So, who is ACS and what is this conference? The American Cheese Society claims membership across the U.S., Canada and parts of South America. It’s an organizing body that helps the membership stay on top of trends, studies and industry changes. The conference is an annual event that brings together retailers, cheese makers, farmers, distributors, food scientists and more. The conference has a few events and presents topics of interest to these people. On our tour from Portland to Seattle, we had a few cheese enthusiasts. As an enthusiast, the conference is not really geared towards you. However, the topics are fascinating and with my volunteering hours, I was able to make it to a few seminars. I focused on the two topics that were of interest to me most: business and science. Here’s what I attended:

* * *

Raw Milk Cheese
Catherine Donnelly, PhD., University of Vermont
Dave Potter, Dairy Connection, Inc.
Andre Jean, Health Canada

This was a fascinating seminar on the issues surrounding raw milk and the “60-day rule” which allows cheeses to be made with raw milk if they are aged over 60 days. This naturally rules out soft and mold-ripened cheeses (among other dairy products) that would go bad if left to age 60 days. In France, there is actually a rule that Camembert cannot be legally sold after 57 days. Such a process would be dangerous for soft cheeses.

Why do we care about raw milk? Well, in my layperson’s knowledge of the issue, and after the great talk by Catherine Donnelly: if you want to make high-quality cheese, you need high-quality milk. Pasteurizing the milk does not as a rule make it a poor quality product. You and I, in the U.S., enjoy many amazing cheeses that are made with pasteurized milk. However, pasteurized and raw milk are fundamentally two different kinds of milk.

Pasteurization is a process of heat-treating the milk to a certain temperature for a certain amount of time in order to kill off any nasty bacteria. However, the argument is made, it also kills off the good kinds of bacteria. Bacteria which can also help fight off the organisms which are bad for you. When you start to really get into cheese you will start to become familiar with the fact that it’s not just milk in there giving the cheese it’s flavor. We have to give thanks to all the little microorganisms that live in the milk and create the character of our favorite cheeses. Often, producers need to add back in those microorganisms after the pasteurization process in order to recreate that environment. Dave Potter, one of the speakers, is a purveyor in just such products! Who knew such a thing existed? I didn’t!

The third speaker was Andre Jean from Health Canada who talked about Canada’s approach to the raw milk issue. Basically, it exempts cheese from the pasteurization requirement that it otherwise imposes on fluid (drinkable) milk. In Canada, they are working to develop a set of standards that would apply to different cheese categories – rather than treating all cheeses the same, it would look at issues for hard cheeses, firm, semi-firm, soft, spreadable, etc. And their focus is really on the contamination issue. Pasteurization takes care of organisms at one end of the process but does not do anything to make the cheese super-heroes against contamination through handling later. They feel like education is the key to safe cheese consumption.

It’s worth noting that ACS invited a representative from the FDA to come in and talk about what their stance is on the issue but they declined.

There was lots of great info in this seminar and I found it really illuminating. Catherine Donnelly, from the University of Vermont, is an expert on this topic and a great speaker. If you ever get the chance to hear her speak on this issue, I highly recommend you do it.

* * *

Cheesemaking Demo: Surface-ripened cheese
Marc “Frenchie” Druart, Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese
Assisted by: Maureen Cunnie, Cowgirl Creamery & Michael B. Vicha, Mt. Townsend Creamery

Okay, I think I have lost my notes on this one! This took place in one of the hotel kitchens around a big vat of already curdled milk where Marc “Frenchie” Druart from the Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese held forth in a very amusing way on the science behind cheese, specifically surface-ripened cheeses. It involved drawings on the white board of negatively and positively charged molecules, bouncing curds in the sink and checking and re-checking the pH of the milk to know when, just precisely when, is the moment to make your move.

It was almost all over my head but it was really great insight into how things actually get done when you understand the science. I was also rather beside myself to recognize two of my favorite Oregon cheesemakers at the demo taking notes as well. (Fangirl! Squee!)

Ahem.

* * *

Zingtrain – why our dishwashers know our net operating profit
Ari Weinzweig & Aubrey Thomason, Zingerman’s

Zingerman’s is a well-known fine-foods business based out of Ann Arbor. In the process of creating their business and expanding over the years they’ve developed a rather unique approach to doing business encapsulated in the title of the seminar. Basically, everything is open there. Everyone knows how much things cost, how much revenue and profit is being generated and everyone is responsible for taking care of the business. They’ve developed a whole line of training materials and classes to show other entrepreneurs how it’s done. I’ve long had an interest in starting and owning my own business. Hasn’t happened yet but I find the principles of the whole enterprise very interesting. There are so many approaches and we’ve all worked before for a company doing things the wrong way!

This talk was just a quick overview of their business model but it really seems to make a lot of sense. By being open, you are encouraging ownership of the business. When everyone takes ownership, you have a lot of enthusiasm and motivation which is directed toward the bottom line.

They also talked a lot about tracking things – not just numbers (clients, customers, products, revenue, profit) but thing that are harder to quantify like quality. It was really interesting and the idea is something I’ll definitely keep in the back of my mind. I can see this approach working really well in retail industries but I can also see how the principles could be applied in other fields.

* * *

The Enthusiasts Guide to Cheese Science
Zoe Brickley, Cellars at Jasper Hill

I kind of thought this one would be a bit boring. I’m an enthusiast. I’ve read a bit on the science of cheese. I’ve started to get a handle on how things work. I was wrong. I mean, I was right, but also wrong – Zoe Brickley from the Cellars at Jasper Hill took us on a breathless overview of the entire process from grass to cheese and it was totally fascinating. She did an amazing job of breaking down the science into its component parts, offering analogies that made sense and created a narrative that was both informative and entertaining. I also learned a lot I didn’t know about cows! The poor, overlooked cow. We are so concerned about what goes into the cow and what comes out. But the process of what happens in between is pretty interesting and we should not take the happiness and health of the cow for granted.

Also! Jasper Hill makes some exceptional cheese. If you see their stuff anywhere, try it and buy it!

* * *

Festival of Cheese

There were so many more events and seminars and tastings and demos that I did not get a chance to go to. However, as I said before, this is an industry event. It’s really not geared towards the enthusiast despite the last seminar I attended. And it shouldn’t be. From what I understand, dairying, farming and making cheese can be a somewhat isolating career. It’s clear that there is a lot of value in fostering a place for all these amazing artisans to come together and share. The one event that is geared towards everyone with a healthy lactose tolerance is the Festival of Cheese. This was really my whole reason for getting involved in the first place.

On the last day of the conference, they announce the winners of the ACS competition categories of which there are dozens. Then, they put out an amazing spread of all the submitted cheeses – there were over 1400 cheeses submitted this year. 1400, I said!

Here’s a few photos:

Did I try them all? Yes, I did.

No! That’s a total lie; I did not! I would be dead. I gave it my best go, though. Between myself, my husband, and our friends Linnea and Peter, we figured we sampled less than 5% of the available cheeses. We sampled as many of the winners as we could and found some great new cheeses and managed to stuff ourselves silly. It was really a sight (and smell) to behold and so much fun – a truly unique and special bacchanal of cheese the likes of which I can’t imagine seeing again… until next time.

* * *

See more photos of the festival starting here or the whole set of ACS photos.

Don’t miss Part 1, in which we visited three Washington creameries and drank lots of beer at 60 miles an hour.

To kick off the 2010 American Cheese Society conference, there were three tours originating from points a few hours away from Seattle and visiting various creameries and retail stores along the way. After the Portland Wedge Cheese Festival last year, I got roped into volunteered to help lead the Portland to Seattle tour which left the morning before the festival, arriving in time for the opening keynote address that evening.

Our itinerary had us starting early in the morning in downtown Portland, visiting the Hollywood Whole Foods for snacks and then heading up to three Washington state creameries on the way to Seattle. We picked up cheese along the way and on the last leg, had a cheese tasting with wine and beer on the bus! My partner in crime, Bill Stephenson from DPI Northwest, was very adept at cutting the cheese at the front of the bus as I wandered the aisles with wine and some of the finest Oregon craft beer (graciously donated by the Oregon Brewer’s Guild).

We all had a lot of fun and only lost a little cheese when the bus braked hard and Bill’s cutting board went flying. For my part, I only spilled a little wine and beer on one poor guy who was very good-natured (and luckily wearing navy blue pants!). Here’s just a little wrap-up about the creameries we visited.

* * *

Black Sheep Creamery
345 Bunker Creek Road
Chehalis, WA 98532-9721
(360) 748-9543

We started out at Black Sheep Creamery in southern Washington. Black Sheep makes only sheeps milk cheese and raises their own sheep and tends their fields for hay. In 2007, their farm and dairy was devatasted by the rising waters of the nearby Chehalis River. To walk by this river today, you’d marvel at how such a gentle meandering stream of water, looking barely larger than a creek at summer’s end, could cause so much devastation. But when heavy and sustained rains came in the fall of 2007, it brought with it tons of silt from the nearby clearcut hills.

Black Sheep bore the brunt of this destruction. The flood covered their fields in a thick layer of silt, and took the lives of many in its herd. It lifted their aging room – a repurposed shipping container – and carried it about fifty yards where it caught on some high ground.

Farmers and neighbors and dairies came to their aid to help save their cheese and help restore the farm. Today, you would never know but it’s clear listening to owner Brad Gregory talk about the incident and recovery that it is still very fresh in their minds. Read more about the flood and the farm at Weekend America, “Recovering from the Chehalis Flood” and over at Tami’s blog, “Black Sheep Creamery Devastated by Flood.”

It’s a real blessing that they have managed to get back on their feet, as Black Sheep makes exceptional sheeps milk cheeses. We sampled their Queso de Oveja which is like a livelier, younger Spanish manchego – you can practically taste the sheep leaping in the meadow! It’s a really lovely cheese which took home a deserved blue ribbon in the ACS competition category for aged sheep’s milk cheese. If you’re in the Northwest, you should look for it today!

* * *

Willapa Hills Farmstead Cheese (will•uh•puh)
4680 State Highway 6
Doty, WA 98539
(206) 612-6253

Just up the road from Black Sheep is Willapa Hills Creamery. Also raising sheep, they do both sheeps milk and blended cheeses. They are are focusing on blue and soft-ripened cheeses and are getting a lot of acclaim this year for their Two-faced Blue, a truly buttery blue made from sheep and cow (the two faces) it is decadent like a triple-cream with lovely blue notes that do not overwhelm. Their Little Boy Blue is firmer and more robust in flavor with lots of mold. It’s bold without knocking you over.

Amy and Stephen showed us around the operation and let us look into their caves. They have three young kids whose faces show up on their cheese labels and we were lucky enough to come by while KelseaMae was in the process of making cheese. Willapa Hills were also winners in the competition for their Two-Faced Blue which took 2nd place in the Blue-veined Sheep or Mixed Milk Category. I’ll be trying to bring this cheese to any and all parties I’m invited to – it’s really unique and fantastic.

* * *

Estrella Family Creamery
659 Wynoochee Valley Rd
Montesano, WA 98563

Our final stop was Kelli Estrella’s creamery which she runs with her whole family. All the kids help out with the extensive farm duties with her oldest daughter taking on the role of cheesemaker. Kelli has made a name for herself for her superb aged cheeses. When you go to Europe, you see cheeses that are kind of like this – mottled, strange, pungent. Creating an exceptional aged cheese requires patience, diligence, a commitment to the science of it and wild leaps of faith.

Estrella is a cow farm and they make a staggering array of cheeses. Their most beloved and well-known is probably the Red Darla, a double-fist-sized lump of cheese with a sticky, newspaper-grey rind derived from the red wine wash that is applied to the cheese. It isn’t the prettiest cheese but, wow, is it good! Pungent, creamy, assertive but not rude, it’s a fantastic cheese and a great pair for beer. Yum, yum, yum! They took a blue ribbon for their Weebles, in the Smoked Italian Styles category and a 2nd place win for their Jalepeno Buttery in the Flavored Cheeses.

* * *

A huge thank you goes out to the creameries for opening their doors and their caves to our group who had a really great time. It was so informative and amazing to meet the makers, hear the stories and really connect with all the hard work and love that goes into these exceptional products.

Don’t miss: Lots more photos of the cheese caves and cheese makers on my Flickr pages!

* * *

Last but not least: Beer

You didn’t think I could get through this without talking about beer, did you? You are right. At the last minute we managed to secure some donations of Oregon microbrews from the Oregon Brewer’s Guild to take on the bus and sample. We already had some donated bottles of red and white wine but, you know, these people on the tour came from all over the U.S. (and New Zealand!) and I felt that it was my duty to expose them to Oregon beer. There’s just nothing like it anywhere else.

The Donations included several bottles of Rogue Brewing beer, Deschutes Brewing Green Lakes Organic, HUB’s brand new Rise-up Red, several bottles from Oakshire down in Eugene (Overcast Espresso Stout, Line Dry Rye, Watershed IPA). Oakshire is really knocking it out of the park these days. I was really surprised by the Watershed IPA. It’s a nicely-hopped beer without being too bitter. Incredibly drinkable and great for summer. It’s really nice to see brewers tempering their hop usage and creating notes of hops and not relying on it as the entire character of the beer. Well done, Oakshire! We liked it with the Two-Faced Blue from Willapa.

I was impressed with how interested everyone was in the beer – including people that said they were wine drinkers only. They came around and sampled quite a few brews. We opened a lot of bottles and kept passing beer then cheese then wine then cheese then more beer then cheese then… any more beer? Yes, please! I was dubious about the plan to do a tasting on the bus, rambling along at 60 miles an hour, but it worked out and nobody got hurt!

Next: Part II, the ACS conference and festival of cheese!

Boerenkaas from Willamette Valley Cheese Co, a 2009 favorite

* * *

FUCheese started off the year with a revelatory cheese and beer tasting put on by Saraveza and Steve’s Cheese. It kicked off a true obsession with pairing these two fine items and I spent most of the year trying new combinations and doing my best to spread the beer/cheese love.

In March, we packed up the car and stayed in a yurt in the Rogue River Valley to attend the 5th Annual Oregon Cheese Guild Cheese Festival in Central Point. We had so much fun at the festival and met some awesome people. We also visited Vern and Gianaclis at Pholia Farm which kicked off a love of goats. I still haven’t been brave enough to milk one yet. New Year’s resolution?

Linnea feeds a baby goat at Pholia Farm

In April, we made mascarpone, more yogurt and had some iffy cottage cheese. I also attended a hard cheese class at Kookoolan Farms which convinced me that we needed to get back on that horse and give hard cheeses another try. Did we? No. Another resolution, perhaps.

Nicole and I hit the road again, this time north to Seattle for the cheese festival at Pike’s Place Market. We went as volunteers and worked at the Peterson tent taking in money and handling out samples. It was a total blast and we may do it again this year. This time we’ll have to walk out of there with more cheese. We were just so overwhelmed after finishing our shift that it was all we could do to visit some of the smaller cheesemakers for samples and then go collapse in the park.

Nico attacks the mimolette @ Seattle Cheese Festival

In the summer, I was too busy camping, BBQ-ing and drinking beer to spend too much time in the kitchen. I got my first paid gig doing a pairing of cheeses and beers. Profits, admittedly, were a bit low because I bought waaay too much really awesome fancy cheese and paired it with incredible (and expensive) beers. It was a total blast, though, and everyone had a great time and – bonus! – we had enough cheese left over to put together a handsome platter for a dinner party of 6 the following weekend. I have done a couple more pairings for groups since then and my portioning is getting more under control.

I also spent a fair bit of my summertime involved in putting together the Portland Cheese Festival. I somehow wrangled my way onto the planning board and met some great people in the process. The festival went off really, really well. Feedback was – and continues to be – incredible. The cheesemakers brought amazing stuff and the location turned out to work pretty good. Hopefully when it comes around again, I’ll be able to get involved and build on what I learned with the last one. You’ll be there, too, right?

* * *

Sadly, this is where an already bumpy year for personal reasons got downright depressing. My father passed away at the end of October after a fierce, year-long battle with cancer. He was a good military man and, really, still too young to go. He loved hearing about the cheese festival and all our adventures with cheese. He was a big cheese fan (also smoked anchovies, hot mustard, oysters and other Scandinavian treats and terrors) and it was really tough to lose him. However, his death opened my eyes to what it means to have people in your life who truly care about you and for that I am so very thankful.

* * *

The end of the year rounded out with more goats, excellent cheese plates and a beer/cheese pairing challenge! My friend Bruce, a die-hard beer nerd and curator of fine brews decided it was time to pull up some beers from his cellar and do a tasting. He asked if I could pair some cheeses with his eclectic collection. Since I couldn’t pre-sample these beers due to their rarity and age, I went off of tasting notes from the brewers and other beer writers and his own recollection of what these tasted like or should taste like.

A 3-decade vertical of Sierra Nevada Celebration – 2009, 1999, 1989! – paired with a pungent and footy Canadian cheese called Charleudix.

The pairings turned out really well and everyone had their favorites. The one pictured above was a huge hit. That cheese was incredibly stinky and I made everyone take a good sniff before I portioned it out. They were scared, for sure. However, it was a wonderful and creamy cheese with a lot of flavor and balanced with the hops notes of the ’99 and ’09 quite well. Poor, old ’89 tasted like it had almost no hops left at all. I couldn’t have asked for a better cap to the year, surrounded by some of my favorite things in life: good beer, great cheese and fantastic friends.

So, to more of that in 2010!

For December, we went back to Foster & Dobbs and put together a tasty cheeseplate of some European heavyweights.

The cheese case at Foster & Dobbs.

The staff there is so helpful and are excellent at listening to your likes and dislikes and recommending something that hits the mark. They’ll also keep track of what cheeses you’ve purchased before! We were all in the mood for some hearty, stinky, battle-the-frigid-winter cheese and were not disappointed in the least.

Starting with the semi-soft cheese on the bottom left that Linnea is pointing to, we have Le Porteaupre from Belgium. It’s a cow’s milk cheese that is delightfully stinky and is pretty creamy and spreadable – we put it on baguette. It’s a bit on the salty side, tangy and very satisfying. Seems like a good pair with meats.

At the top, is Jura Erguel from Switzerland. A raw cow’s milk, this was firm, stinky and a little sour. Definitely hearty and quite good. Next, clockwise, is Blu di Bufala, a buffalo milk from, of course, Italy! This was a moderate blue with distinct mushroom notes and I wrote down “cardboard” but I don’t mean that in a bad way, there was an earthiness to the rind that was good. This was a stout flavor without being overwhelming.

The large wedge in the center was a big favorite for all of us, the Bastardo del Grappa Nero, another raw cow’s milk from Italy. This one from the Veneto region which is in the Northeastern part of the country, a stone’s throw from Austria. The Bastardo was light, firm, creamy, tangy and lemony. It hit all the right notes for me and I’d get that one again anytime.

We stuck with our Europen theme and rounded that out with the St Cosme Côtes du Rhône syrah. So delicious and a pretty perfect accompaniment to some stick-to-yer-ribs cheeses.

Thanks again Foster & Dobbs! What cheese theme should we explore in January?

Claudia did a mozzarella demonstration for us and she was absolutely charming and very clear. She has a great, relaxed attitude about cheesemaking — you can’t mess it up! While cheesemaking is a science it is very often an inexact science so it helps to have a cheerful can-do attitude for when things go a bit sideways. I picked up some great tips from her and look forward to sharing them when Nicole and I do our own mozzarella demo for some friends next month — eek!

Claudia is planning to be at the Wedge Festival (be there!) with her kits and may also do a ricotta demonstration on the main stage. Kits are such a great way to jump in to cheesemaking, I highly recommend picking one up. You can find out on her website which stores in Oregon are selling them or order from her etsy shop. They would make such great gifts!

Also, if you want to get notified when Foster & Dobbs do their next DIY cheesemakers meeting or to hear about any of their other many events, sign up for their mailing list!

The main steps in making cheese are generally heating the milk followed by cutting the curds and then draining the curds to get rid of the whey. The less moisture in the cheese, the firmer and denser the cheese will be and the longer it can age. If you are making cheese at home, any of these steps can seem daunting, but sometimes the thing we have the most trouble with is the seemingly simple task of setting it up to drain properly.

The most obvious thing to do would be to have a hook in your ceiling over your sink which would allow the whey to flow right down the drain or be captured in a stock pot for another use. However, because of the soffit in my kitchen and the placement of the sink under it, this proved impossible. You may have other limitations. This post is a roundup of some of the devices we have conjured to drain our cheese.

For our huge mozzarella/ricotta/whey day experiment, I came up with the “brilliant” idea to use an old camera tripod. It worked, for sure, but was a little crazy and took up a lot of space.

One day, at the grocery store, I came across this jelly strainer. And I thought that this might work even better and be a little more compact. We used it for draining our cheddar.

It actually worked pretty well. The jelly strainer is essentially a hoop with three legs that screw into it. The legs have a little foot and you can perch it on top of a modest sized stockpot. Bonus is that it is easy to store away.

When we did our goat cheese day and made two batches of fromage blanc, one with fresh goats milk and one from cow, we kind of scrambled around to figure out how to hang them. I don’t think I had the jelly strainer at that time and, anyway, it wouldn’t have worked for two. So, we ended up improvising by hanging the cheese from a broomstick, balanced between a bult-in and a desk. Not pretty, but it worked!

When we made mascarpone, the directions said that we should allow the cheese to drain in the fridge. Hmmm… another conundrum. We ended up with a colander, a wooden spoon and a casserole dish to catch the whey. Really, I could have just balanced it on a stockpot but I couldn’t fit that in my fridge at the time. Any other kind of bowl which will allow the whey to flow away would work as well.

Lastly, if you have the right kind of cabinet handles in your kitchen, you could fashion some kind of hook and hang the cheese from the cupboard handles. Here I’ve used a chopstick to hang the draining cheese over a pot between my closed cupboard handles.

Granted, the drawback here is that you’ve made accessing your cabinet a bit of a pain and, for a small kitchen like my own, I wouldn’t want to give over such prominent counter space for a long draining session. However, if you draining overnight something like this could work in a pinch.

Would love to hear of any inventive ways that you’ve drained your cheese. Just putting this together has inspired in me to once again go looking for a spot where I could hang a hook just for this purpose.

UPDATE! Just saw this post from Urban Cheesecraft for draining cheese using a banana hanger — brilliant!

Our cheesemaking group, FUCheese, has long talked about doing a home cheese pairing with homebrews (from the guys at BSBrewing, including my husband) so I started doing some research on what kind of cheeses we would want to make and what would be a good pair. There’s a surprising amount of information out there about pairing the two and for good reason: they are delicious together!

Typically, when you think of pairing something with cheese, you think of wine. Wine is a wonderful, wonderful thing and I have had some truly sublime wine and cheese pairings. (The Rioja Santiago paired with Midnight Moon that we had at the sadly defunct Curds & Whey shop in Sellwood comes to mind.) But, at least for me, wine is a little less accessible than good beer. And wine is really more of a contrasting flavor with cheese whereas beer can be more complementary. The tannins and oak and leather and jam of wine is not very present in cheese. However, the grassyness of some hopped beers, the earthy and meaty flavor of porters and the bright freshness in pilsners and hefeweisens can really interact with cheese in a refreshing way. That’s the other thing — beer is refreshing! It can cleanse the palate in a way that wine is hard-pressed to do. Some cheeses are incredibly tongue-coating and not much but something bubbly and cold can hold up to that. And now that the hot weather is finally upon us, it makes even more sense to crack open a beer and keep on enjoying that cheese.

Last year when we got some goat milk and had a goatapalooza of cheesemaking, Nicole and I put together a goat cheese plus beer pairing using as a guide some info we found online (google Garrett Oliver — he loves this stuff!). We were bowled over by how good it was. Then this past winter, Thom (the Mr.) and I joined Dave and Sarah at Saraveza for a cheese and beer pairing with cheese provided by Steve Jones of Steve’s cheese. It was fantastic! The cheeses were incredible and the beers were amazing. So, we’d been talking about this for months and continually pondering which beers would go with which cheeses. I’d push Thom to try some cheese and think of what beer it would go with and he’d push back with some beer asking what cheese I thought would go with that. We were talking about this with his cousin Julie (also a beer fan, she used to work at Bridgeport Brewing, Portland’s oldest craft brewer) who is now at Adidas. She said that a cheese beer pairing would be a fun thing to do with her department at work and could we arrange that? We looked at each other and laughed, “Yeah, we could probably do that.”

So, a few weeks later after some fun evenings of beer sipping and cheese sampling, we came up with a rough plan of attack. We bought beers at Belmont Station and Saraveza (all Oregon beers) and I spent an hour or so at Steve’s Cheese getting the cheeses. And let me take a moment to sing the praises of Mr. Steve’s Cheese, also known as Steve Jones. He is an enthusiastic and knowledgeable cheesemonger who clearly loves his work and puts a lot of effort into stocking the best local and international cheeses. Thankfully, he is also a big beer fan and was able to suggest alternatives and amendments to my cheese list based on the beers that we wanted to serve. I knew the type and flavor of the cheeses I wanted but only had one very specific cheese in mind that I had to have so he was invaluable in finalizing the list. If you live in or near Portland, GO TO STEVE’S CHEESE. Seriously.

The next day, I packed up a cooler of beer and cheese, a big cutting board and my cheese knives (a birthday present — they are so cool! I should write a post on those.), some crostini crackers and sampling glasses for the beer. Thom and I went over to Julie’s house that evening and met a dozen of her coworkers and gave a little talk about what we were about to do. Then, we started sampling!

The menu started with a fresh chevre from River’s Edge paired with Widmer’s Hefeweizen. This is one of my favorite pairings, they work so well together and I think Widmer’s Hef is one of the best of its kind — easy drinking, accessible and inexpensive. Next we paried Pondhopper with Mirror Pond Pale Ale. Pondhopper is an aged goat cheese that uses Mirror Pond Pale Ale to wash the curds during the making process. I wasn’t actually sure how well these would pair because when you taste Pondhopper you don’t necessarily get a “beer” vibe from it or a hops note but they were really fantastic together. Also, Pondhopper is a standout cheese that would be welcome on any cheese plate at any time. We then passed around small samples of Mirror Mirror which is a double of their Mirror Pond beer and aged in oak barrels to produce what is essentially a barleywine.

After that we shifted gears a bit and sampled Rogue’s Hazelnut Brown with the creamy, 3-milk Robiola — an Italian cheese from the Piedmont that is meaty and full and creamy and awesome. You kind of want to roll over and die after eating some Robiola and that’s a good thing. The final pairing matched Cascade Brewing’s Kriek (a sour cherry beer) with a stinky swiss style cheese called Maritchas. This last cheese came straight from Steve because I could imagine a few different types of cheeses that might work with the sourness of the beer but I wasn’t sure how big I wanted to go. Some cherry beers are incredibly tart and the Cascade Kriek is too but not terribly so. Once he cut me a sample of the Maritchas, I knew it would be a good finish to the evening.

Anyway, everyone had a really great time and Thom and I had a blast. I would totally do that again. So, next time you’re at the cheese counter, pick up a few things and then head over and grab a couple beers. Beers tend to be cheaper than wine (though not that Kriek!) and you may come up with an astounding flavor combination. Also, I was asked what would be a good cheese to go with Budweiser and I think a Kraft American cheese slice wrapped around a Slim Jim would be pretty awesome.*

* But I’m not sure I would ever eat that.

I probably won’t post every time I make another batch of yogurt as it’s so easy and I have a feeling that I have a lot of yogurt making in my future. But, for this batch, we took the yogurt making another step further by using a starter from our last batch.

For our first foray into yogurt making, we followed Dr. Fankhauser’s wonderful recipe, with great results. We used an organic whole milk and Nancy’s yogurt. Nancy’s is an Oregon brand, made in Springfield since the 1960s. It’s my preferred yogurt and I buy a lot of it every year. The first thing I did with our delicious batch after sampling it was to portion out 8 oz. of it into an ice-cube tray to freeze and serve as the starter the next batch. After frozen, I put them in a plastic baggie where they’ve been sitting for over a month.

The day before I was going to make yogurt, I transferred the cubes to a covered bowl in the fridge and let them thaw out. I considered all the whole milk options at my local New Seasons and decided to give Alpenrose a try. They are also a local, Portland metro, dairy who has been in the milk business for over 90 years. In addition to that, they have a wonderful grounds where they have built a replica “frontier town” for kids and families to play in, they have a baseball field and a velodrome where I’ve been a few times for bike races. They are an icon of an era gone by where big companies have a distinct role in the community and a desire to create a legacy that they can be proud of. And, it’s pretty good milk, too!

To make a short story long, I used the yogurt from the previous set as starter and everything proceeded as usual. I took better notes this time and wrote down the time it took to heat the milk to the right temperature — medium heat for 1 hour to 185-F — and let it incubate overnight, at least 12 hours. It gelled really well, perhaps even better than last time. The flavor is somewhat less intense and less tangy than the last batch. I attribute this mostly to the starter but it could be the milk as well. I’m debating saving another 8 oz from this batch and seeing how it goes. Perhaps next time we can do a comparison taste test with an all-fresh batch and one made using previous starter.

Check out this great article that Linnea sent me about making your own yogurt at the NYTimes. It has a really nice explanation of the bacteria and activity in yogurt and how your culture can really affect the taste of your yogurt.

Kookoolan Farms is in Yamhill, Oregon, about an hours drive from Portland. It’s quite the bucolic agricultural area which is becoming well known for some excellent wineries as well as barley, wheat and dairy farming. The owners at Kookoolan have dairy cows and raise chickens for eggs and meat. They have a little store there where you can buy cheesemaking supplies, raw cow’s milk and farm fresh eggs. I think all of their cheese supplies are sourced from New England Cheesemaking Supply.

The class was taught by Mary Rosenblum, who has been making her own cheeses for over 30 years. The focus was on cheddar. You may recall in the Cheddar Incident of Aught Eight that our first go at a hard cheese didn’t turn out so well. We’ve all been talking about trying again but just trying to follow along in books and figure it out has been sort of… frustrating? Entertaining? Mixed? So, I was really excited about the opportunity to watch someone make cheese who knows what they are doing!

The class was completely full with around 25 people. I wasn’t sure what to expect out of the class — I was fairly certain that it wouldn’t be too hands-on as the cheesemaking process doesn’t really lend itself to a bunch of people all cooking at once. I would call it a lecture style class. There’s a small kitchen and Mary faced us, cooking up two gallons of raw cow’s milk and explaining the process as she went.

She also explained lots of things about milk: what’s in milk, what happens as it converts to cheese, what the ingredients are and how they work together. It was a ton of information but her style is really easy and it was no problem to follow along.

At various times she had us come up to the pot and get a good look at what was happening, showing us a “clean break” and she put out plates of curds in their various stages so we could get a feel for the texture. I took gobs of notes and discovered a few things that we maybe could have done a little better with our cheddar.

For one, we let our milk get way too hot. According to Mary, mesophilic culture will die at 102-degrees. I don’t recall exactly how hot our milk got but it did sort of shoot up in temperature, as milk will do, and stayed quite hot. I have a feeling that we did let it get too hot and that may have had an effect on the culture and the taste.

Another issue has to do with our nifty little press that we made. It’s made out of solid maple and is pretty great. However, the base of it is grooved to allow the whey to flow away from the cheese along the bottom. It makes an adorable pattern like this:

And when you flip your cheese in the press, then you get a doubled-up pattern like this on both sides:

It’s lovely! It’s also a great place for moisture to hang out and mold to develop. Big no-no. We can do the initial pressing as-is but for the long pressing we should bandage the sides (take a strip of muslin the size of the edge of the cheese and wrap it around) and put something flat and smooth on the bottom.

Mary had a lovely little stainless steel tray that she put under her cheese. The tray had a lip that allowed whey to continue to flow away. She also had a stainless steel round that she slipped under the follower. What this does is create smooth surfaces on the top, bottom and sides of the cheese.

One other little component we were missing was Lipase powder. Mary recommended always using it. We didn’t have any on hand, and I believe it was listed as optional in our book. Well, lipase is an enzyme which aids the cheese in fermentation and also adds a lot of flavor and character to the cheese — two things which our cheddar lacked. I bought sharp Lipase powder (they also had mild) at Kookoolan and I’m pretty excited to give this a try. It was $7, and I think I could get dozens of cheeses from the bottle. So, by eliminating the major issues and adding lipase I think we can go a lot further in realizing our cheddar dream.

Mary also put together a big sampling of cheddars for us to try along with wine. She told us a little about each one and talked about the processes which go into them to make them distinctive from one another. It was a lot of information but I really think it was a good class, especially for someone who has already dabbled a bit in cheesemaking. Mary also writes a blog cataloging her life on her own little farm in Happy Valley, check it out.

Vern and Gianaclis Caldwell, along with their daughters, have created a truly wonderful farm and make some fantastically delicious cheese (Wimer Winter being my personal favorite). They are so obviously excited by what they do and so willing to share their joy and knowledge that I found myself getting more and more excited and motivated to get back into the kitchen and try my hand at some more home cheese making.

The whole morning was filled with goats.  Their herd of Nigerian Dwarf goats filled the barn, there were newborn and preganant goats to look at, little baby goats to feed, milking and aging rooms to see, and always Vern, Gianaclis or one of their creamery family members was there to answer questions.  They so easily opened up their farm and discussed their philosophies on goat rearing and cheese making that it was very hard to even think about leaving.

Another highlight for me was the tour that Vern gave us of the solar and hydro-electric systems they use to power their farm.  The conscious choice they’ve made to live off-the-grid is truly inspiring and has proven to be a complete success for them.  The time and energy that went into the planning and construction of their farm is evident in every aspect of the operation.  Their website does a much better job than I in documenting the planning and construction so I strongly recommend you visit their website and take the time to look through the construction photo album.

I’d just like to take this opportunity to thank Vern and Gianaclis for opening up the farm and to encourage you to stop in and check it out for yourself if you are in the Rogue River area.  The cheeses are worth the stop, in and of themselves, but I promise you’ll come away with a warm spot in your heart for goats and Pholia Farms.