Tour a cheese farm

Cheese-making demystified

Tour a cheese farm
By Hannah Cameron, GH Cookery Assistant

I've always loved cheese so when an invitation landed on the cookery desk for a chance to visit Westcombe Dairy, one of the dairies of the West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers, I jumped at the chance.

Westcombe dairy is run by a father-and-son team, Richard and Tom Calver. Richard's passion is the 3 herds of Holstein-Friesian cows they keep for the milk to make the cheese while son Tom concentrates on the cheese-making process.

They source all their milk from their own cows which are kept within just a few miles of the dairy. The cows are milked every morning, before most of us have had breakfast, and the milk gets delivered to the dairy. It's really important at this stage to keep the milk as still as possible and at the perfect temperature as it's so delicate and too much aggravation can change the structure and ultimately affect the texture of the finished cheese.

Once the milk is safely in the vats at the dairy, they can add the starter culture. This is basically the same as those probiotic yoghurt drinks you can buy for breakfast from the supermarket; it contains live bacteria which starts the process of turning the milk into cheese. Rennet also gets added at this point which helps the milk to set.

The milk is then left for 2 hours, after this time it has a set yoghurt-like texture, Only the cheese maker knows when it's at just the right consistency to start to cut through it. This is done by large fork-like stirrers which cut through the milk separating it into curds and whey. The whey (the liquid) then gets drained off and is used to feed local pigs, while the curds (the solid lumps) get stacked and pressed into a round container and go to make the end cheese.

The pressed cheese are then dipped in a very weak salt solution, at about 85°C which seals the cheese and eventually allows it to form a rind. The rounds are then wrapped in cheese cloth which is similar to muslin and dunked again in melted lard. They are then labelled, and go into the cheese store to mature for anything between 1yr and 18mths to develop that unique Westcombe taste which Tom described as ‘buttered toast'. And I could see what he meant when I tasted the cheese. There is definitely a creamy butteriness to the cheddar.

I was lucky enough to try the cheese at varying stages of the maturation process, in the cheese store where it's kept, and I was amazed by the difference that even a day can make to the overall flavour and texture.

Our tour continued to the farm where the cows are free to roam, eat the sweetest smelling feed (a combination of grass silage, maize, cracked wheat and non-GM soya) and sleep on a mattress made of old car tyres and newspapers. All this makes them very happy cows, and, as Richard and Tom informed me, happy cows make quality milk and even better cheese.

The end product is an unpasteurised cheese. When milk gets pasteurised it is heated and then cooled very quickly which kills all the living organisms in it. Richard and Tom like many cheese makers, choose not to pasteurise their milk as doing so would take away the unique depth of flavours that they have worked so hard to achieve by treating the cows the way they do. They allow the different organisms in the milk to combine with the starter culture and the natural organisms in the air and this produces a cheese that is unique in taste and texture. Because of this, the eventual balance of flavour is something of a gamble. Each individual Westcombe cheddar, like any fine wine, can be ever so slightly different to the next. Whilst some may see this as a downfall of using unpasteurised over pasteurised milk, I think it makes for a more dynamic taste.

If you want to learn more about Wescombe Farm or any of the West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers go to www.farmhousecheesemakers.com

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