Artisan cheeses, Humanely Raised Meats, Select Wines & Beers, and Gourmet Foods

I know it’s been a while. Let’s just say that the New Year brought a wrath of mechanical failures with it. Maybe some of you know that our pasteurizer was down for a while and while not having to make Green Hill for a week or so was a nice change of pace, it made me very nervous and anxious. I’ll be honest for a moment and tell you that I loathe pasteurized cheese. For cheese heads, it’s all about raw milk. I am no exception but seeing as how this blog could easily expand into a tirade on the government’s zealous regulation on the dairy industry, I will save this for another time. I will say that I do depend on Green Hill to make a living and people’s willingness to consume semi-ripened double cream cheeses in unheard numbers allows me to experiment with cheeses I hold in higher regard. For example- the often overlooked washed rind cheese. I’m not sure how you could overlook it, you can smell it from a mile away. Known somewhat affectionately in France as “les pieds de dieu” or “feet of God,” washed rind cheeses such as Epoisses, Taleggio, and Limburger are more bark than bite in reality. I once saw a sign in a Monroe, Wisconsin bar during their bi-annual Cheese Days Festival that surmised: “Limburger- for your mouth, not your nose.” Very true. I finally got my opportunity to experiment with this style the other day and I have included a little photo gallery of the process.

I will lament that it appears that my experiment has blown up though.

Good news though is that the size and shape of the holes indicate they are gas holes and not coliform holes (bacteriophage) which means I need to tweak the culture a little. I will reattempt this on Thursday, so stay tuned…

Happy new year cheeseheads! Now that the holidays are over and I’ve had some time to reflect and contemplate, I’m psyched for 2008! Last year, I made my resolution to get an apprenticeship making cheese by the years end. Having fulfilled my 2007 resolution, I’m looking to focus on quality and productivity as my resolution for 2008. To me, these two things are dependent on each other and require striking a delicate balance. Yet, there is an evil force lurking in my cheese room that stands to destroy my resolution. Bacteriophage is just like that donut, or in our case, piece of cheese, that could break our resolve. Bacteriophage are viruses that infect bacteria and if your wondering how this has anything to do with your diet, let me explain it this way. Cheese makers use bacteria (the good kind) to culture milk and thus make cheese. The good bacteria (culture) are introduced to the milk, feed off lactose, convert it to lactic acid, lowering the PH and subsequently, creating an inhospitable atmosphere for bad bacteria. Turning lactose into lactic acid requires the utilization of metabolism, which is precisely the process that bacteriophage attacks. In effect, bacteriophage renders culture unable to do it’s job. Unfortunately, I often can’t see bacteriophage at work until it’s too late. It’s like that one donut every week that seems harmless until I try to put on my bathing suit for the summer. Seriously folks, bacteriophage will attack my acidifying starter culture and cause my Goudas to blow up like beach balls. This is not pretty. How to cope? I have to anticipate what the bacteriophage’s plan of attack is and counter-attack by rotating different strains of acidifying culture. So, to keep my resolution of quality and productivity alive, I have to stay one-step ahead of the “phage” by essentially engaging in biological warfare. More from the front lines soon…

Well folks, I had hoped to dive a little deeper into the subculture of culture and draw up a more cohesive image of what’s going on in that cheese you are eating. Alas, the holidays are upon us and that means a quiet storm is brewing at Sweet Grass. For the most part, my work is done. Raw milk cheeses need two months of aging to be legal for sale, so the big wheels were cranked out some time ago. However, our most popular cheese is Green Hill, which is made from pasteurized milk and needs only a few weeks to ripen. As fast as I can make ‘em, Jeremy and the gang in the packing room are wrapping and boxing them ten times faster. Let me give you an idea of what I’m talking about. In the regular season, we make Green Hill roughly twice a week and if the milk is luscious and fatty, we can get 440+ cheeses in a day. During the holidays, we are making Green Hill four times a week! And remember that this time of the year is a transitional one for the cows- they are calving- so the milk quality varies. We have started getting milk from Grassy Flats- the newest member to our family of farms- and I can tell the differences and nuances between it and Green Hill’s. Needless to say, our yields are not what we’d always wish, especially now when it’s more crucial than ever. I’m lucky if I get 400 cheeses a day. I know 400 seems like a lot but I just back from the airport where I dropped off a thousand or so destined for the west coast. While we are on the topic, remember that when you are eating artisanal cheeses- you are subject to the whimsy of the seasons. The goats and cows graze upon different grasses, flowers, and herbs throughout the year and the milk reflects the variety and changes in their diet. In addition to diet, stress, health and weather are factors. All of this affects the raw product I work with in the cheese room- recipes change because variables in production change. So, when the milk isn’t as fatty or chock full of protein, as it is now, I have to be extra careful because the curd isn’t as resilient as it is in the spring. As I commented earlier today to Jeremy, it’s the same thing everyday but different everyday. So the moral of this story is to make it your New Years resolution to taste Green Hill or any other cheeses at different times of the year and savor the subtleties of the seasons, particularly the extra care put into your winter cheeses!

Hey Folks! I’m working on another entry and until I get it posted, I thought I’d let you see how the experimental Bleu is progressing…

Before I begin this post, I suppose introductions are necessary. My name is Veronica Pedraza and I came to Sweet Grass Dairy a little over three months ago by way of Chicago. I came with the intention of apprenticing with Jeremy and learning the art and science of cheesemaking. Making the transition from the Windy City to southwestern Georgia is not as strange as I assumed it might be. After all, Chicago, with all of it’s cosmopolitan features, stills lies at the heart of the Midwest- which is above all else, farm country. So this post is not about the cultural nuances of farm life as it is about understanding cheese cultures- which are the various bacteria that are added to milk to make a particular cheese. Cultures give flavour profiles, define texture and assist in the ripening process. For me, understanding how cultures work in conjunction with milk and for that matter, each other, is a delicate balance of science and craft. When we speak of culture, we are essentially speaking about microbiology and the cooperation and competition among organisms of the smallest kind. For example, we use a mixture of four types of culture for our Green Hill and the success of each batch of cheese is determined by carefully balancing those cultures. Too much of one and the cheese will ripen too soon, not enough of another and it will fail to ripen early enough. Last week, I had a breakthrough in my understanding of culture when I was making an experimental batch of bleu cheese. We had decided to use a strain of gas producing culture because gas producing cultures create CO2 and thus create small crevices in which the Roquefort culture (the bleu in bleu cheese) might grow. However, the culture we chose was not an acidifying starter. Acidification is necessary to make cheese because on the most simplistic level- making cheese is merely acidifying a base. Just like making vinegar or pickles. Without acidification the curds fail to firm up and do not hold up to the moulding and pressing processes. I realized that little or no acidification had taken place when we went to mold and the curds turned to mush in my hands. Nevertheless, the cheeses turned out pretty good- we got the desired technical holes we were looking for. However, it will be months before we will know how they taste and ultimately if a mistake turned out to be a diamond in the rough. Regardless of that fact, I was satisfied with my days labor as I was able to to identify the cause and effect for why something happened the way it did. This may seem trivial to most of you but there is little information out there for the aspiring cheesemaker. Understanding how all these components work together is sometimes daunting. Given that humans have made cheese for an estimated 10,000 years, it seems ridiculous that there is little written information on the process and that many aspects of cheesemaking are still not understood, especially with regards to culture. I have to admit that I was even mystified as to how these bacteria were eventually referred to as “culture” and in examining the origins of the word itself, found that the definition as it pertained to biology was not as useful as the defintion pertaining to anthropology: “A particular form or stage of civilization.” This seems fitting if you think of each wheel of cheese as its own microcosm playing out a scenario very similar to the world in which we live in- various cultures working together or duking it out to produce whatever it is that we do. I’ll let you know who came out on top in the battle of the bleu in a few months.

Welcome to the new Sweet Grass Dairy site and our new Blog, The Unfinished Symphony! In the coming months we’ll be sharing insight into what goes on behind the scenes at our dairy, tips on selecting cheeses, and much, much more.

Thanks for stopping by!