up before following the link. Both these waxes are food grade. I used the 65deg C paraffin wax.
The thing I couldn't find about cheese wax was the proportions of the mix, so I took a guess and went with 1/3 Microcrystalline and 2/3 Paraffin. I used a total of 120gm for this initial test batch.
This was melted in a pot, over another pot with water over a flame.
I had read that you can use food colouring to add the colour.
But what I found was that the colouring didn't want to mix with the wax. If anyone has some experience with this I'd be keen to hear it. Maybe another brand of food colouring might work?
Finally, the bottles were dunked three times into the wax. After the second dunk, the label was attached to the top, and when dunked the third time it was nicely stuck to the cap. One thing I will do it get a narrower and taller pot for the wax, so that less wax is used. The left over I had was put in the fridge for future use.
I only had 16 bottles laying around, but here's the result. I'll let these sit around for a little while to see how they weather.
From what I could find online, cheese wax is made from Microcrystalline Wax and Paraffin Wax. My limited understanding is that the Microcrystalline wax is used to add some 'elasticity' to the final product which helps to reduce/stop cracking the wax with age.
I found an online candle making supplies shop which sells both. http://www.candlemaking.com.au Be sure to grab a beer first to man up before following the link. Both these waxes are food grade. I used the 65deg C paraffin wax.
The thing I couldn't find about cheese wax was the proportions of the mix, so I took a guess and went with 1/3 Microcrystalline and 2/3 Paraffin. I used a total of 120gm for this initial test batch.
This was melted in a pot, over another pot with water over a flame.
I had read that you can use food colouring to add the colour.
But what I found was that the colouring didn't want to mix with the wax. If anyone has some experience with this I'd be keen to hear it. Maybe another brand of food colouring might work?
Finally, the bottles were dunked three times into the wax. After the second dunk, the label was attached to the top, and when dunked the third time it was nicely stuck to the cap. One thing I will do it get a narrower and taller pot for the wax, so that less wax is used. The left over I had was put in the fridge for future use.
I only had 16 bottles laying around, but here's the result. I'll let these sit around for a little while to see how they weather.
