Day 8 - Life of Cheese

For a cheese to become a truly washed rind style, we need to develop the rind with a variety of yeast and bacteria. To do this, we literally wash the cheese with a solution. The solution is made up of yeast, bacteria, salt and water. This is then scrubbed onto the cheese using a brush. This action, scraps the surface and therefore provides more surface area and opportunity for the organisms to grow. The process of scrubbing also enables us to spread the solution across all surfaces of the cheese. Our cheese has had its first wash today.

Day 6 and 7 - Life of cheese

On the surface, all appears to be quiet, but deep inside those millions of bacteria are working their magic.

Day 5 - Life of Cheese

Take a look at this. This photo is a view of our cheese cut in half with a knife (smooth side) and then quartered by breaking it in half. You can see that the texture is almost crumbly. This is due to the high levels of acidity. At this stage the cheese tastes quite acidic. Not extremely sharp and tart like tartaric acid but more like the gentle sourness of citric acid. There is also a prominent creamy, milky character that fills the palate. Interesting to taste, but certainly not suitable as a table cheese at this stage.

Day 2 - Life of Cheese

Much has changed in the life of our little cheese in the last 24 hours. Through the science of cheesemaking, which I won't go into now, we have managed to extract and form a gorgeous pale white curd from the milk to create our 200 gm cheese. It really is totally amazing. Within this little round form, are millions of tiny bacteria that have begun their own journey. These tiny beasts have fermented the lactose (sugars) in the milk and converted it to lactic acid. It is these living creatures that will determine the texture and flavour of our cheese over time. Keep them happy and they will do their job perfectly, but beware, if they don't get what they want, they become evil!

In our picture today, the cheese is floating in the brine (saturated salt water bath). The alternative would be to dry salt them, which means essentially dusting all surfaces of the cheese evenly. Salting is another preserving step in the cheesemaking process and also helps flavour development.

Day 1 - Life of Cheese

Day 1 in the life of our little cheese is of course the milk stage. So here it is, the silky, smooth, creamy, delicious fresh milk direct from the farm. The girls start moving onto the rotating milking system at about 7 am, where their very full udders are suction capped to remove their fresh milk. At about 8am, Helen drives our little milk tank to the dairy and picks up the milk for our days production. Into the our vat is goes where the cheese journey begins.....