When we started making cheese, we packaged each retail wedge by coating it in wax. We burned our fingers a few times dipping the cheese, but packaging this way wasn’t too difficult. Then a few customers complained that the wax would crack and later they would find mold underneath. We Read more…
Affinage is a French word that refers to caring for cheese as it ages. The aging process is where our cheese matures and develops its awesome flavor. We make our cheeses in an artisan European style. Cheese factories suffocate cheese in vacuum pack bags right after they come out of Read more…
Rennet, curds, whey, cheddaring. As you may have noticed throughout this series, cheese making has its own special vocabulary. Before I can explain the next steps in cheesemaking there are two more words that I need to define. Hoops are the containers we use to mold the curds into a Read more…
Did you know that in cheesemaking, cheddaring is a verb? Cheddaring is a process that cheesemakers use to further acidify the curds and draw more whey out. This process is what allows cheddar cheese to last a long time. But, before we can get to the cheddaring process, first we Read more…
“Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet eating her curds and whey.” You probably know the rhyme, but what are curds and whey? Where do they come from, and what do they have to do with making cheese? Without curds and whey, we would never get cheese. But first, we Read more…
Whenever we have a school tour we start with a question: are bacteria good or bad? Most kids say bad because they associate bacteria with washing dirt off their hands. However, anyone familiar with food preservation knows that there are good and bad bacteria. If you make wine, beer, kombucha, Read more…