Join us on the farm for a full day of Cheesemaking, Cheese Tasting and Goat Visits!
We’ll be starting at the beginning of the cheesemaking journey by covering Chevre & Fromage Blanc as examples of easy cultured cheeses that take minimal time, ingredients and equipment. You’ll get to see each step of the process, learn the basic science behind cheesemaking, and then make your own custom-flavored log of cheese to take with you.
Next, we’ll move into the aged cheese category of Surface-Ripened (Bloomy Rind) cheeses with a session on Brie & Camembert. You’ll see how adding just one more ingredient to our morning recipes, and tweaking some of the techniques along with a special aging process, you can take your milk from a fresh, simple cheese to one much more complex in flavor and texture. You’ll get to take your own mini wheel home with you in a special tiny ripening container to finish aging at home.
We’ll wrap up the morning session with a tour of the farm and a visit with the friendly Dairy Goats who will be happy to see you and enjoy lots of attention. Then we’ll head back into the classroom for a guided cheese tasting session with our favorite Cheesemonger and Certified Cheese Professional, Kelly Liebrock. She’ll explain how each of the four cheeses you’ll sample have things in common, as well as learn about the techniques that set them apart from each other. Bring your own sack lunch to supplement the cheeses you’ll be sampling.
In the afternoon session, we’ll move on to Pressed & Aged Cheeses. The first cheese we’ll make together is affectionately called Guido’s – named after the cheesemaker who originally inspired our recipe. This is a nice Italian hard cheese that is a great place to begin your pressed and aged cheesemaking journey because it is relatively easy and doesn’t need to age for many months to be quite enjoyable.
After a short break, our afternoon session will continue as we build on the knowledge you’ve just learned when we add a new technique called “washing the curds.” This is the key technique used to make Colby, Havarti & Gouda. We’ll cover the Gouda make in detail with information about how you would modify these techniques to make the other two. We’ll also introduce you to Annatto – the colorant that makes orange cheeses orange. And we’ll talk a bit about setting up and aging cave and various options for aging your cheeses. At the end of class you’ll get your own little wheel of Gouda to wax and take home with you to age.
