Cheese Making Course

I know this is supposed to be a beer blog, but it’s also my blog so I’ll abuse that from time to time. So here goes.

Yesterday I went on a cheese making course at Hartingtons School of Food in Bakewell in the Peak District. I’ve been interested in the idea of making cheese for a while now, but the skills you need to get started are not something you can get from reading a book. I needed to SEE it. My wife came up with the great idea of enrolling me on a day course for my Christmas present.

So, why cheese making? Well for me it’s just the same reason I am keen on making beer. It’s partly about the end product, but it’s largely about creating something from first principles that is complex, technical, challenging and takes a great deal of experience. Most people can turn their hand to cookery (although that’s perhaps a little unfair comparison because we all HAVE to eat). But who can make beer from grain and hops? Who can make cheese from milk and a few additives? It’s the challenge of understanding and undertaking those deeply complex processes that really gets me interested.

So what was my day like? Well it started with a glorious drive across the peaks. Hartingtons School of Food is in the upper floor of a mill right by the river in the middle of Bakewell. It’s a wonderful setting. You can watch the ducks on the river whilst waiting for your milk to coagulate.

The business is run by two lovely people called Julie and Chris. And the cheese making course was run by a lady called Chris Ashby who has a lifetime of experience of making cheese commercially. She was so full of knowledge and so happy to give it that I crammed as much into my brain as I could manage in one day. (Sorry to Chris for my hundreds of questions).

It was a totally hands-on day pretty much from the start. In a single day you can’t spend ages going into scientific theory, so it was heating milk and adding drops of rennet right from the word go. We made three cheeses: a camembert, a lemon cheese and mozzarella.

The camembert is the most technical cheese to make and over the day we got it to the stage where it was in a mould and ready to be taken home and cared for for 6 weeks before it is mature enough to eat.

The lemon cheese is the complete opposite: dead simple to make and needs no special ingredients. It’s basically milk that is curdled with lemon juice and then strained. But it’s surprisingly effective. Once made you can spread it out and roll it like Boursin, with your preferred flavouring.

The mozzarella was great fun and one I want to try with the kids. Once the milk has been separated and you have your curds, the whey is heated to 80C and small balls of curd are dipped in it for 30 seconds or so. This makes the curds go stringy and you can stretch and shape them into your preferred shape – balls, cheese sticks, plaits or whatever. We ate it with a barbecue tea when I got home, and the family scoffed it with gusto.

So there’s a brief description of my first introduction to cheese making. I’m planning to buy a bit of equipment and try it again at home, so no doubt I’ll be abusing this beer blog again in the future. Cheshire Peaks Creamery anyone?

Heating the milk

Cutting the curds

Curds in the mould

Turning the curds

Stretching mozzarella