Best Cheese Caves (October 2026)

When most people search for the best cheese caves, Google hands them a map pack and a list of tourist attractions. That is not the question home cheese makers are asking. They want to know which enclosure will keep a wheel of cheddar at 55°F and 85% relative humidity for six months without anyone touching it, and how much that setup takes to assemble.

I have spent the last few years running exactly that kind of comparison for our own maturing shelves, and the answer has not changed in years of community testing: a modified wine cooler at 55°F beats a fancier dedicated unit that nobody monitors. This guide covers the spec targets, the six build routes we have seen work, the parts you actually need, and what to do when a wheel starts sweating or cracking.

If you are still pressing wheels and need the other half of the process, our picks for the best cheese presses for home cheese makers are worth reading first. Updated for October 2026.

Quick answer: the best cheese cave for a home maker is a 12- to 28-bottle wine cooler, top shelf removed, set to hold 55°F (13°C), with a bowl of water and a wick, and a thermo-hygrometer sitting at wheel height. That combination has held 85% RH in community testing for years and needs no daily attention.

What Is a Cheese Cave? A Stable 45-55°F Space at 80-95% Relative Humidity

A cheese cave is a dedicated, enclosed space held at a steady 45-55°F (7-13°C) and 80-95% relative humidity so cheese ripens slowly and evenly instead of drying out, sweating, or molding unevenly.

The enclosure can be a converted mini fridge, a wine cooler, a purpose-built aging cabinet, or a walk-in room in a commercial creamery. What matters is not the container. It is the pair of numbers and the stability between checks.

Cheesemakers call this process affinage, ripening, or maturation. All three mean the same thing: bacteria and molds on the rind are breaking down lactose and proteins into lactic acid, then into the sharp and nutty compounds that make aged cheese taste the way it does. The cave is the room where that chemistry happens at a controlled rate.

Five specifications separate a workable cave from a disappointing one:

• Temperature: 45-55°F (7-13°C) held within a degree or two, not a set point that drifts with the season.
• Relative humidity: 80-85% RH as the working baseline, with 80-95% as the realistic ceiling for most home setups. Soft and washed-rind styles want the top of that band.
• Air circulation: gentle movement, not a still box and not a fan blasting the rind.
• Shelving: slatted or plastic-net racks so air moves under each wheel and nothing sits in standing water.
• Monitoring: a thermo-hygrometer with a remote probe placed at wheel height, ideally with logging, so you know the readings rather than guessing.

Here is the plain-language version of the humidity requirement. Relative humidity is the share of the air that is water vapor at a given temperature. Cool air holds less water than warm air, so when you drop the temperature of a sealed box, the moisture has to go somewhere. It condenses on the coldest surfaces, which are the walls, the coil, and the outside of the cheese itself. That is condensation, and it is what people call sweating.

One more piece of vocabulary. A bloomy rind cheese is one that grows a white Penicillium film, like Camembert or Brie. A washed rind cheese is brined or brine-washed during aging, like a Taleggio or a washed alpine style. The two need different humidity behaviour, and that difference is the single most useful thing to understand before you buy anything.

A Cheese Cave Beats a Kitchen Refrigerator on Both Temperature and Humidity

A kitchen refrigerator is usually too cold, too dry, and too swing-prone. A dedicated cheese fridge or modified cooler gives you a higher set point, a sealed airspace, and a place to put humidity. Here is the honest comparison.

Factor	Kitchen refrigerator	Dedicated cheese cave
Typical temperature	34-40°F (1-4°C)	45-55°F (7-13°C)
Achievable relative humidity	Often 45-65% RH once the compressor runs	80-85% RH routinely, up to 95% with active humidification
Humidity behaviour	Condenser coil actively draws moisture out of the air	Sealed airspace plus added moisture
Airflow	Directed cold air onto exposed food	Minimal, still, or gently circulating
Door opening	Opened many times a day for food	Opened a few times a week for turning wheels
Seasonal drift	Minimal, but the room load changes constantly	Minimal if the enclosure is independent
Odour transfer	Absorbs strong smells readily	Small sealed volume, easier to protect
Verdict	Fine for storing finished cheese for weeks	Required for aging months to years

The temperature gap matters more than beginners expect. Below about 45°F the ripening organisms slow to a crawl and a wheel you expected to be ready in four months is still tight and waxy in eight. The humidity gap matters more still, because a rind that loses moisture cannot be rescued later. Once a wheel’s surface cracks, the fissures trap brine and become permanent.

That said, a refrigerator is a perfectly good short-term store. If you are buying wheels to eat within a month, refrigerate them in a sealed box and save your effort. The cave only earns its name when cheese stays put for months.

The Targets: Temperature, Humidity, and Aging Time by Cheese Style

There is no single correct setting for every cheese. Hard pressed and bloomy styles want different numbers. This is the table that no ranking competitor publishes, so treat it as your working reference.

Cheese style	Temperature	Relative humidity	Typical aging time	Rind care
Cheddar	45-52°F (7-11°C)	80-85% RH	2-24 months	Wax or vacuum seal after the first week; turn monthly
Caerphilly	46-52°F (8-11°C)	85-90% RH	2-6 months	Keep the surface dry; salt bloom is normal early on
Emmental and alpine-style	50-55°F (10-13°C)	85-90% RH	6-24 months	Brush off rind dust monthly; do not wash
Parmesan-style long maturate	50-55°F (10-13°C)	80-85% RH	12-36 months	Seal the cut face; wrap in waxed paper, not plastic
Camembert and bloomy rind	50-55°F (10-13°C)	90-95% RH	4-8 weeks	Allow deliberate surface white mould; do not wipe early white growth
Washed-rind (Taleggio type)	50-55°F (10-13°C)	90-95% RH	6-12 weeks	Wash or brine the rind every few days once the surface sets
Blue cheese	50-55°F (10-13°C)	85-90% RH	3-12 months	Pierce or wrap loosely so the mould can breathe; expect ammonia aroma
Fresh soft (mozzarella, chèvre)	38-45°F (3-7°C)	Below 80% RH	Days to 3 weeks	Drain in a basket; do not seal while warm

Two patterns run through the table. First, every long-aged style clusters at the warm end of the band, because flavor development is faster and more even when the cheese is not fighting the cold. Second, the soft and washed-rind styles need the high-humidity rows, and they are also the styles beginners most often ruin.

A note on the fresh soft row. Those cheeses are the exception to the whole subject. They want cold and comparatively dry, and they are not what a cave is for. If that is all you are making, skip the rest of this guide and refrigerate them.

Humidity Is the Hard Part Because Condenser Coils Strip Moisture

Temperature is the easy half of a cheese cave. A thermo-mechanical controller or a wine cooler’s own thermostat will hold 55°F without drama. Humidity is where most builds fail, and the reason is mechanical.

Every compressor fridge works by pulling heat out of the airspace onto a condenser coil, then rejecting that heat into the room. When warm moist air passes over a cold coil, water condenses on the coil surface and drains away. The airspace is left drier every cycle. This is why a kitchen refrigerator measures 50% RH on a hot afternoon, and why it measures even lower once the compressor has been running steadily.

Long-running Homebrew Talk discussion on cheese caves puts it plainly: mini fridges tend to have very low humidity because the condenser coil draws moisture out of the air. The appliance most people already own is the worst possible starting point for aging, and the reason is physics rather than a flaw in the fridge.

Worse, a fridge running too cold has a second effect. When you drop the air below the dew point of the moisture in it, that moisture condenses on the coldest thing in the box, which is the cheese. The rind gets a fine sheen of water, the salt and lactose on the surface dissolve into a film, and you get the sweating people complain about in refrigerator-aged cheese.

So the working rule is simple: run your cave warm enough that you are not condensing on the cheese, and add moisture deliberately rather than hoping the appliance provides it.

Six Build Routes, Ordered From Cheapest to Most Capable

Route 1, the modified wine cooler, wins for most home makers. Route 6, no cave at all, wins for beginners. Here are all six in the order most people should consider them.

Route 1: A Wine Cooler With the Top Shelf Removed

This is the community consensus, and the single most-repeated endorsement across Homebrew Talk, r/cheesemaking, and Permies. A 12-bottle wine cooler pulled the top shelf, run at its warmest setting, and paired with a bowl of water and a washcloth wick, held a hygrometer at 85% RH in repeated testing.

Three reasons it works. The temperature band is naturally higher than a fridge’s, so it settles near the 52-55°F zone without a controller. The interior is a sealed cavity with no evaporator fan blasting air across the contents. And the doors are opened a few times a week, not a few times a day.

Larger 28-bottle units are the other common build. One widely reported example held roughly eight to ten three-pound cheeses, ran across a 42-65°F range, and came with a warranty. The same buyer planned to make a cheddar to christen the unit, which tells you how these are actually used.

The modification is trivial: pull the top shelf, because it blocks the cold air path at the warmest point of the box. Set the dial to the warmest setting. Put the probe at wheel height, not near the back wall where it reads coldest.

Route 2: Converting a Mini Fridge or Dorm Fridge

A converted mini fridge works, and it is what most people try first because they already own one. Expect to spend more effort on humidity than on temperature, because the condenser drawdown described above is working against you the whole time.

What you are really converting is a low-humidity box into a sealed microclimate. Once you add active humidity, the problem flips: the interior surfaces and the coil start sweating, and you can create standing condensate. This is the route where frost cycling in a repurposed freezer compartment becomes a real risk, and it is one of the deal breakers experienced makers list.

My advice is to pick a small unit, keep it indoors, and treat humidity as an active duty rather than a set-and-forget. If you would rather not manage that, go back to Route 1.

Route 3: A Dedicated Cheese Aging Refrigerator

Purpose-built aging units exist, and they hold 45-55°F with far tighter tolerance than a repurposed appliance. For a homestead or micro-creamery running more than a handful of wheels on a schedule, this is the right call.

The honest framing from a home perspective is that most buyers over-invest here. A dedicated unit with genuinely reliable humidity control is a meaningful step up in cost, and if nobody is logging the readings, that advantage is theoretical. Buy the quality of control only if you will also buy the monitoring.

One warning from the forums: budget appliances with poor insulation and a small compressor often cannot hold 50°F consistently, or cannot hold it at all against a warm room. Test any candidate unit for a week with a logger before you fill it with wheels.

Route 4: Retrofitting Humidistat and Temperature Control onto an Existing Box

This is the route for someone who already has a working enclosure and wants precise control. You add a temperature controller to hold the set point regardless of the thermostat, and a humidistat to switch a humidifier on and off against a target relative humidity.

Set the expectations honestly. Specialist discussion on cheeseforum.org notes that home humidity controllers commonly run past a hundred in money terms and top out around a 95% RH ceiling, which is essentially the practical limit for a home setup. Anything approaching 95% and you are at the edge of what consumer equipment does well, particularly without a condensate drain.

What this route buys you is automation and stability. What it costs you is complexity, and a tendency to over-engineer. Build it only after Route 1 has taught you what the cheese actually needs.

Route 5: An Insulated Closet or Cabinet With a Controller

A walk-in closet, a cellar, or a well-insulated cabinet in a basement can make an excellent cave if it is insulated, sealed from the house, and instrumented. The principle is the same as a commercial cave, just at a smaller scale.

The failure mode here is seasonal. A basement that sits at 68°F in August will not hold 55°F without help, and no controller placed inside will fix a space whose walls are conducting the whole house temperature. Insulate the shell before you buy a single piece of control equipment, and put a logger in for a month before you put cheese in.

For anyone with a genuinely cool, stable cellar, this is the most scalable home route. For anyone without one, it becomes a construction project with a real chance of ending in disappointment.

Route 6: Maturation Boxes With No Cave At All

Beginners do not need a cave, and saying so plainly is the most useful advice in this article. A sealed container, a cheap hygrometer inside it, and a wheel with its own moisture will produce a high-humidity microclimate on its own. Community testing has found cake carriers and vegetable storage boxes with a small thermo-hygrometer in each one to be sufficient for aging.

The logic is straightforward. A wheel of cheese is roughly 60-70% water. Seal it in a box and that water is trapped in a small airspace, raising the relative humidity inside without any water source. The box becomes the cave.

Waxing and vacuum sealing extend the idea. Once the surface is sealed, moisture loss through the rind stops, and the humidity question largely disappears. This is why waxing and vacuum sealing come up so often in mature maker discussions as the real alternative to building anything.

If you are aging one or two wheels, a set of nesting boxes plus a hygrometer per box will carry you a long way. Save the build for when you are consistently producing more than the boxes can hold.

The Bill of Materials: What a Working Home Cave Actually Needs

Forums scatter these parts across a decade of threads and never consolidate them. Here is what the recommended Route 1 build actually contains, in the order you would buy it. Prices move constantly, so the tiers are described by band rather than by figure.

1. The enclosure. A 12- to 28-bottle thermo-electric wine cooler. Mid-tier. This is the single largest cost in the build.
2. A thermo-hygrometer with a remote probe. Entry-tier. The probe must reach the height where the cheese sits. This is the second most important purchase after the enclosure.
3. A data logger. Entry-tier, optional but recommended. A USB stick that writes a reading every few hours is the difference between a cave and a guess.
4. A small ceramic or glass bowl. Trivial cost. Holds the passive humidity source.
5. A cotton washcloth or felt strip. Trivial. Acts as the wick. Felt strips wick more reliably over long stretches.
6. Distilled water. Bulk. Refill the bowl every few days. Distilled water avoids mineral deposits on the coil and on the rind.
7. Slatted shelving or plastic netting. Entry-tier, and frequently improvised. Anything that holds a wheel off a flat surface and lets air reach the underside.
8. Two spare plastic crates as shelves. Trivial. They stack, they are removable, and they cost very little.
9. A timer, if you use a small fan. Entry-tier. The technique circulated on Homebrew Talk runs a computer fan on a timer to move air briefly every twenty minutes rather than continuously.
10. Absorbent polymer pellets and a small humidifier unit, optional. Mid-tier. The low-maintenance alternative to a bowl you refill.

Buy the enclosure and the monitoring first, live with a bowl for a month, and only then decide whether you need anything automated. That sequence is how most experienced makers avoid over-spending on a hobby they are still learning.

Water Bowls and Wicks Are Passive; Humidistats Are Automatic

Humidification methods range from a bowl you refill to equipment that runs itself. Here is what each one achieves and what it costs you in attention.

Method	Achievable RH	Attention required	Notes
Water bowl with washcloth wick	80-85% RH	Refill every 2-3 days	The most-repeated method in community testing; held 85% RH reliably
Frozen water bottles	70-80% RH	Swap every 1-2 days	Borrowed from shipping and wine storage; condensation is the humidity source
Damp towel over a rack	70-80% RH	Rewet daily	Cheap, effective, and dries out fast in a warm room
Repurposed cigar humidifier	Adjustable, roughly 60-80% RH	Weekly	Proposed twice in one long-running thread; one model covers up to 60 cubic feet
Absorbent polymer pellets with fan	80-90% RH	Occasional top-up	Pellets plus distilled water, a little propylene glycol, and a small fan on a timer to move air every 20 minutes
Ultrasonic cool mist unit	70-85% RH	Daily, and prone to overshooting	Risk of soaking surfaces and encouraging mould where you do not want it
Humidistat-controlled humidifier	Up to roughly 95% RH	Set and mostly forgotten	Highest cost and the practical ceiling for home setups

The short version for a beginner: start with the bowl and the wick. It is free, it has held 85% RH in repeated testing, and it fails safely. A passive method that you refill every three days is better than an automated one that overshoots in the night and wets the whole rind.

Watch for a specific failure. Single-stage humidifiers that simply mist into the box are the most common cause of uncontrolled surface wetness, because they have no feedback. A humidistat that switches the unit on and off against a measured reading does not have that problem, which is why it is the last item on the list rather than the first.

Place One Probe at Wheel Height and Log the Readings

Monitoring is the least glamorous part of a cave build and the part most often skipped. A cheap sensor placed badly gives you a number, and the number is wrong, which is worse than having no number at all.

Probe placement rules, in order of importance:

• At the height of the centre of the wheels, not at the top or bottom of the box.
• Where the air moves, not pressed against a wall, a coil, or a stack of other crates.
• Not directly above or beside the bowl or a cold bottle, which will read artificially low.
• Accessible through a gap in the door seal so you can read it without opening the box and letting the air out.

Log the readings if you possibly can. A plug-in USB logger writing a sample every few hours turns a vague sense of how things are going into a record you can look back on. When a wheel fails, the log is the only thing that tells you why, and most failures are a temperature or humidity excursion that happened weeks earlier.

On cadence, experienced makers in the community check a stable cave weekly. That visit is for turning wheels, washing washed rinds, refilling the bowl, and glancing at the meter. The most common complaint in old forum threads is about setups demanding two to eight interventions a day, and a well-built cave is specifically designed to avoid that.

Above all, resist the temptation to open the door for a look. Every opening dumps conditioned air and pulls in room air, and repeated cycling is exactly the deal breaker experienced makers warn about. Open it when you have a reason.

Slatted Racks and a Weekly Wash Are Non-Negotiable

Inside the cave, two details do more for your cheese than any expensive component. The first is the rack. The second is the washing routine.

Never let a wheel sit on a flat, solid surface. Contact patches trap moisture against the rind, and that is where a wheel develops a wet, darkened ring and then a bad spot. Use plastic netting, slatted shelving, or a stack of crates with gaps. Air has to be able to reach the underside of the wheel and circulate under it.

On washing: washed-rind cheeses need it, and the schedule is style-specific. A Taleggio-type wheel wants its rind washed or brined every few days once the surface has set, or the microorganisms that define the style give way to the wrong ones. A bloomy rind cheese wants the opposite treatment. White Penicillium growth on a Camembert at twelve days is exactly what should be happening, and wiping it off or worrying about it is a common beginner mistake that ends a good wheel early.

Hard cheeses want almost nothing. A monthly turn, a brush of any loose salt bloom, and a check of the wax or vacuum seal is plenty.

Also watch the condensation. If you see water running down the inside wall of your box, that is the dew point problem, and more humidity will make it worse rather than better. The fix is a modest drop in humidity plus better air movement, not more water.

Compressor Noise and Heat Are the Two Apartment Deal Breakers

No guide we found covers the two objections apartment hobbyists raise first, so here they are plainly. A compressor appliance is audible. A thermo-electric wine cooler is quieter than a compressor fridge, which is one of the quieter reasons it is the recommended build, but it is not silent. A compressor fridge adds heat to the room continuously, since all the energy it removes from the inside is dumped outside it.

In a small flat that matters. A 28-bottle unit cycling in a home office will be noticed, and a compressor fridge will make the room measurably warmer over a long aging cycle. For a bedroom-adjacent space, choose a thermo-electric unit in the smallest capacity that fits your wheel count.

Placement rules that experienced makers follow without exception: keep the unit off your bed’s wall, leave clearance at the back so heat can reject, keep it out of direct sunlight, and do not put it inside an unventilated cupboard. Appliance guidance generally requires a compressor unit to be able to reject heat into open air rather than into a closed cavity, where it will simply run continuously and struggle to hold temperature.

On the positive side, a small dedicated cave in a flat is quieter and more stable than the kitchen fridge it replaces, because it stops being opened for lunch forty times a day. Some hobbyists report the net noise in their home actually dropping after the move.

Above 60°F You Are Not Aging Cheese, You Are Cooking It

Temperatures above 60°F do not stop a cheese from aging. They accelerate ripening so far that you lose control of the schedule, and the texture goes soft and slick long before the flavor develops. Repeated swings are worse than a single high reading, because each cycle pushes ripening forward and pulls moisture out in turn.

This is why seasoned makers list seasonal swings among their hard deal breakers. A garage or unheated basement that reaches 70°F for a week in July and drops to 45°F in January cannot hold a stable age, and no amount of equipment inside fixes an enclosure whose walls conduct the outside weather.

Before you commit to a space, put a plain thermometer in it for a full month across the seasons you care about. Check the minimum and the maximum, not the average. A space that averages 55°F but swings between 40 and 70 is a worse cave than a slightly warmer space that holds steady.

If your building runs hot, the realistic options are a controlled enclosure, a better-insulated shell, or simply accepting a shorter, warmer schedule and reducing the number of wheels. The last option is the one people forget, and it is often the right one for a first attempt.

A Real Cave Is a Room, Not a Fridge

The word gets used two ways, and separating them explains why searching for the best cheese caves returns tourist attractions. In the US, a cheese cave is still a real thing: controlled, humidified rooms built into rock or earth, and the word shows up in plenty of regional tourism. We have deliberately not chased that intent here, because a map pack wins it and it tells you nothing useful about your garage.

What is worth looking at is the commercial practice, for perspective on scale. One regional grocer built a 12,300 square foot cheese aging facility with a dedicated Brie room and seven separate caves, where soft cheeses like Camembert and washed-rind styles such as Bourbon-Washed Pie d’ are aged. A dedicated room for Brie alone tells you how much surface area a bloomy-rind program needs. Specialist retailers and tours in cities like New York, Toronto, and Wisconsin show the same pattern at smaller scale.

Every one of those rooms does the same three things your home build will do, only with industrial equipment: it holds temperature inside a narrow band, it holds humidity above 80%, and it moves air gently past the wheels. Your wine cooler is a miniature version of the same idea, and it is closer to a commercial cave in principle than most people assume.

Sweating Means Too Much Moisture; Cracks Mean Too Little

Almost every cheese cave problem shows up first as a surface symptom. Read the symptom correctly and the fix is usually one adjustment.

Symptom	Likely cause	What to do
Sheen of liquid on the rind, beads of moisture	Too much humidity, or air temperature below the dew point	Drop the RH target, raise the box temperature a degree or two, add gentle air movement
Rind drying, hardening, or cracking	RH below 75% for an extended period	Raise humidity, shrink the airspace, or move the wheel into a maturation box
White powdery bloom on a hard cheese	Normal salt bloom, or harmless surface yeast	Brush it off; no action needed
White growth on a bloomy rind at 10-14 days	Normal Penicillium for the style	Leave it alone; do not wipe or scrub
Sharp ammonia smell	Blue cheese or a washed rind doing what it should	Expected; a signal the rind is active, not that the wheel failed
Sour, rotten, or barnyard off-odour	Contamination, or a wheel sealed before the surface dried	Isolate the wheel, log temperature and RH, cut and inspect
Green, black, or fuzzy grey mould	Contamination, almost always with a humidity or handling cause	Remove from the cave, review your sanitation and your RH readings
Wheel ripens but stays waxy and tight	Too cold, or not enough time	Confirm the box is actually at 50-55°F, not 38°F
Ice or frost inside the box	Box temperature below freezing, or a freezer compartment reused	Stop using that compartment; frost cycling is a hard deal breaker
Fine white dust on every surface	Condensate leaving mineral or salt residue as it dries	Improve drainage and reduce surface wetness

The diagnostic that experienced makers give most often is blunt: not enough humidity in the aging space, or too cold, or simply not enough time. When a wheel is not turning out, check those three before anything else, and check your log rather than your memory.

The most costly beginner mistake is discarding a wheel over a few days of white growth. On a bloomy rind that growth is the entire point, and the same surface on a hard cheese is usually harmless. Learn to tell them apart before you throw anything away.

Set the Cave, Load It, and Let It Run Unattended

Traveling makers ask how to age cheese for weeks or months away from home, and the honest answer is that a well-built cave is built for exactly that, which is the strongest argument for the passive approach.

Before you leave, do a full service. Refill the water source, check the log for a stable week, confirm the probe reads where you expect it to, and make sure the air source is set to its timer if you use one. Then stop opening the door.

Put a second, independent thermo-hygrometer in the box as a backup. If the primary probe fails while you are away, the second one tells you the space never went out of range, and that single fact is worth having.

For long absences, you have three options in order of increasing reliability. Rely on a passive bowl if the trip is under a week. Rely on an absorbent pellet system for two to three weeks. For longer, move the wheels into sealed maturation boxes or wax them before you leave, and let the cheese’s own moisture carry the environment.

There is no substitute for telling someone who knows what the box looks like where it is and what the readings should be. A neighbour with a key and a photo of your meter reading is worth more than any piece of automation.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Right Cheese Cave Depends on How Many Wheels You Age

If you are aging one or two wheels, you do not need a cave. A sealed maturation box with a cheap thermo-hygrometer inside it will hold the humidity the cheese needs, and waxing or vacuum sealing the surface removes the problem entirely. Start there, and start the other half of the process with our guide to the best cheese presses for home cheese makers.

If you are aging a steady handful of wheels and want the community-standard setup, build the wine cooler: top shelf out, dial to the warmest setting, bowl and wick inside, probe at wheel height. It is the configuration that has held 85% RH in repeated community testing, it needs attention a few times a week rather than a few times a day, and it is a small step up from a kitchen fridge in both temperature and stability.

If you are running a schedule, producing more than your cooler holds, or have a genuinely cool and stable cellar, that is when to move to a dedicated aging unit or an insulated room. Buy the logging equipment at the same time, because unmonitored control gear is the most common waste of money in this hobby.

Whichever route you take, hold 45-55°F and 80-85% RH, keep the wheels on slatted racks, wash the rinds that need washing, and leave the white mould alone where it belongs. That is the whole craft of a cheese cave, and the container matters far less than the numbers.