I arrived at Black Sheep just as the cheesemaking was winding down because the sheep were ready to stop lactating and enter the breeding season. But thankfully I arrived just in time to see how a few of their cheeses are made.
4) Cheesemaking
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Where the magic happens. The vat
is the round thing in the back. |
Though there is less milk, the work is just as laborious. In the summer, Brad is making two batches of cheese each day (in smaller quantities per batch). I wasn’t around for the long days of cheesemaking, but I’m sure it also required a lot of simultaneous clean-up. The vat, like the vat I described from my visit to Beltane Farm in Connecticut to make goat cheese, is much smaller than the open vat at Cato and it doubles as a pasteurizer. Especially when pasteurizing, the temperatures in the room can get quite high. But it’s not quite the same cardio-heavy sweat-fest as in a larger make room dealing with more milk and larger wheels. There aren’t several dozens of giant molds waiting to be washed in piping hot water. There aren’t 30 pound wheels to be flipped and hoisted into the press. And most of all, there aren’t several thousand pounds of milk in an open vat, emanating heat after being warmed to triple-digit temperatures. Still, two makes each day, would wipe me out all the same.
Some of the cheeses are much easier to make. For instance, the fresh cheese is simply pasteurized, then cultured in 5 gallon containers until it sets overnight. It’s then hooped and hung in cheese cloths the next day to drain. The seasoning and packaging of the fresh cheese is actually a bigger pain. There is also yogurt, for which you do need to closely watch the temperature at certain points, but it is also a basic heat-add-culture-and-wait recipe.
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| Cheese house on the left of barn. |
The other cheeses are made in much the same manner as what I described this summer. The cheesemaking steps are essentially the same: heat the milk, add culture, add rennet, cut the curd, stir, drain the whey, hoop, flip, press and brine the cheese. Some of the cheeses also call for washing the curd. We keep our hands washed and sanitized, and all the equipment is washed and sanitized. But within each step there are differences. First, there is less to sanitize and wash, so there isn’t quite as much to clean-up. Also, the amount of milk requires a different measurement system for the rennet and culture. In the summer, I was calculating and weighing out precise grams of culture to add to 1500 to 3000 pounds of milk. We were diluting up to 100 mL of rennet in a big bucket. There was A LOT of milk I had the potential to ruin. Here there are maybe 30-some gallons of milk at a time in the vat. So I add 8mL of rennet to water in a yogurt cup and measure out culture in teaspoons. Precision is still necessary, you have to add the correct amount, and ruining 30-40 gallons of milk is still a really big deal. But at least psychologically I was less nervous to do the culture and rennet when I heard the words “heaping teaspoon.”
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Molds in the press. Pot on the stove is for yogurt. |
Once the milk is ripened and set, the curd is ready to cut. Instead of giant harps, which probably won’t even fit in the vat, we use a whisk – the same type I have in my kitchen, but longer and sturdier. In the similarly-sized goat cheese vat, I believe we used a large knife. The whisk goes in, and with each twist, the curd is cut into pieces. Then, same as with the cows’ milk, we heat the curd and stir. This time there is no giant rake and I’m not hanging over the vat while the hot curd heats my face. We do hand-stir the curd with our hand and arms, but it’s small enough that two arms can do the job. Plus the vat is high enough that my arm dips right in without any lower back issues.
Then the whey is drained and we begin scooping out the curd (“hooping”) into molds. The molds are much smaller and lined with cheese cloth. We stack the molds to get some whey out. Then we start flipping and pressing them. The press is a home-made structure (not an air-press). It uses jugs of water as weights to create pressure. The molds go into the press. They are generally flipped three times and pressed for an hour each time. The next day they go into the salt brine before beginning their life in the aging cave.
5) Aging
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The front trailer is the prep room.
If you look behind it, you see part of the
trailer used as the aging cellar attached |
The cave work is similar, but less involved at Black Sheep. All cheese has to get flipped regularly to allow for proper rind development. But there are fewer varieties of cheese to maintain; so there are no blue cheeses to poke and fewer types of cheese to wash. Because there is less cheese in the cave, there is less maintenance for the structure itself. The floors stay pretty clean and the shelves don’t need to be scraped quite as aggressively. That will likely change as the cave gets older and if production increases. The cave itself is not an underground cellar like at Cato Corner. Instead it's a metal shipping trailer that has been rigged to allow for temperature and humidity control. It is attached to the back of the trailer that serves as the packaging and cutting room.
The cheeses that are washed – the St. Helens, and occasionally the Pecorino – are washed much less frequently than Hooligans. Because of the washing schedule and the recipe itself, the washed rinds here are fairly mild and not very stinky. The washed-rind cheeses here are washed with a similar salt brine solution. To encourage the orange-rind development, B. Linens is also added to this brine in small quantities. Instead of a brush, I put the brine solution on a cloth and wipe the cheeses.
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The aging cellar. Attached in the
back holds the brine tank. |
One added task that arises from having smaller quantities is brushing. I’ve discussed dust mites before and the dust they create. I know the mites and molds that thrive in the cave are pretty unappetizing, but it’s a natural part of the process. I’ve seen it all and I still heartily enjoy the cheese. Flipping and handling the cheese, and properly maintaining the cave and shelves will generally take care of a lot of the dust and blemishes on the rind. The rest is cleaned off when the cheese is pulled from the cave. This fall, however, I’ve spent a few days of cave work that were dedicated to pre-emptively brushing the dust and gunk off the rinds during the aging process. I take each cheese and brush off the dust and mold blemishes and replace them on the shelf. When cheese is pulled, it is brushed again, but there should be less to clean at that point. It’s a good way to keep an eye on the cheese and see how the rinds are developing. But that would take a substantial devotion of man-power if there was a lot more cheese.
On a final note, I have to say I've been really lucky so far to work with wonderful people and find internships that have genuinely been a great learning experience. I appear to have lucked out again. Meg and Brad are awesome. They are laid-back and fun to work with, and most importantly, ridiculously patient and kind in helping me learn the ropes even as their season winds down. Both here at Black Sheep and at Cato Corner, I've had the chance to work with people who really know what they're doing and have won recognition from their peers for it. Yet, they are still generous enough to welcome a hapless twenty-something into their business, put me in touch with their cheese contacts, and in the process, support my goal. I've been very very fortunate in my path this year. Fingers-crossed that the luck continues!
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Ricotta hanging at the end of
cheesemaking day. The fresh
cheese hangs in the same manner. |
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