HOW TO BUY CHEESE FOR A CROWD

Cheese is best served at room temperature, not cold from the refrigerator. To fully appreciate the unique flavors in cheese, remove cheese from the refrigerator early enough for it to come to room temperature. Hard cheeses take longer to come up to temperature than soft cheeses. When you remove cheese from the refrigerator keep it wrapped so the exposed surfaces don't dry out. Try to serve only as much cheese as can be eaten, as cheese has a shorter lifespan the more it goes back and forth from cold to warm.

HOW TO BUY CHEESE FOR A CROWD

To determine how much cheese you will need for a party,
answer the following questions:

1.) How many people?
Count each adult as one, each child as one half. Multiply the total number by 3.5, which is the rule-of-thumb number of ounces I have found works best. To determine the amount of cheese you need to buy, divide the total by 16 (ounces per pound), and round up.

2.) What time of day are you serving and for how long?
Noon until 3pm is a hungry time of day; even more so is the period from 5 to 8pm. For these times I usually figure 4 ounces per person unless the answer to question 3. is significant.

3.) What other food will be served and in what quantity?
If a wide variety of other foods will be offered, you'll want to lower the 3.5 ounce standard by 1/2 to 1 ounce.

4.) There is no need to serve more than 3 or 4 types of cheese.
Indeed, serving more would be disrespectful since it makes it very difficult to focus on the merits of any one cheese long enough to make tasting it a meaningful experience. Also bear in mind the more cheeses you serve, the smaller the quantity of each will be required.

Of course, there's always the possibility that two people who take an instant liking to the same cheese will focus on it, thereby depriving other guests of the opportunity to taste it. Buying a bit extra can't hurt.

Condensed from The Cheese Primer

Keep your cheese well wrapped and separated (to avoid mingling the flavors). Plastic wrap works well, even plastic bags - as long as their is no air in the package. Fresh or soft cheese can be kept in a warmer portion of the refrigerator.

There is some disagreement about freezing cheese. When frozen, the water and milk fats contained in cheese will separate, dramatically changing the texture of the original cheese. When thawed, the cheese will be mealy and crumbly. While this is obviously an undesirable outcome for most cheese, some cheese in some situations will not suffer.

Freeze a cheese if you plan to grate it or cook with it. The change in texture will be unnoticeable. In fact, romanos (grated or ungrated) can be used straight from the freezer. There is no need to thaw it first. Since blue cheese tend to crumble, they can be successfully frozen and thawed.