A blog dedicated to urban cheesemaking, cheese tasting and appreciation and all things cheese and dairy related.
Via considerbardwellfarm, which now has a Tumblr!
Freshly ladled Mettowee
Chevre des Cremiers, a bloomy-rind goat’s milk cheese, double- or triple-creme (I’m not sure which but there’s definitely some extra creme goin’ on here!). Hailing from Midi-Pyrenees, France, the wheel is plump and velvety with the pillowy amber-snowy rind collapsing around the oozing paste.
A mild, milky, buttery cheese, smooth and creamy with a nice saltiness, with hints of hay, mushrooms and mustiness and just the slightest hint of goat bite and a slightly sour finish.
Purchased at Blue Apron.
Tomme Chabrin, from the Onetik Cooperative in Macaye in the Basque region of France. A mixed-milk cheese made from goat and sheep’s milk, the Chabrin manages to marry some of the best qualities of both into one cheese. The natural rind is reddish, mold-splotched and a little bit sticky, enclosing a smooth, creamy ivory paste that hints at its sheepy half with the touch of lanolin oiliness as it warms.
In flavor it is mild but full-bodied, briny and nutty with herbaceous notes and a tangy, citric finish that lingers.
Purchased at Blue Apron.
Wheel of Gouda-style cheese, drying before going into the cooler for a week, and then getting waxed. The second picture is the wheel brining for 16 hours before drying. This wheel was made with mixed-milk, raw goat and raw cow.
(Note: someone asked if I dry it on the slate. I definitely do not, normally it’s on a wire rack, I just briefly moved it to the slate for the big close-up. ;) )
Goat dairy farms gaining ground in Vt
From WCAX in Vermont, comes a story about the rise of goat dairies in Vermont, even as cow dairies, increasingly beleaguered, are on the decline:
It’s been a rough month for Vermont dairy farms. At least three farmers have called in quits in the past two weeks, but there is a bright spot in the industry. Cows may be king in Vermont, but from the factory to the farm, a new breed of animal is moving in on the bovine’s stomping grounds.
“It’s an incredibly exciting industry,” said Karen Lindbo, who along with her partner, George Redick, operate Oak Knoll Farm in Windsor — the largest goat dairy in the state.
Lindbo and Redick first got started in the dairy business 24 years ago with just four goats, but things have changed in the years since. They now milk more than 400 goats a day.
In 1994 there were only 9 goat dairy farms in the state. There are now 27 goat dairy farms.
“The interest in goats has expanded. I think primarily because the cow dairy industry fluctuates so much,” Lindbo said.
And one company can claim an outsized role in the growing success of Vermont goat dairies: Allison Hooper’s Vermont Butter & Cheese Company:
But Vermont does have one thing most states do not — The Vermont Butter and Cheese Company. The creamery churns out more than 8-million pounds of product a year using milk from Vermont farms, and is the largest producer of goat cheese in all of New England.
Read the full story here.
Bleu du Bocage, from the Vendée in the Loire Region of France, and one of the cheeses lovingly aged in the caves of Murray’s. One’s mind might go to the assertive and biting Spanish Cabrales when goat and blue are mentioned in the same breath, but the Bleu du Bocage is surprisingly mellow, with just enough spice.
With a smooth, buttery body lightly veined with greenish-blue and yellow mold, the sweet and grassy paste contrasts nicely with the spice and subtle barnyard bite of the bluing, with undertones of fruitiness, nuts and minerality.
Purchased at Murray’s.
How can you not love a cheese with a name like Wildspitz? Then you find out that it’s another cheese from master affineur Rolf Beeler, aka the “Cheese Pope” of Switzerland; add in that it’s an unusual Swiss thermophilic alpine in that it’s a mixed milk cheese made from goat and cow’s milk and you’ve got a winner on your hands.
Similar to a Scharfe Maxx, the Wildspitz is a wonderfully pungent alpine with a reddish-brown smeared rind, holding a lightly eyed smooth and buttery paste with a complex, herbaceous flavor that starts out like a tamer alpine but opens quickly into hazelnuts, hay, mushrooms and a woodsy undertone.
Purchased at Brooklyn Larder.
Amarelo da Beira Baixa (translation: “Yellow cheese from the lower Beira”) is a Portuguese sheep and goat’s mixed milk semi-firm cheese. Unlike many Iberian cheeses, it is made using animal rennet rather than vegetable coagulants like those derived from thistle, and yet it still has a subtle bitterness in the flavor that one associates with those cheeses, which I found interesting.
With a semi-soft, creamy paste, mild in flavor and aroma, it has a slightly sour, yeasty flavor with a nice earthiness and nuttiness and only a hint of lanolin from the sheep’s milk. The sheep and goat seem to balance each other well, neither dominating the cheese and producing a mellow final result.
(By the way, if you’re wondering why I called it “thistle coagulant” when it’s often called “thistle rennet”: during my class at VIAC I was corrected on this, as apparently only Animal Rennet is labeled as such, the rest are coagulants of one kind or another which have just been short-handed to “rennet”.)
Purchased at Fairway Red Hook.
The latest batch of Gowanish, at around 3 weeks. I used a slightly different recipe this time around, and included Aroma B Mesophilic in the starter mix. This did change the flavor — Aroma B is often used in the making of cream cheese, and the Gowanish did have a slightly cream-cheesy tang to it. I’m not sure if it was the Aroma B (it could be, because Aroma B produces CO2, which can give the cheese a fluffier texture) but the paste also had a scattering of air pockets, I wouldnt call them eyes exactly, which might also have been due to the curds being slightly harder than ideal at scooping time so that they didnt knit together perfectly in the molds.
Overall I was pleased with the flavor; the rind was a little saltier than I like but the paste was creamy and fudgy in texture, with a creamline that was soft and oozing, but not so liquid that it just spilled out as soon as the room temperature pyramid was cut open. This was also the first time using a new milk supplier from a farm in PA, and it was extremely fresh, bright and sweet out of the bottle, which definitely came through in the cheese.
In the next batch I’m going to pull back on the Penicillium Candidum somewhat, go for more of a 1/1 Geotrichum and Penicillium. I’ll also watch the curds more hawkishly to avoid over-coagulating in the vat.
Tomme de Chevre Aydius, from the village of Aydius in the Béarnaise Pyrénées region of France, is a washed rind goat’s milk tomme, aged for up to 6 months, after which the aging continues in the Murray’s caves to bring them to perfection.
With a pungent, grassy aroma and a dense, eye-pocked creamy paste and melting mouthfeel, this tomme is mild but complex, sweet, nutty and herbaceous, with hints of lemon and fruit.
Purchased at Murray’s Cheese.
