Yesterday I made Fortsonia all day while watching the snow blow outside.  Good thing we moved away from Massachusetts years ago to escape the snow! It was a long day, as making this type (Gruyere) of cheese is Tim making Fortsoniaphysically demanding.  After hours of hand turning the curds in whey that I heated to 126 degrees (ouch is right!), hand pushing the curds back against 500 lbs of whey and then forming and flipping for almost 12 hours, I couldn't help but compare the process of making various types of cheeses.  And that led me to thinking about how cheeses are priced, the yields realized from the milk and the aging requirements.

At this point, we make three styles of raw milk cheeses. As a result, they all have to be aged for at least 60 days before sale.  One is a bloomy rind cheese (Harmony Crème de la Crème), one is a blue cheese (Elberton Blue) and one is inspired by the best Gruyere (Fortsonia).  Other well known cheeses in the bloomy rind category include Constant Bliss by Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont, and Green Hill by Sweet Grass Dairy in Georgia.  Both of those cheeses are made from raw but pasteurized cow's milk and can be found online or at Whole Foods for $30-$35 per pound, although you can get Green Hill for much less (about $20 per pound direct from their website).  They are both very well made cheeses that we have tried and enjoy very much, and I'm very confident that if you enjoy these cheeses you'll also love Harmony Crème de la Crème.

Compare these cheeses to a well-aged alpine cheese like Gruyere, which is one of my favorite cheeses and indeed is my inspiration with Fortsonia.  The best reserve cheeses aged for 16 months by Rolf Beeler can be purchased online for about $32 per pound, which is comparable in price to the bloomy rinds mentioned above.  But does this make sense?

In making Fortsonia yesterday, it was an all-day commitment that was quite physically demanding.  By contrast, when I make Harmony Crème de la Crème tomorrow, I'll start at 9:00 a.m. or so and be done by 2:00 p.m.  There's no doubt that the Alpine cheese is a tougher make, so this is a disadvantage to the cheesemaker relative to making the bloomy rind.

Crème de la Crème on the Draining TableLet's turn our attention to yield.  When I make Harmony Crème de la Crème, I consistently get a 15% or better yield. This means that for 100 pounds of milk I get at least 15 pounds of cheese, and I have yielded as much as 17%+!  Part of the high yield is thanks to the Jersey cows, but the real thanks goes to the fact that we only feed our cows grass or hay. No grain, ever. Like many people, I was shocked to learn that other grass-based dairies feed grain to their cows.  Our department of agriculture inspector described other grassfed cheese makers and how they feed a daily ration of grain (twice per day) when the cows are milking.  I guess that's why they're "grass or pasture based" rather than "100% grassfed".  But I don't have a problem with that, as long as everyone is just upfront about what they're doing so consumers can decide what makes sense to them.  We only get just over a gallon per day per cow, which would put us in the hall of shame among other Jersey dairies, where 5-6 gallons per day are the norm.  Naturally this results in MUCH higher costs for us, but we believe the milk itself has better flavor and nutritional qualities, and we think the cows are healthier.

So...where was I?  Ah yes, yield. The Forstonia I made yesterday yielded 11.5%, typical for an Alpine make.  This resulted in 4 pounds LESS cheese per 100 pounds of milk than with the Harmony Crème de la Crème.  So much for all that work.  This makes sense given that bloomy rinds like Camembert typcially have a moisture content of 50%-55% compared to 38%-41% for Gruyere, with blue cheeses falling between those two.

After the cheeses are made, the bloomy rinds need only be aged for 60 days in our case since it's raw milk, or about a month in the case of the others who are pasteurizing their milk.  The Fortsonia and Gruyere's on the other hand have to be hand turned, hand smeared and aged for well over a year, resulting in much higher labor costs and cooling costs during that time.

So let's add this all up. 

Right now, farmstead cheesemakers can make a bloomy rind, age it quickly, sell it for over $30 per pound and the consumer gets 50% moisture.  Or, the cheesemaker can handcraft an Alpine or similar cheese, age it until it's marvelous and get the same or a lower price, work much harder and have a much lower yield.

I think I understand why it's the fresh cheeses and bloomys that artisan or farmstead cheesemakers focus on then.  Easier to make, shorter cash flow cycle and consumers are, curiously, willing to pay more.

So how will this impact our pricing strategy?  Simple...we'll reverse this model.  It costs us less to make a very good bloomy rind and we'll price that accordingly. We're hoping to hit a price of $20 per pound for raw milk, organic, no fine-print Harmony Crème de la Crème.  Elberton Blue yields less than Harmony Crème de la Crème, must be aged longer and tended to more carefully and therefore will be slightly higher in price. However, the pricing on Fortsonia will reflect the effort to make, the reduced yield and the time and care it will take to age it properly. It's too soon to tell, but I suspect it will be in the $35 per pound range next year when we offer it.

The tough part about this is it makes it difficult to estimate how much Fortsonia we should make.  Given that we'll age it for 12-18 months, if we make too much now and run into resistance in the marketplace next year, we would have made quite an investment with a limited return. We could instead just focus on making Harmony Crème de la Crème or Elberton Blue, both of which offer the ability to get a "report card" much more quickly.  On the other hand, if the market really likes and wants Fortsonia, and believe me, they're aren't very many really well made and carefully aged cheeses of those types around, then we'll quickly be out of cheese and 12-18 months away from having much more.

So what's a cheese farmer (ha!) to do?  Make what the wife likes I guess.  Probably 40% Harmony Crème de la Crème, 30% Elberton Blue and 30% Fortsonia and see what happens.  I already know our bloomy rinds are coming along VERY nicely, but I'm still not sure about the Elberton Blue and what adjustments will be needed. As for Fortsonia, initial tests are promising but we won't know for a long time...but I'm pretty optimistic. 

OK, so we made our first "commercial" batch of blue cheese, which we call Elberton Blue, back on December 3.  Designed to peak at 3-4 months, it's getting close to the time when it would be ready for market.  Of course, with all early cheese endeavors, there's a "but".Elberton Blue

The "but" in this case is that we meant to make it with whole, raw milk, "but" we didn't agitate the tank first, and as a result pumped out skim milk to make our Harmony Crème de la Crème, leaving us with pretty much high fat cream with which to make the Elberton Blue.  If that sounds yummy, it is, but it creates a problem.  The problem is that the blue mold won't grow too well in that high fat environment.  So what we have in our first attempt, our friends, is a wonderfully delicious creation that tastes more like raw milk butter with a little salty/blueness to it rather than blue cheese.  Anyway, these journeys are what make farmstead cheese making fun and interesting.

Two nights ago I took some Elberton Blue and made a broccoli/blue cheese soup for Liz. She made some small round loafs of bread that I hollowed out for the bowl. To go with it, I pan seared some Ossabaw pork chops and made a simple blue cheese/cream gravy to go over it.  The cheese was great to cook with, but I have to admit I do cut off hunks of it and just sit and eat it. Always wanted an excuse to just eat gobs of butter!