My name is Bubba and I'm a Dog!!

Bubba is our guardian, he lives with the flock and has a very loud bark to scare off any predators. He is a Great Pyrenees which is an ancient breed the lineage of which can be traced back 10,000 years to the earliest domesticated dogs. Isolated in the Pyrenees mountains these dogs are used by basque herders who appreciate the dogs ability to live outside in harsh conditions. They have an warming insulating undercoat and a thick water resistant outer coat of white fur that allows them to weather the toughest climates and blend in with the flock. Great Pyrennes are nocturnal animals, sleeping most of the day but spending the night patrolling and barking at anything they might find threatening. They integrated themselves with a flock quiet readily and need no training to do their jobs, its deeply ingrained genetic memory.

The Lambs are not silent

With January comes lambs in waves of white fleece and thunderous bleating. Sheep will produce milk for 6 months following birthing, all the new life equals lots of milk, the essential liquid of life. After staying with their moms for three days drinking the colostrum which is the initial dose of milk with exceptionally high amounts of minerals and nutrients, the lambs are separated into pens and the mamas head for the milking line-up. The lambs will be hand fed from bottles until they learn to suckle off a bucket easing the task of feeding the pesky buggers with their voracious appetites.

Lambing is a very busy time of year but its all this new life that graces us with our milk, that sweet elixir that will eventually become a beautiful tasty wheel of cheese. Life is a fleeting thing and milk quickly sours and rots away but when a little human ingenuity intervenes the process of decomposition can be delayed, leading to the incredible diversity of artfully crafted cheeses. Making cheese is kind of like playing god, utilizing natural phenomena and microbiological manipulation to create the most exquisite of foods. Cheese is the meeting place of life and death.

Kind of went off on a tangent there but I think this gets close to the nut of the issue. This life of farmstead cheese making is a way to reconnect with natural cycles that most of us in this country have moved away from. Its a connection to the land, the seasons, the weather, animals, other humans, and the circle of life and death which really is the bedrock of reality. It is a hard life that doesn't really pay off in an economic sense but is fulfilling in a spiritual sense because it offers a whole integrated existence somewhat removed from the ordinary options of an eight hour day at work away from home. It is this that lead me to say that cheese is life.

Kurtwood Farms visit

 On my Christmas vacation to Washington I visited Kurt Timmermeister, owner of Kurtwood farms and maker of Dinah's cheese, a small bloomy rind cheese reminiscent of Camembert.  The farm is on rural Vashon Island, a ferry ride away from Seattle and my hometown on Kitsap pennisula.  Kurt has a dozen our so cows, a rustic farmhouse, dairy, and cheese cave on 13 acres.

The cave was amazing, it was built of extensively reinforced concrete with a barrel vaulted ceiling then buried under 4 feet of soil.  It maintains a temperature around 50 degrees and houses a Italian style grating cheese that Kurt is developing.  There is also a building with a kitchen and large dining area where farmhouse dinners were held in the early days of the farm.  I like his approach of making one cheese very well, and these little bloomies are certainly difficult cheeses to perfect.  The cheese is splendid and it was very nice to see someone running a small scale farmstead operation in the Puget sound.  

Photo credit Emily Warmedahl

Monarch - Beer washed Cows milk cheese

Monarch Wheel at 2 weeks

We have just released a pair of new cows milk cheese that I spent September and October working on.  The first is called Monarch and is a trappist style cheese which we are washing with a brown ale from Santa Cruz Mountain Brewery.  This style is a semi-hard washed curd cheese, meaning that we pull some of the whey out and add hot water during the cook, reducing the rate of acidification and creating a softer cheese, Monterey Jack has a typical washed curd texture.  These trappist cheeses originated in Bosnia but are made in Hungary and Germany as well, and the style we base Monarch on are those made in German Trapppist monasteries, which generally also make beer.  This subset of the Trappist family is typified by washing with beer, and the growth of a b. linens smear, lending a pungency and softening of the paste through proteolysis.

Five Weeks

 The milk for this cheese comes from the Schoch family, who have a ranch near by in Salinas.  They bring us the milk still warm from the morning milking, It dosn't get more fresh than that.  Monarch is made in wheels smaller than our sheeps milk cheeses, It will ripen after only 2-3 months that way.  It is also softer than our other cheeses, and is washed regularly with first a brine to stimulate the growth of B. Linens, then with beer to add a distinct flavor and keep molds off.

9 weeks, ready for sale

Cheese Defects Workshop

On September 13th I attended a workshop taught by Moshe Rosenburg in which we discussed how to respond to the imperfections that can commonly arise in cheesemaking. His is approach was very scientific, emphasizing the use of very accurate measurement of aciditiy and temperature and making minute adjustments, especially during the process of syneresis.  Syneresis  a stage in the cheesemaking process which begins after the cut when the curd begins to expel whey, and lasts until the cheese is brined. During the intervening steps of cooking draining hooping and pressing small variations can be used to adjust moisture content.  Being able to take accurate measurements and control the rate of syneresis can help you address issues found in the final product and is the first step in creating a consistent cheese.

We also discussed the chemistry of flavor development.  During aging, flavor development takes place through the metabolic activity of microorganisms and enzymes originating from the milk, rennet, starter, secondary microflora (yeasts, molds, bacterias), and non-starter lactic acid bacteria (NSLAB).  There around 60 enzymes that occur naturally in milk and many survive the cheesemaking process.  Most of the starter culture that is added dies off but in doing so releases enzymes.  The flavor of a cheese can be explained by identifying flavor compounds that are released during aging mainly through two biochemical events: Lipolysis and Proteolysis.

Lipolysis is the catabolism (breakdown) of fat in milk by lipases.  Lipases are enzymes that hydrolyze fat triglycerides, breaking them into fatty acids which can follow various pathways to create flavor compounds.  For most cheeses, the creation of free fatty acids is as far as the process goes, but in cheeses with high levels of lipolysis (blues, some Italian cheeses) further breakdown occurs.  Unsaturated fatty acids can undergo a secondary metabolism involving oxidation into aldehyes which flavor compounds.  Hydroxy fatty acids can become lactones which are a specific type of ester found in low levels in cheddars and high levels in blues.  Ketoacids can be oxidized into methyl ketones which are found extensively in blues as a result of lipolysis by P. roqueforti, a commonly used blue mold.  Levels of lipolysis vary, raw milk cheese will have more potential because pasteurization kills lipoprotein lipase, which is indiginous to milk.  The rennet paste used in some hard Italian cheeses contains pregastric esterase (PGE) which is a potent lipase.  B.linens, the bacteria which characterizes washed rind cheeses, contains intracellular lipases and esterases which contribute to lipolysis.

Proteolysis is the breakdown of protein into peptides then amino acids and finally amino acid catabolites.

There are multiple sources of proteases (enzymes that breaks protein down into peptides, which are amino acid chains).  Chymosin is an enzyme in rennet that is a principal protease in most cheeses. Plasmin is a component of blood that is also an indigenous milk protease. After these two have done the initial work of breaking protein into peptides further breakdown of peptides into amino acids takes place through the action of peptidases.  Starter cultures contain intracellular peptidases which are released into cheese after they die.  Thermophillic cultures die and lyse quickly, resulting in high levels of amino acids in cheese utilizing this type of culture.  Cheeses which use secondary microflora as a primary ripening catalyst (washed, bloomies, blues) get most of their proteolytic activity from their respective microorganisms.  The free amino acids that result from the preceding events are catabolized (broken down) into amino acid catabolites, many of which have been identified and linked to aromatic sensations, which is what we really care about in the end.  Extent and source of  Proteolysis is also a decisive factor in the texture of cheese, so understanding this process is a must.

Route One Farmhouse Dinner

On July 17th we did a Farmhouse dinner for Route One, an organic farm based in the Santa Cruz area.  It was held in an orchard adjoining the farm with tables set up to set 80 people.  We pulled in a large BBQ and had a prep area, deep fryers, propane stoves to warm soup.  The first course consisted of flatbread which we grilled, hummus, marinated veggies, olives and our cheeses, including a marinated feta.  The second course was a lentil soup followed by lamb kebabs.  The desert was lemon ricotta fritters with fresh fruit and a honey sauce.  Wine from Odonata was served along with beer from Uncommon brewery.  It all came together nicely and was great exposition of the amazing local food system in region.

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.

Moonflower Make, Thermophillic Culture

I got to make moonflower today which is a semi-hard cheese with a mild washed rind flavor. On this make we use a thermophillic culture which grows best at a temperature ranging from 95 to 113 and has a maximum of 140. This class of cultures is best for cooked pressed cheese because they are heat tolerant, but is also used in some soft cheeses to produce a substance called exopolysaccharide (EPS) which prevents the paste (interior) from becoming to runny. Thermophillic culture is also used in other dairy products such as yogurt and buttermilk.

So we add our culture at 95, wait half an hour, rennet, then wait 45 minutes as the cheese sets. After cutting we cook the cheese up to 102 over half an hour. This involves draining out the 125 degree water and adding 165, to slowly raise the temp while stirring. We then drain the water from the jacket and drain the whey from the vat. The curd is hooped into our Kadova molds and pressed for 4-5 hours or overnight. In the cave this cheese takes out its washed rind character from the Brevibacterium linens (b. linens) bacteria which grow on it forming a beautiful slimy orange blanket. Ill explain this in greater detail as I get into the nitty gritty of the aging room in a later entry. Suffice it to say this is an excellent cheese with a mild washed rind flavor with nutty nuances on top of that unique creamy sheep milk background.

Peter Dixon cheese class day 2

We started the day by going up to the creamery and taking a look at the lactic acid cheese we had cultured and renneted yesterday. It was fairly hard, we began ladling it into cheesecloth bags which we hung inside pots and let drain. The ladling is the cut in this case, you take a little scoop and plop it in the bag, cutting the curd into 2-4 inch disks 1/2 inch thick. When then went back down the hill to have a discussion of the stage of cheesemaking referred to as setting, which consists of ripening and coagulation. Ripening is the period after culture has been added and LAB's begin converting lactose into lactic acid.

Coagulation takes place after rennet has been added and consists of two stages: enzymatic and aggregation with the intermediary time refereed to as flocculation. In the enzymatic stage Rennet cleaves off Kappa hairs off casein sub micelles turning changing them from a polar to non-polar molecule. This allows casein sub micelles, which constitute 75% of the protein in milk, to aggregate into micelles. The period between the enzymatic and aggregation stages is refereed to as flocculation and timing this is crucial to deciding when to do your cut. Peter showed us the "spinny test" in which an floating object (bottle cap) is placed on the milk and spun. When it will not spin freely aggregation has been reached. You take your floc time and multiple it by 3 for sheep, 3.5 for goat or cow and then you wait that long until you cut, for lactic cheeses. for harder cheeses you multiple by 2, for alpines 1.5 as you want softer curd to cut smaller curds.

A discussion of rennet followed. Rennet consists of 2 enzymes: chymozin and pepsin. chymozin is the superior high quality enzyme and pepsin the inferior because it encourage protealysis, the breakdown of protein. There are 4 types of rennet: Calf and plant which are the originals with calf being much better as it has a lot of chymozin and little pepsin, microbial, and GMO. Microbial and GMO are the moderns, micro has a good balance and is equal to calf and GMO is pure chymozin. Rennet is temp dependent and the optimum temp for its activity is 104F, above this it breaks down. In parm the rennet is broken down by heat but plasmin does the work or residual rennet, creating peptides. The lower the PH, the more residual rennet. With sheep milk you use less rennet than with cow and goat.

The discussion of rennet brings us back full circle to the setting stage. A divide is formed here: Lactic curd cheeses use very little rennet and set overnight, the final PH falling to around 4.5. Rennet curd cheeses use enough rennet to set within 1/2 hour to 45 minutes and have a final PH of 5.4 to 4.7. Rennet curds are more workable, shrink faster, expel more whey, and hold their shape. Lactic curds are fragile and hold water well. There are some hybrids such as Chaource and aged chevre which fall somewhere in between but always start as lactics. There are also the exceptions of heat precipitated curd cheeses which are heated up to 185 the acidified directly with vinegar or citrus. Examples of this type are panir, queso blanco, and ricotta.

After lunch we made three cheese: Gouda, Feta, and Tomme. The Gouda was a washed curd and took a much longer time then the others. Feta is uncooked and unpressed besides the weight of the baskets. This gives it the open texture you expect from this style. After filling the basket hoops we flipped it every 15 minutes. The Tomme we cooked and pressed. This cheese set much faster than the others because it was raised to 90 degrees, displaying how temp affects rennet activity. We hooped this cheese in the whey which will give it a closed texture. This style is traditionally pre-pressed by placing a weight on top of the hoops. Making these three cheeses side by side showed us how very similar makes will end up with very different cheese depending on what you do after the make. There was a good variety, a washed curd, a unpressed uncooked, and a cooked pressed. Although they always say the cheese is made in the vat and i agree with this, what makes the difference between styles is to a great degree determined by what you do after this step with only slight differences in the make.

Peter Dixon cheese class day 1

First day of three day workshop with Peter Dixon here at Monkeyflower ranch. Peter is a badass cheese consultant who operates Consider Bardwell farm in Vermont. They have turned a New England bank barn into a cheesemaking/aging facility, with a loading dock and milking parlor. Peter has been involved in multiple cheesemaking operations including Shelbourne farms which makes cheddar and Vermont butter and cheese company. He has traveld in Albania and Macedonia with a grant from land o lakes and shared some amazing stories with us including one about an albanian cheesemaker who did not use cultures, instead let the milk sit out over night and naturally ferment.

The whole drive of Peter's lectures was 1st that good cheese comes from good milk, 2nd a balance between hygiene and biodivesity is crucial, and 3rd that making cheese is the smallest part of having a farmstead cheese operation. The paramount importance of good milk means that what the animals are eating is the largest factor in final outcome. He outlined this with a feed pyramid showing the finest cheeses coming from native pastured animals, below this seeded pastures, then dry hay, followed by the less desirable fermeneted wrapped bales and finally corn and grass silage. Silage is corn or grass that has been packed without proper drying and allowed to ferment, partially digesting it and creating bacteria which compete with LAB's. Farmstead cheeses tend to be superior because the milk has not traveled very far meaning it hasn't been jostled which breaks down protein chains or left out for bad stuff to grow.

By balance between hygiene and biodiversity he means you let nature do its things with as little tampering as possible. So using wood in an aging facility is less sanitary but is prefered because a biofilm will grow on wood which will encourage growth of beneficial molds and wood will balance moisture and temp fluctuation through evaporatation cooling. Raw milk is an ecosystem of beneficial bacterias that must be preserved as it goes through the transformative processes of harvesting, handling, cheesemaking, and affinage. The doctrine of sterilty upheld by the regulatory process is often at odds with this concept of cheese as an ecosystem.

The third major point made on this first day was that the making of cheese is a minor part of a farmstead cheese operation. The difficult and time consuming sectors are farming and marketing/distribution of the cheese. The care of animals and land takes up much more time than actual cheesemaking/aging. Most farmstead cheesemakers find the business aspects the most difficult aspects. This something worth thinking about and makes me realize that studying business is a really good idea and would be more applicable to what I want to do than food science.

So on to more nuts and bolts. When discussing pastuerizing versus raw Peter came down squarely in favor of raw but explained some key differences. Pastuerizing traps more moisture giving a higher yield but making the moisture harder to remove. This is due to more calcium ion bonding under heat. HTST is actually preferable to LTST because there is less denaturing of the milk. If you go above 175 however there is damage which makes it hard 2 get a good curd formation. Peter made a very good point that it is valuable to learn the Pasturized Milk Ordinance because this is the text the inspectors use and we should get to know it.

We spent alot of time this first day going over the microbiology of milk. Peter diagramed different results of lacto-fermentations tests in which milk is put in a sterile test tube at 90-95 degrees F then allowed to sit overnight. If there is some seperation and a little bit of bubbles this is great, there are LABS. The bubbles are CO2 formed by Propionic bacterias which can form eyes in cheese and come traditionally from animals grazing on legumes. If there are numerous large holes, a sponge-like apperance and lots of whey means coliform bacteria, definetly not good. If there is fleecy curd that hangs from the sides of the tube with strands and copious whey you have psychotrophic bacteria which grow in cold milk. You can still make aged cheeses with this, just not fresh.

My New Home!!

I just arrived here this evening and got moved into one of three rooms in an apartment within a farm house in royal oaks California, outside Watsonville which is near Santa Cruz.  The Ranch consists of 40 acres on hilly terrain about 7 miles from the coast.    This place is incredible and I know I'm going to love it here. There are pigs, goats, ducks, chickens, cats, and dogs along with a grip load of Sheep.  My housemates are Jess who works at Happy Boy produce doing farmers markets and Rebecca who runs Garden Variety Cheese.  

Beechers Pike Place Market

My adventures in cheesemaking began  with me getting a job at Beechers Handmade cheese in Seattle's historic Pike Place Market, the oldest continuously operating public market in the country.  I started off as a Hoopbreaker which is the position you start in to learn the ropes before becoming a Cheesemaker. The job consisted of taking the cheese made the day before out of the presses and then scanning the blocks into a computer before palletizing and shipping it out.  I did this for about 5 months before getting the opportunity to begin making cheese and I haven't look back since.

Cheddaring cheese

Making cheese at Beechers was an important experience because I learned how a very hygienic and efficient cheesemaking operation worked.  We ran a pasteurizer and COP tank for washing the dirty hoops and various implements.  Both had charts and were rigorously cleaned every night.  The whole program at Beechers was very clean and I learned many basic cheesemaking skills such as taking Titritable Acid readings, monitoring flocculation, and cooking curd.  I learned to make Cheddar, Jack, and fromage blanc.  The cloth bound Flagship Reserve that was especially good cheese, it won first place for aged cheddar at the American Cheese Society convention held in July 2010 in Seattle, which we got to attend.

Make vat and cheddaring table

Working down in Pike place market was great, I really enjoyed talking with all the vendors and street performers.  There was some excellent local produce, fish mongers, bakeries, places to get sandwiches and bowls of the steaming clam chowder. It was pretty cool being able to make cheese in the city, a little surreal when you think about the roots of the craft.  All said and done it was a great place for me to start out and I made some really good friends, had a great time, and found something I really enjoy doing.