Creamery begins making raw-milk cheese
Posted: Thursday, September 23, 2010 12:00 am | Updated: 3:53 pm, Wed Sep 22, 2010.
Teton Valley Creamery has begun making raw-milk cheese. But plan on waiting awhile before you get to taste it.
With a new aging room featuring computer-controlled temperature and humidity, and a 175-gallon Holland-made cheese vat, cheese maker Kristopher Malling made his first wheels of washed-rind and mold-ripened raw-milk cheeses Sept. 17.
The washed-rind variety, which ages 3-4 months, has a brevi bacteria growing on the outside. With its orange-red color, the bacteria add a strong pungency to the cheese.
"I'm going to try to keep it so it's not too pungent," Malling said. "You can control that by the way you age it. I'm looking at the milder end, but the inside is going to be nice, semi-firm and creamy, and the outside will have some earthiness and pungency to it."
Malling is also making mold-ripened cheese. A white mold will grow on the he said.
“You get an earthy, mushroomy flavor right around the outside,” said Malling. On the inside, the blue mold will add a sharper flavor.
Although both styles are aging in the same room, accommodations had to be made for the second variety.
“We create a microclimate by closing those cheeses off to raise the humidity,” which allows mold-ripened and washed-rind cheeses to age in the same room, he said.
Look for whole mold-ripened cheeses to be ready in two months. By law, raw-milk cheeses must age a minimum of 60 days, he said.
Although aging ultimately helps determine a cheese’s flavor, the process starts with the freshest raw milk available. Malling gets his milk from Holsteins at the Wright Dairy on Stateline Road just hours before he begins the cheese-making process.
“This milk was still in the cow this morning,” he said. “It’s really good for the startup.”
Malling hauls the milk in 10-gallon milk cans. Once the milk is added to the cheese vat, rennet — an enzyme — is added to the milk and coagulates it into a custard-like consistency. Cutting blades separate the curds from the whey, and the curds are stirred and cooked, and drained of the whey. The curds are then packed into cheese wheel molds and pressed for three hours.
The whey is not discarded. TVC pumps the whey into a tank, which goes back to the Wright ranch for use as pig feed. Whey can be used in any number of ways, he said, including whey powder, sparkling beverages and ricotta.
“Within a few hours of going into the vat, the milk is converted into cheese curds, compressed and left overnight. Then it goes into the brine, and into the aging room for the rest of its life,” he said.
Temperature, airflow and humidity are carefully controlled in the aging room. All of these factors determine how the cheese ages.
“It depends on what kind of cheese you’re making,” he said.
TVC continues to make cheese curds from fresh milk pasteurized minimally at 145 degrees for 30 minutes. The creamery’s gelato pasteurizes at higher temperatures. Curds are made from fresh milk and lactic cultures, which create lactic acid and allow the milk to ripen. Rennet is added to coagulate the milk very quickly and firm up the curd while helping to expel whey.
Malling said cheese curds come in a cheddaring variety and Dutch-style or Gouda-style curds. Garden herb, spicy and plain flavorings are added to these textures.
Eventually, TVC will make a pasteurized cheese for local distribution, from which it will draw its curds.
“They’ll be a byproduct of a natural process and a natural cheese,” he said.
TVC plans to market its artisan cheeses nationally, but local markets are also a priority.
TVC has room for yet another aging room, Malling said, and the goal is to build it to accommodate Alpine-style hard cheese that will age for 8-12 months.
The creamery opened on July 4. The building, a former 1930s gas station, was also a city of Driggs building until the Hokin family invested in the building.
Dutch cheese maker Fons Smits, who is married to TVC owner Lauren Hokin’s cousin Eileen, helped convince the family to start the creamery. Malling worked in Indiana with Smits, who is a dairy technologist.
“This is a typical alpine dairy area,” said Smits.
Smits has served as an advisor during the creamery’s cheese-making startup.
“We’re still fine-tuning the process,” he said.
To contact Ken Levy e-mail reporter3@tetonvalleynews.net.
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