Europe: The Excursions: Cheese

The final excursion I went on during the conference was a cheese making tour. It is important to understand that my lab has been having cheese parties every few months. They were started by someone in the lab who is very passionate about cheese and under her tutelage we have all gained a greater appreciation for delicious cheese. So, when we saw that a cheese making tour was an option on our European adventure, we needed to make it a lab outing.
So, we donned our protective cheesewear in anticipation of learning all about this mysterious creamy food.

Our tour guide was an italian cheesemaker. I can't decide if I like rubber gloves, the giant apron, or the beard best. He told us all about making cheese: where they source their milk, the proper pH and temperature for cheese, how they grow their cheesy bacteria. This whole discourse was in Italian, likely to conserve trade secrets the interpreter summarized the explanations to simple statements like "this is cheese" and "you should keep it cold" The Italian researchers gave helpful elaborations. We got to see the giant bowls full of milky cheese and the big whisks and rakes they use to mix it. The cheese is formed from the more fatty part that sinks to the bottom of the bowl. They pump off the top watery part into another giant bowl and heat it to make ricotta. We got to see them make both cheese (in the big wheel forms bottom left) and ricotta (in the baskets top right) 

The cheese starts out in these big wheel forms but rapidly drains so that it is only half as tall as it started out. Please note the convenient drain in the cheese making table

Once completely drained the cheese is put in a "cheese cave" (almost as cool as a bat cave but likely involving fewer effective super heroes) to age. The rind on the outside is just the outer bit of cheese that gets all dried out. The cheese making itself only took like 1-2 hours but aging can go on forever and, along with bacteria, is the key determinant of taste. pH is important for keeping the bacteria happy. Temperature is important in determining the density of the cheese. 

At the end of the tour we got to sample 3 different kinds of cheese that they made there in the cheese factory. My favorite was a mild one, you can see it on the far right. I brought have a wheel back as a present for my lab.  I was rather surprised to find that after an additional 2 weeks of aging while I went on to have more adventures the cheese flavor got much more intense. But it was still delicious and we got to enjoy it in a welcome back cheese party with the lab.  

The cheese crew: Me, Grace, Choo, JP. Katie- founder of our cheese parties present in spirit.