Reblochon, Grand Bonnard

Today, when I was in my local cheese store in Brooklyn, my eye fell on a reblochon. I don't see this cheese often in cheese stores probably because most reblochons are made from raw milk and usually don't make it to 60 days. I asked whether it was a raw milk cheese, and indeed, this was the case. It was from Maitre Fromager Rolf Beeler from Switserland.

This reminded me of my visit this summer to Bertrand Perrillat, a reblochon maker from Grand Bonnard in the Haute Savoie.

Bertrand Perrillat makes wonderful cheeses in the traditional style twice a day from his herd of 24 milking cows. He doesn't have heifers neither calfs. The breeding is done by other farmers using the gene pool from the Perrillat's herd. His herd is a mix of Abondance, Montbelliard and Tarentaise.

As said, he makes cheese twice a day, after each milking. He doesn't have bulk tank. The culture for the cheese comes from the cooperation and is distributed among the members. He makes about 70 t0 80 wheels a day. His equipment is very rudimentary, a small stainless steel vat with a butane fueled burner to heat the curds. The vat looked to me to be about 100 gallon. It didn't have a draining valve.

After the draining and pressing Bertrand brines the cheeses for two hours after which they are dried. This is all done in the making room. When the rind has formed sufficiently, the cheeses move to the aging room where they are regularly washed with water until they are ready for sale.

Alpine Cheese

In a recent post I mentioned I had found a small farmer who produces high quality milk. I haven't had the milk tested yet, but I am convinced it has a very low somatic cell count. The farm has about 25 milking Jerseys, fed on grass and dry hay in the winter.

A few weeks ago I made an Alpine style cheese from this milk and I was amazed by the yield. The resulting wheel was much larger than the wheel from the same amount of milk from another Jersey farm. I had already noticed since switching milk that the curd sets much firmer. Amazing...

Humidifier

Since the cold weather here in Brooklyn, the temperature in the cave dropped down to 40 degrees Fahrenheit. I already had a little heater in the cave, but it wasn't adequate. I installed another little heater. This raised the temperature to the desired level but, although I have a tray with water sitting on the heaters, the humidity was negatively affected. The dry weather outside and the heat inside made the humidity drop to 70 %. To compensate I had to install something like a humidifier.

I don't know anything about humidifiers, but I guess, there is not much to know. All they have to do is put moisture into the air. I found a simple vaporizer humidifier the first store I went in.

Seeing it produce all that steam while testing it, I didn't want to put the unit directly into the cave being afraid of creating a sauna in there. So I hooked up a hose to the humidifier and lead this into the cave. This way the steam will have cooled before entering the cave. The humidifier runs on a timer, set at about half an hour on every two hours. We'll see how it goes. No doubt, some cheeses will like it better than others.

Washed Rind

This cheese I made mid October from some Jersey milk. I washed the rind several times a week for about four weeks. I first used a brine for a week and after this I washed the cheeses with Marc de Borgougne for another three weeks. The white on the rind is a micrococci which appeared after I stopped the washing process.

Tomme

I made these cheese about two months ago in the style of Reblochon. Whether they taste like a this cheese, I don't know. I had the pleasure of eating Reblochon only once, this summer in France. As far as I remember, the cheeses here did not taste like the cheese I tasted in France, but I imagine the not all Reblochon tastes the same. 

But this is not the reason for this post. These three cheese came from the same batch. I treated the rind different during aging and ended up with three rather different cheeses.

The cheese in the first two photos I washed with lightly salted water. Besides some mould in the cavities, the rind is smooth orangy yellow. The wheel in the next two pictures I washed in Marc de Borgougne. This promotes the development of  coryneform bacteria which gives it a meaty flavor. The last cheese I let go wild, I did not do anything to the rind. This rind is dry and crispy, musty and crusty.

Loomis Blue

Loomis Blue is a blue veined cheese made from Ayshire milk in the style of Devon blue. The cheese is covered in a beautiful white rind and has a firm marbled blue creamy texture; it's ivory paste is smooth with a of complexity of flavors that burst in the mouth.

Taleggio

My desire to make a more moisture cheese has brought me back to a Taleggio recipe on Peter Dixon's website. I have tried this recipe numerous times when I started making cheese and I always liked the result. My skills as a cheesemaker have improved since then and so has my equipment. I use a pH meter now to monitor the acidity level of the curds and whey and am able to create cheeses of more consistent quality. The milk I use now is also of a better quality. Recently I have found a source of very high quality Jersey milk. The lactic test I did with this milk for this batch formed a very solid curd. It did not have any imperfections, no gas formation or other breaks in the curd. It was very exciting to see the test result. 

I made this batch on December 6, so the cheeses have been in the cave for a few days. I have start washing them with beer and the first signs of yeast and corynefrom bacteria are apparent.

Epoisses

Finally I have managed to make a cheese with a resemblance of Epoisses both in appearance, texture and taste. It might not come close to the cheese made by Gaec des Marronniers, but it is as close to an Epoisses style cheese as I have ever been. 

I made this batch on November 9 from raw Ayshire milk. I used 5 gallons of milk with a pH of 6.79. At a temperature of 78F I added the culture: 1/16 tsp MA4001 and 1/16 tsp Aroma B. After 1 hour the pH had dropped to 6.55 and I added 1 ml of microbial coagulant to the milk. I let this sit until the pH had reached 4.51, which was after for about 14 hours, before ladling the curd into the molds. At 9.30 PM the next morning I turned the cheeses in the molds and let them drain for another 12 hours before I salted one side. 12 Hours later I released the cheese from the molds and salted the other side. At this time I put the cheeses under the fan for a drying session of about 10 hours before moving them to the cave. For the first week I washed them with a light salty brine. After that I washed them a few times a week with some Marc de Buorgogne for another two weeks. 

The rind shows some contamination from different moulds and yeasts. My place of production as well as aging room is swarming with all kinds of micro organisms and this lactic cheese is very susceptible to contamination. But with a little more focus on the washing process I should be able to make a cleaner looking cheese.

What's in the Cave

All the cheeses have been back in Brooklyn for a month or so after spending the summer upstate due to the heat in the city. I can attend to them more regularly because I spend most of my time in the city. This also allows me to start with some washed rind cheeses as seen in the third and fourth photograph. The recipes for these cheeses are based on the procedure for Reblochon cheese. Jim Wallace, the technician from New England Cheese Supply was so kind to send me a target sheet for this cheese and when I was in France over the summer I visited a Reblochon maker in the Haute Savoie. I shall post about this visit in a few weeks. I am currently washing three wheels with Marc de Bourgogne and two wheels with lightly salted water. One wheel I have allowed to go wild. This is the green wheel in the third picture.

Gaec des Marronniers

When I was in France in August, I spent a few days in Epoisses in Burgundy. Epoisses is a little village after which one of France's great cheeses is named. I had developed an interest in this cheese and hoped to visit one or two cheese makers there. As a teenager I had spend some time in Burgundy, so I thought it would be fun to visit it again. I mainly remember it from then as hilly with winding country roads. This time it reminded me of the Midwest. I live in America now as opposed to in the Netherlands before and it has dramatically changed my referential point of view. It seems to me to be the breadbasket of France.

We stayed at a bed and breakfast on a large farm of, if I remember correctly, 1000 acres of arable land. The farm grows rapeseed, wheat and used to grow potatoes. It had at least three humongous John Deere tractors and I was very excited when the farmer showed me those beauties on our last day there. Turned out that the farm we were staying on was the farm where Robert Berthaut and his wife Simone had reinvented Epoisses in the fifties and thus saved this cheese from becoming extinct. Unfortunately we had to catch a train back to London. (The TVG is fantastic, I really recommend it for the US) There was no time for a visit to their current manufacturing facilities.

The photos here are from a visit to another Epoisses producer, Gaec des Marronniers in Origny-sur Seine, about 50 km northeast from the village of Epoisses. I had found this maker on the website of the Syndicat de Defense de l’Epoisses. Being the only farmstead producer and only producer of Epoisses from raw milk, they seemed to me the right one to visit. We showed up unannounced and after mentioning that we had come all the way from America and only had one day, they were so kind as to give us a tour right away. We were asked to put on disposable gowns, hairnets and boots before we could enter the facility. After walking through a sterilizing dip bath, we entered a very sterile environment not like any cheesemaking facility I have seen so far. The walls were white, the floors tiled, everything was spotless. Cheese was present in various stages of its process.

Being a farmstead producer they only make cheese from milk produced on their own farm. They started in 2002 and have 200 cows, Montbeliards and d’Alp Brunes. Sixty of these cows are milkers. The rest are either calves or heifers.

The evening milk is mixed with the morning milk before it is renneted. The coagulation takes place in white rectangular plastic containers of about 15 gallon. They are visible on photo four (to the right) and five (stacked in the back). After coagulation, the curd is scooped in plastic perforated forms of about 5” diameter and left to drain. After sufficient drainage the cheeses are salted and dried for (I think) 24 hours before they move into the aging room (last photo). Here they are first washed with salted water for two weeks before the washing with Marc de Bourgogne begins. Gradually the amount of Marc is increased during this stage which last for about another two weeks. By then the cheeses have developed a deep orange rind but are still very chalky and mild inside. Ready for shipment, they are wrapped in micro perforated film and packed in individual wooden boxes. On our leave we bought some cheeses and after having traveled via England all the way across the Atlantic, it had ripened nicely and developed in one of the most delightfull cheeses I have ever had.

Batch 101

Just out of curiosity, I counted how many batches of cheese I have made so far. I have kept records of all my batches. Turned out I have made exactly 100 batches of cheese. Time for an improvement. 

I have seen several cheesemakers using a number system to keep track of their cheeses. Every batch has a number which is pressed in the wheels from that batch. I have been meaning to implement this system as well. Although I only make cheese in limited quantities, my current system has once in a while lead to some confusion.  So I cut some numbers from some plastic milk bottles and put this in the bottom of the mold at the final turning. Et voila, batch number 101. This is obviously hard to do for lactic cheeses so for now I will have to stick to my old tracking system for these batches.