Finally in Production

I finally started production. I made my first legal batch of cheese about a month ago. Here a few pictures of the process. I'll let the pictures tell the story, hoping they speak fro themselves.

Moved The Vat

Finally I have moved the vat from its storage into the cheese making room. The floors are done, the walls are ready and I have doors. I also bought some large sinks on Ebay. I am very excited, the creamery starts to crystallize and it looks like I might be making cheese within the for see able future. I even submitted the paperwork with the state.
Their is still much to do however. The electricity needs to be installed, the plumbing for the water has to be put in and the various heating systems have to be installed. Their is quite a bit painting to be done and other miscellaneous touch up work. And than there is the cave. The cooling installation has arrived but I haven't had time to install it yet so that has replaced the vat in the storage. I also have to built the shelving units for the cave. I have been thinking about how to do this efficiently and cost effectively. I haven't come up with a design yet and whether to use wood, metal or a combination for the structural elements. The aging shelves however will be wood. Luckily my inspector has given me that allowance.

Creamery Construction Update

Finally, here is an update of the creamery in progress. I am nestled in approximately 1200 square feet in the left hand corner of the building above, behind the white door and the adjacent windows.

The photo below shows the outlay of the floor drains, cut into some very hard and thick concrete.

The make room and the cleaning room have a 2 feet high concrete knee wall made of three courses of concrete block. This will prevent the wicking of water from the floor and is required by NY state regulations. On top of this I have constructed a 8 feet high framed sheetrock wall. This part of the wall is covered with FRP (fiber reinforced panel) a.k.a. dairy board which makes it into a washable surface. Both of these rooms will have underfloor radiant heating. One can see the pex and concrete reinforcement laying on 2 inches of blue insulation foam board. I am about to pour the concrete for this.

The last photo shows the dry area. The walls here are bare sheetrock which will eventually be painted. At the end of this space, in the center of the picture, one can see the the entrance to the aging room. I will dedicate a post to this room in the near future.

New Cheese Cave

It has been a while since I posted. This doesn't mean I have been sitting on my laurels. I have made quite a few cheeses and ate quite a bit of it too. I have also been working on the construction of the creamery in Walton. In the next few weeks, I will add some posts about some of the batches I did and some updates on the creamery.

Apart from making cheese, I have moved my cave. I lost the cave under the Brooklyn sidewalk because the lease to the building it came with, expired. Luckily my wife and I had just bought a house in Brooklyn with plenty of space. So I have moved my cheese in there. I have converted a space under the basement stair into a cave. I have cleaned it, tiled the floor and white washed the walls and ceiling. Because the space isn't cool enough, I have installed a air conditioner run by a coolbot. This easily keeps it to the right temperature but because I did not insulate, the air conditioner is running 50 % of the time on cool mode. I might try to squirt some expansion foam into the walls or otherwise insulate the space.

To keep up the humidity, I have installed a vaporizer. I know, this kind of defeats the purpose of trying to keep the space cool as the vaporizer steams up the space. But when I have some more time on my hands, I will change this into a humidity sensor controlled mister system. As I have planned a system like this for my cave in the creamery, this would be a good opportunity to investigate its workings.

Creamery Construction

In the last post I promised an update on the progress of the creamery I am building. Well, here are some pictures of the construction as well as plan of the creamery. As one can see by the white out, it has been through many changes and I am sure this won't be the final version yet.

So far the floors have been trenched to run the plumbing for the floor drains, sinks etc. This was a hell of job. The concrete which had to be cut was 8 inches thick and of old fashioned quality. It bore a machine shop for many decades.

Besides cutting the floor, I have been laying blocks. The make room and the cleaning room will have 2 feet high concrete knee walls. This will prevent the wicking of water behind the material on the wall. This was strongly suggested by the inspector and I don't want to start out on a arguing basis. On top of these walls I will put an 8 foot high frame wall. The large room in the back will be the aging room. The walls of this room are entirely made from concrete and insulated by 6 inch polyisocyanurate rigid foam insulation. I am not sure how to cool this room. I am deliberating various options.

Cheese Vat

For a while I have been looking for a cheese vat for the the creamery I am building. I have contacted several makers of cheese making equipment and received as many quotes. As I am planning to make raw milk cheese, I don't need a vat pasteurizer. This lowers the initial investment but a new 150 to 200 gallon round cheese vat costs anywhere in the range of 15-to 20,000 dollar, a major investment. These cheese vats are triple walled and have an insulated outer wall. Hot or cold water circulate in the jacket of the vat. This is done by means of a spray pipe for indirectly cooling or heating the product. These vats last forever and have a high resale value. However, I would rather spend less an buy a used vat. But they are hard to come by, hence the high resale value.

I have located a used cheese vat in the Netherlands. The construction is slightly different. Instead of an insulated stainless steel wall, the outer wall is made of wood. The wood used is Teak which was traditionally used in Holland to built cheese vats. Wood has been banned as a material to make cheese in a long time ago but it is perfectly adequate as a insulating material for the outer wall for a modern cheese vat. In fact, because of the wood these vats hold the temperature better than triple wall stainless steel vats. The wood is treated with a two part food safe lacquer and thus made impervious, a concern my local dairy inspector had. Including shipping to the United States it will only be about a third of the price of a new vat, a major savings. But the vat is a larger than I would have liked. It has capacity of 240 gallon and the minimum filling is one third. This means the smallest batch I can make in this vat is 80 gallon. As I am planning to collect the milk in cans from farmers, it will be a lot of hauling. A 100 pounds a a full can will be back breaking work to fill up the entire vat. But I really like the look of this vat as well as the price.

Architectural Plans for Creamery

I have been working with an architect for a while on the design of a creamery. Here are the preliminary drawings. The plan is to build the entire structure out of concrete, partly dug into a hill. The aging cave is five feet below ground, which is approximately the frost line. This way a constant cool temperature and stable humidity is achieved. The ceilings of the cave are vaulted to promote airflow. It also prevents water from dripping on the cheese. Aging rooms often accumulate condensation on the ceiling. When the ceiling is flat, this drips on the cheeses. When the ceiling is vaulted, this water runs off along the ceiling and the walls. The vaulted ceiling also adds to the aesthetic appeal or the room. To avoid having to add any load bearing beams in the cave, I added some columns in the center. This allows me to partition the cave in the future if I decide I want two curing rooms with different climates. The ventilation system of the cave has to be worked out still.

The rooms in front of the cave are for drying and brining the cheeses. This part of the building is three quarters below ground. In one of these rooms I hope to install a walk in cooler in the future.

The making room, cleaning room and office in the front are above ground. The cleaning room was added after I read the state regulations for dairy processing plants. State regulations prohibit cleaning milk containers in the making room when the milk is not produced on the premises. I do not intend to start a dairy but plan to make cheese from milk bought from local farmers.

The making room will get a cheese making vat in the center. Around the walls sinks and draining tables are planned.

I haven’t worked out the heating system for the building yet. Although the winters are long and cold in upstate New York, by building the structure in a hill from thick concrete walls insulated from the outside, I hope the building will not require a lot of heating. A small central hydronic system fired by propane might do. I hope I can use the same system to heat the water for the cheese vat as well as other running water.

The plant has two septic systems as required by regulations. I will write about the septic systems in a separate post later. Being located in the New York City watershed adds an enormous amount of restrictions and regulations to these systems and makes building outside municipal systems often cost prohibitive. Whether this will be the case with my plans is to be seen.

Creamery

I haven't posted anything recently as I've been occupied with other things. I did make some cheeses and will write about this in the next few weeks. Right now I would like to add another topic to this blog. Soon after I started making cheese I began to consider the idea of starting a small creamery. The cheeses I had made were well received, even cheesemongers spoke encouraging words. I have enough land in upstate New York to build a cheese making facility. The area is full of dairy farms where I can buy milk. I don't plan to produce my own milk as this would involve starting a farm which would need a lot more capital and is an entirely different endeavor. There are still plenty of dairy farms around and they can do with a boost--some of them are suffering badly from the low price of milk. In fact a lot are on the brink of extinction. 

 I've begun to think of a business plan but haven't decided on a name as yet. These are the names I'm considering  (no particular order): Dunk Hill Creamery (this is the name of the hill); using my own name-Vulto Creamery, or I could name it after the stream: Dry Brook Creamery (lots of water at present) or Pricklebush Creamery (the local name for the rosebushes which crowd out untended fields), or Walton Creamery (after the nearest town). I'm still pondering and hope the name will evolve with help from others.