Like many people, I can't sing well, although I sometimes like to try.  However, I don't think that "Simon" would be impressed.  Unfortunately, I draw even worse than I sing, so you definitely don't want me on your Pictionary team.  By contrast, Liz is fantastically talented at drawing and painting but, alas, she seldom finds the time or motivation.  For me, it's too bad because I love to be creative, but for the most part have to limit that to an active imagination or a VERY loud Les Paul guitar.  Testing the pH

And then came cheese. I absolutely LOVE making cheese!  I think I would do it every day if I could. What others might see as a chore...a repetitive list of tasks interspersed with periods of waiting and cleaning, I see as a canvas on which to create something great.  Only, lucky for me and those around us, this creation will taste great too.  And I get to wear super fashionable hairnets!

Every time I stand over the vat stirring for thirty, forty, sixty minutes, I just look at how beautiful the milk is as I bring it to temperature.  It's mesmerizing to me.  Once it's close to the temperature I'm looking for, a long chain of problem solving and calculations begin.  I think this is the part I love. Liz really liked the idea of making cheese, but prefers a set recipe to follow. And it's true that there are countless recipes for countless cheeses, but the reality is that there are a lot of variables that fluctuate based on temperature, quality of milk, stage of lactation, quality of feed, milk treatments (raw/pasteurized) and so on.  It's the cheese maker's job to know what targets s/he is trying to hit, by when, and to make adjustments as needed to do so.  I LOVE that kind of stuff!

Take a Camembert, for example. The variation we're making has to age for 60 days to be sold legally as it is raw milk. Yet, traditional Camembert recipes will yield a cheese that peaks well prior to that.  To achieve our goal of a bloomy rind cheese peaking at 60-70 days, we experiment with a variety of cultures and molds in the ripening stage. At this point we have a "cocktail" of five cultures/molds blended that look like they're producing the desired result.  Aging also plays a huge role in how the cheese will ultimately express itself, and just adds to the art and science of cheese making.

There's nothing like watching your large vat of milk coagulate after you've set it with rennet.  Cutting with knives to the desired size based on the cheese you're making, you start the process of increasing surface area of the curds in an effort to expel as much whey as necessary.  All the while you keep a close eye on the pH. Some cheeses require a rapid rate of acidification, as is the case with Camembert, and some require a slower rate of acidification, as is the case with Gruyere. This can be traced back to how each cheese evolved. Camembert, being made in the Normandy region by peasants who may have only owned 1-2 cows, required the cheese maker to wait a day or two to collect enough milk.  As this milk aged without refrigeration, it would have produced lactic acid bacteria. As a result, the milk began ripening on it's own and started down a more rapid rate of acidification, ending up below 5.0 pH, a target preferred by the Penicillium and Geotrichum candidum molds that give Brie and Camembert their distinctive and luxuriant snowy white blankets.

By contrast, our Fortsonia cheese, which is modeled on Gruyere, has a quite slow rate of acidification.  Why is this so?  Because the monastic Apline cheesemakers had large herds of cows and cheesemakers with clearly defined roles and responsibilities. Thus, much cheese could be made from each milking without the milk aging at all, and therefore not starting itself on a path of rapid acidification. As a result, a cheese maker needs to understand the pH targets and times for each cheese, and one of the best ways to do that is to Harmony Creme de la Cremethink about how/why each cheese evolved in the first place.

Which is another reason why I love making cheese.  If you really want to do it well and go way beyond a recipe, you may be served well to respect history and learn about how various cheeses came to be.  Whatever cheese you want to emulate or use as inspiration, ask yourself what the conditions were that led to that cheese being produced?  Was it fresh milk or slightly aged?  Did it need to be pressed for storage and long transport (Gruyere down from the Alps, Cheddar to be transported to London, etc.) or could it be aged, sold and consumed quickly such as Brie and Camembert, which were made close to Paris?   Understanding the history and chemistry of cheese making can definitely fill your spare time if you have any.

Other cheeses, such as our Elberton Blue, present numerous opportunities to get creative and practice the art of cheese making.  We were surprised in our cheese taste tests how many variations, or, interpretations, if you will, there were of blue cheese.  It goes well beyond basic blue, Gorgonzola or Stilton.  So the first decision is to decide what you're going for. Texture is important to us, as we like more of a dense, chocolatey texture (not flavor), an edible natural rind, distinctively blue without being overly salty.  This will just take practice and experimentation.  And problem solving, which I love.

We're early in our journey as 100% pure raw-milk cheesemakers, and as we discussed on our first podcast, it's been disappointing how little milk we receive from 100% pure grass fed cows.  But it is what it is.  The yield is lower than we want, the cost will be higher than we'd like, but the quality and health (to us, our customers, the environment and the cows) will be great.

And now, if you'd excuse me, I have to go prepare to make some cheese. :-)