Milk Trekker : May 2011

Who I am and what my mission is.

I spent ten years making cheese in the US before beginning to travel globally volunteering with cheesemakers and herders in 2019. I wish to document the intersection of traditional and modern techniques, and portray the global diversity of dairying, cheesemaking, and grazing practices. In doing this I want to show how the final cheese is the end product of a complex series of relationships and decisions made by humans, that are embedded in a a cultural, geographic, and climatic setting. I advocate for raw milk, a natural starter cultures, heritage breeds, regenerative or ecologically responsible grazing, and the right of all humans to ferment milk in their own homes, selling in local markets. In order to further my mission I am writing a book, and hope to build an online archive, a global database of cheese, dairy, and grazing knowledge. I would love to talk with anyone interested in hosting me anywhere in the world and hearing about how you do things.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Affinage

Cheese Boy in the Cheese Cellar being you guessed it......Cheesy!!

A good portion of my work here consists of doing Affinage, which is the craft of bringing cheese to maturity. That makes it sound really cool, and I am excessively proud of my esoteric title: Affineur. In reality it means I sit in a dank cellar and scrub mold off cheese but I seriously enjoy it because I love cheese that much. It is a fascinating process to see the stages of ripening and try to figure out the microbiology of cheese. There are successive stages of first molds and yeasts and then bacteia. A mild brine is used to wash off molds and encourage the growth of desired bacteria

Moonflower

The initial work done by yeasts deacidifies the rind (makes it less acidic, raises the PH) to a point where bacteria can grow. On Moonflower this means orange B. linens, on Black Eyed Susan I believe it is Arthrobacter arilaitensis because of its yellow color. I'm still trying to figure out why the two cheeses in the same room being washed with the same concentration brine get different bacteria. Its probably due to moisture and acidity, Black Eye definitely ends up drier and more acidic. It could be mineral or protein content, A. Arilaitensis likes Iron, B. linens digests only protein. Pigmentation!! Fascination.

Black Eyed Susan

As you can see, Affinage is both a mundane task and a scientific investigation. I like working alone in the cool quiet of the cave, and being I see tuning in to the life cycle of the cheese as taking part in a strange and mysterious rhythm. The surface of each cheese is an ecosystem and it is interacting with the larger environment. The temperature and humidity of the air are important factors, bringing local weather conditions into the mix. The valley in which we are situated seems to be a perfect area for the aging of cheese. Every evening the cool moist ocean air flows in and cools down our aging room enough that it will not get too hot during the day. I am very interested in cheese being a product of the land and I am seeing more connections as time goes on.