Meeting the Cheese Family Part 3: Making Goat Cheese at Beltane

Until now, my only experience making cheese has been at Cato Corner and a brief laboratory session at cheese school in Vermont (i.e., VIAC classes). I thought all cheesemaking was an intense, sweat-soaked battle with curd. I completely forgot that not all cheese comes in ten to thirty-pound wheels of bicep challenging fury. What revived my cheesy perspective? Making goat cheese at Beltane Farm for a day.

Paul at Beltane and Mark at Cato Corner are cheese buddies who make their respective cheeses ten minutes down the road from each other. They each have their niche and they each rock the cheesy rind off that niche. Mark is the master of raw cow's milk, whereas Paul makes awesome fresh chevre and bloomy rind, French-style soft-ripened goat cheese from pasteurized goats milk. Last week, Paul was gracious enough to let me see the farm and help them out for a day in the cheeseroom.

Paul had a very calm and patient approach that made working in his cheeseroom a pleasure. His staff was great to work with as well. The majority of the time we laughed and talked about cartoons and music, so I felt right at home.

I started out, as expected, with cleaning dishes. Cleaning is always a constant no matter what cheesemaker you're working with. Then, I took down the chevre that had been hang-drying in the cheese cloth hoops overnight. We mixed the thick glorious mounds of fresh goat cheese into a tray and added salt. I did the honors of tasting several spoonfuls to make sure the salt was spread evenly. I'm always a little hesitant to offer up sophisticated tasting observations because most of the time I'm so excited about food that all my brain tells me is "mmmm tasty, now eat more." But I surprised myself in being able to pick out when the salt was inconsistent.


Fresh chevre takes almost two days to make. First, it has to rennet overnight in order to retain more moisture with a slower coagulation. Then, it has to dry overnight in hanging cheese cloths. Yet, it is an instantly gratifying cheese to make, because after those two days, it's ready to be packaged and sold right away. No aging room, no maintenance, no drama.

After last night's chevre chilled for a while, it was thrown into a crazy cheese-sausage-making contraption that squeezed out symmetrical 4-inch rolls for packaging. Some were sprinkled with herbs.

Next, we worked on the curd that had renneted overnight in the vat to use for a couple different cheeses. We spooned some of it into small molds that looked like plastic Dixie cups. These molds would then be flipped, but not pressed, much like Cato Corner's softer cheeses. The spooned curd will ripen and become one of their soft bloomy rind cheeses. Then, we scooped the rest of the curd in a large pitcher and poured it into cheese cloths to hang overnight for tomorrow's chevre. No hot and sweaty stirring, no cutting with giant wire harp cutters, no draining, no pressing. There was a fine art, however, to pouring the curd, which was a very wet, jello-like amorphous mass, and carefully gripping the cloth around the heavy wet blob to tie it so that everything didn't go spilling out from an errant corner. Plus, if the cord isn't tied tight enough while it is hanging, the cloth could slip out and spill all its cheese entrails on the floor.

While all this was happening, the milk in the second small vat was pasteurizing for that day's cheese, which would be a Camembert-style ripened cheese. In order to make fresh cheeses like chevre that cannot be aged, the milk has to be pasteurized. By federal law, anything made with raw milk has to age at least 60 days. That just won't fly with soft un-aged cheeses, such as chevre, ricotta or even many Camembert or Brie-style cheeses, that is unless you want a plateful of funky rubber in two months. Therefore, in this country, young fresh and soft-ripened cheeses have to be made with pasteurized milk. To accommodate this step, cheesemakers like Paul use a cheese vat that doubles as a pasteurizer. Once the milk heats for long enough to meet pasteurization requirements and then cools to avoid killing the rennet and culture, then everything can remain in the same vat and be added directly to it.

There wasn't much milk. The pasteurization, cooling, acidification and coagulation process, all taking place in the same vat, didn't require much time. By late afternoon we were hooping. Everything at this stage involved the same familiar concepts of cutting the curd and scooping it up in molds, but with one-tenth of the milk, almost no heat, and different equipment. We cut the curd by cutting lines in the gel with a basic kitchen knife and stirred only long enough to catch the big pieces we missed. With such a small vat it only took fifteen minutes to empty out the curd during hooping. The molds were the same ones we use at Cato Corner for Hooligans. We flipped the cheeses in the molds, of which there were only a few dozen (versus over 120 Hooligans at a time). Both vats cleaned and all done...at 2:30!

Though the day ends early and I lose far less fluids making goat cheese, there was a careful dance to balance the various batches and additional work of pasteurizing the cheese. On top of that, they make cheese every day of the week -- all seven of them -- so there is no reprieve. I'm glad I got the opportunity to broaden my experience while catching a glimpse of the goat-world with such an awesome crew.

Be it from a goat or from a cow, I still love eating both by the fistful. And now, I love making both. I'll pick cow when I need more cardio and weight training though.

The aging room. Less space required.
What no giant wheels of cheese?

I love baby animals so much.