Many cheese makers pay homage to the ancient and traditional method of aging cheeses in caves by calling their aging space a “cheese cave." Caves are often ideal locations to age cheese due to their environment and year-round stability, so most aging space seek to replicate those conditions as much as possible.
An aging space requires essentially four things:
Other aspects of a cheese cave can be important, such as limiting light: darkness is good and helps avoid any fat rancidity; avoiding dripping water, and having space to work and to move.
A cave can provide near-ideal conditions for aging cheese, so long as the cave is not a dead-end or otherwise lacking air flow.
Going underground, the temperature quickly converges on the average temperature for the area, usually somewhere in the 45-65 F range. It stays quite stable throughout the year, and changes only very slowly with the seasons so long as it isn't too openly exposed to the outside air.
Caves tend to have higher humidity due to being exposed to accumulated ground water and slow seepage, without direct sunlight to evaporate and bake off water. If their humidity is not high enough, it's not too hard to improve with some added water. Shelving with good aging boards can be constructed and placed inside a cave as easily as any other location, and dripping water can be protected against reasonably easily.
It almost goes without saying, but caves are dark.
Refrigerators and freezers can make wonderful small-scale aging spaces for cheese. They present two difficulties that need to be addressed.
Most fridges are designed to operate in the 33-40 F temperature range, and freezers typically operate in the -5 to 15 F temperature range. Typically, a temperature controller such as an InkBird can be installed that the fridge plugs into, and which has a temperature probe going inside that will monitor for the right conditions (55 F or so) and cycle the power to the fridge to keep it at cheese aging temperatures.
Standalone freezers can work just as well, provided they are frost-free; frost freezers run the coolant through the shelving and will ice up there, dripping onto cheeses below and otherwise causing havoc. Also, some fridges and notably also beverage coolers / wine fridges use a cool plate, related to a frost freezer's mode of operation, which can drip, so if you use one make sure the plate drains away from the cheeses and won't drip on them.
Most refrigerators work on the principle that during the cooling cycle they will remove humidity from the fridge and condense it onto the coils. This causes the cooling cycles to also cause a sudden drop in relative humidity, which needs to be restored as soon as possible. These cycles can be hard on cheeses if not managed well.
There are two methods for managing the humidity in a fridge:
Depending on your location and the typical relative humidity of the air, you may end up with too much relative humidity, especially when your fridge is loaded up with cheese to age as they will emit some of their moisture into the air of the fridge and raise the humidity. If that happens, you may need to also install a dehumidifier into the fridge and have a humidity controller capable of activating both a humidifier and dehumidifier as needed. Sometimes just getting some air flow from outside is sufficient to lower the humidity to a better level.
A dedicated aging room — a closet nook, pantry corner, or converted interior space sized for multiple wheels at once — is the middle option between a repurposed refrigerator and full farm-scale caves. The same two target conditions govern it: temperature 50–62 °F and humidity ~78–90 %, plus airflow over boards. However, because you are conditioning room-sized volumes of air rather than 8 cubic feet or fifty litres, what changes isn't which problem to solve — equipment gets bigger and water management moves from a drip tray into actual plumbing. Space itself also becomes an ingredient: with real height between floor and ceiling you get natural stratification (slightly cooler at the board level), which is where your cheese actually sits, so set targets by what loggers read at wheel height and location.
A room has far more thermal mass than a fridge, so instead of the fast compressor cycling you saw in Repurposed Refrigerators and Freezers above (or the slow seasonal drift typical of cellars, see below), expect slower temperature swings: house A/C pulling cooler, drier air through an unsealed door or gap on summer days; heating systems breathing warm dry air across winter. The fix is still the same class as a fridge — close leaks and add a controller. If you have a dedicated AC unit for your aging room, most AC units will not allow cooling down to the proper range for cheese, so you'll need to use a good controller for it like a CoolBot and have a compatible AC unit. You may need a heater as well if your aging room will be subject to very cold temperatures outside it. Sizing matters a lot: an undersized cooler will cycle frequently like a refrigerator, but the right-sized unit and room mass keeps swings gentle. Two placement notes that scale up from the fridge case: supply air should circulate gently around shelves rather than blasting them directly. Keep boards at least 1 inch off any surface so no face sits in still air against a cool plane where condensation can pool on it.
It's very important to insulate the cheese aging room very well. When building a room for aging, insulation will likely be the single largest cost, but it will reduce your energy usage the most in the long run.
This is the difference that room scale really makes: humidification must handle fairly continuous duty, which changes both equipment choice and water management. In practice this usually means three layers working together rather than one heroic unit:
When choosing insulation, be careful about humidity. The interior of the room will be at a very high relative humidity. Also, if the room will be much cooler than the environment on the outside, it will pick up condensation that some insulation can't handle; for example, fiberglass insulation will end up with black mold growth. The recommendations for walk-in refrigerators and cold rooms apply to cheese aging rooms: usually rigid foam insulation is used, with spray-foam insulation in all of the cracks, and then the interior is sealed off well. This keeps the insulation and structure (wood) from deteriorating.
At room scale you finally get space for proper aging racks of wooden shelving or boards with at least 1 inch / 2-3 cm clearance around all sides of every wheel (see Aging Boards above) instead of crowded fridge shelves. Gentle whole-room circulation via a quiet low-speed fan beats several harsher directed drafts, and periodic fresh-air exchange by opening the door or using a small vent works fine for a room large enough to walk into. The room will have “zones” with slightly higher or lower humidity and temperature, which you can map out with hygrometers and thermometers; assign cheese types or move cheese wheels by age in the zone that makes the most sense — hard wheels to the drier zones, bloomy rinds toward more humid zones, for example. The one room will likely provide more than one microclimate. Energy-wise this ends up modest: right-sized and insulated for its purpose it runs near fridge cost, although the initial cost to build the room is higher than buying a refrigerator.
Cellars have historically been the classic place to age cheese at small-farm or household scale for centuries. They sit at grade and below it with stone/concrete/brick walls in contact with earth, so — like a cave — temperature drifts toward your area's mean annual (typically 45–60 °F) underground temperature, and will be quite stable year-round except where the cellar opens onto house air via stairs/hatch. Compared to refrigerators you don't get compressor cycles or drying from condensation; compared to an aging room, dedicated climate equipment is often not needed or only a little supplemental help is needed. This makes a cellar relatively cheap energy-wise and more forgiving because its large thermal mass (earth + concrete floor) buffers both temperature and moisture. A damp concrete slab/stone wall works like a giant "aging board," slowly absorbing water on dry days and giving it back later to even out RH swings that would otherwise stress the cheese.
However, not every cellar is equal — assess suitability first before placing wheels there to age:
Your climate matters: cellars in hot-humid regions can sit at 70 °F+ year-round or creep past ~95% RH, which works against most aging styles over long periods — check your humidity logs first and be honest about whether the space actually fits what you want to age. If it's too hot, you'll need to cool the space like an aging room. Where a cellar environment does fit, it runs nearly for free: its big thermal mass will do the heavy lifting on temperature/moisture control. Add or subtract additional help for temperature and humidity as the seasons shift (water basin up in dry spells, gentle air exchange / dehumidifier during muggy weeks). A good cellar may not really need electricity at all, but a marginal one can be made useful by adding a little bit of temperature and/or humidity control for some parts of the year.