Everything Under One Roof
From milking to production and aging, all of our cheese is produced right here inside this hundred year old barn in Cambria, California.
Our creamery is where all the delicious cheesy magic happens. Inside our facility, there are four main areas for production: the milk house, the barn, packaging and cheesemaking.
Starting in the Milk House
Starting with the Milk House, goat milk is pumped from the milking parlor, traveling through our pipeline system, through a filter and into the 200 gallon bulk tank in milk house.
The milking parlor is where the first part of our production begins... if you don’t count the breeding, birthing, raising, feeding, pasture maintaining, snuggling, and general caretaking of the goats, that is!
Every day, twice a day, for about 8 months of lactation from spring to fall, we milk our goats at 7am and 4pm. No days off for the goats or for us! Between four of us creamery workers we all take turns during the 14 milking shifts each week.
From The Dairy to The Creamery
Once we have pumped goats milk, cows milk, or a combination, over to our cheesemaking vat on the left, we first do a low-temp pasteurization: we heat the milk to 145 degrees for 30 minutes. A low-temp pasteurization will remove potentially harmful bacteria, while preserving the proteins and integrity of the milk, as opposed to ultra or high-temp pasteurization which is often used at a larger industrial scale.
Inside the Art & Science of Cheesemaking
Making cheese is part art and part science. After pasteurization, our cheesemakers add our proprietary blends of starter cultures to the milk. A culture is a specific group of bacterias, now isolated and propagated for many centuries, that will convert the lactose (milk sugar) into lactic acid. Yes, you heard correctly- cheese is a product of fermentation assisted by bacteria! We have honed our recipes over the past decade and dialed in the perfect blends of different types of cultures for different types of cheese to yield the perfect flavors, textures, and acidity taking into account our rich farmstead milk and terroir.
The next ingredient we will add is rennet. Rennet is an enzyme that reacts with the milk to coagulate the proteins (the milk solids), separating the solid curd from the liquid whey.
Cutting The Curd
Acidification and rennet cause the casein proteins in the milk to knit and the curd to “set”. Once the curd has set, it will have formed a jello-like mass. We then cut the curd with steel harps and “cook” the cheese activating heat loving bacteria. For a firmer, drier cheese like Parmesan, the curd is cut into small, rice sized pieces, and is cooked longer, so more moisture is expelled from the curds. For a softer cheese, the curd is cut into larger pieces and cooked less. Our cheesemakers know how to identify the look and feel of curds at the exact moment it is time to cease the cooking process.
Forming the Wheels - “Hooping”
Hooping is where our cheese processes vary the most widely based on the type of cheese we are making.
Softer fresh cheeses set overnight, and drain in bags under their own weight.
Our triple crème cheeses are drained out of our vat into form moulds where they drain under their own weight for 24 hours.
For our hard cheeses, the liquid whey is drained, and we scoop the curd into perforated moulds. We then press all the moulds under weights overnight to expel more of the whey. In the morning we will pull the basket out, and we will have a firm but fragile wheel of cheese.
These various hooping methods yield cheeses with different moisture contents and textures.
Salt is Our Friend
Salt is one of our best friends in the creamery. We use salt to control the fermentation process. Our soft cheeses have salt mixed in by weight. The triple crèmes are expertly salted by hand. And our hard cheeses take a bath in our saturated brine solution to get them to the perfect level of seasoning.
Inside the Caves
Our team of cheesemakers and affineurs (the French word for people who care for aging cheeses) diligently care for our cheeses for anywhere from a few days to two years. This involves flipping, brushing, smelling, and tasting the wheels to find the optimal time for their release.
Simple Ingredients, Complex Results
At its most basic level, cheesemaking involves the controlled fermentation of milk, removing the desired amount of moisture, and letting time do the rest. This leads to many different odors, textures, and of course tastes. This symbiosis between man, microorganism, and milk is a culinary tradition woven into our everyday lives.