from milk to cheese

I like to think that I’ve learned a lot in 2020 in our cheese make room. Since May, I’ve made 3 batches of cheese a week. That’s a decent amount of hours spent stirring and peering into a vat of curds and whey. Although, the world of cheesemaking is so vast, it is obvious that the learning process has just begun. Milk, for example, something we can usually take for granted as a simple food product secreted by mammalian females, can be broken down into components that has caused me to once again enroll in online biology and chemistry classes.

Water, minerals, lactose, casein, whey proteins, fat, vitamins, enzymes, and microbes come together in a unique fashion to create milk. On top of that complex interaction, milk has seasonal variations and is highly influenced by what the mammal is eating. So in our case, our cows’ milk is changing all the time based on the season and their diet.

I have heard from other master cheesemakers that it is much harder to make a good consistent cheese from cows on pasture compared with cows raised on a rationed diet inside of a barn. A cheesemaker has much more control over the final flavor of the cheese when the cows diet is controlled. I can not argue with that experience, but I fundamentally like the management of cows on grass and pasture. I love seeing cows grazing on our hilly mountain pastures, and I prefer to manage my herd in that regard.

As a cheesemaker, I need to understand both the big and the small, the gross and the subtle. I need to constantly keep in check our animals overall complete health, calorie intake, micro and macro nutrients. I need to constantly improve the way our animals forage on the land, so that I improve the health of the landscape instead of degrade it. That is what I mean when I say “big”. As for the subtle or the small, one only needs to think of bacteria, yeasts, and molds that produce enzymes that create either a good cheese or a bad, and completely different cheeses such as a Parmesan or a blue. Cheesemaking is a crossroads between the micro and the macro and I find myself thrown between these two worlds. Constantly I am trying to piece together a puzzle that is 3 dimensional and held together by the imagination.

At the same time that cheesemaking is daunting in its complexity, the depth is exciting.

Temperature, bacteria, salt and moisture content are the big players in this world of cheesemaking. Temperature and bacteria go hand in hand. The happier the bacteria is at its optimal range, the more lactose sugar is converted into lactase, which creates the acidity that is necessary to flavor cheese. Likewise, salt slows down and hinders lactase production. Finally, the final moisture content of the cheese when it enters the aging room can create drastically different cheeses as the wheels age.

My mind is here. This is where it has been all year. I project I’ll be pondering bacteria, fungi, milk, and grass for years to come.