A day making our own cheese

There is a cheese in a shoe box in the corner of our larder. It is small, white, and round. We keep it at the right temperature (between eight and 12 degrees celsius), inspect it regularly for cracks, and turn it over every other day. It’s been there since my Mum and I went on a cheese-making course at the High Weald Dairy. 

It was a bright spring day, fresh but not cold, when we drove along the lanes of Sussex looking for the Dairy. Blackthorn nodded in the hedgerows and primroses clung to the verge. After a few wrong turns, we found the place, and were directed up some stairs into a converted granary.

Inside, we met Mark and Sarah Hardy, who own the Dairy, Chris, a trainee cheese-maker, and our fellow students. They were an interesting bunch – one was a cattle farmer thinking of diversifying into cheese production; another was an engineer who already made halloumi at home.

We were issued with white coats, paired up, and shown to our stoves. We stood expectantly behind our worktops, like pupils assembled for a particularly interesting chemistry lesson. In front of us lay the tools of the cheese-making trade – a tall pan, a good thermometer, some moulds, and cheese cloths.

The tools of the cheese-making trade

Making cheese is a slow process requiring patience and precision, yet Mark was adamant it was within our grasp. We would be making two cheeses - one soft and one hard. The soft cheese was the easier one. We started with milk (whole, pasteurised, non-homogenised) and lots of it. Five litres of cow’s milk would make 800 to 900 grams of cheese.

The first step was adding the starter. This is a dose of bacteria which increases the acidity of the milk. To save time, Mark and his team had already put this in (otherwise we would have been there all night). Next, we added the rennet, an enzyme which curdles the milk. Traditionally, this was taken from calves’ stomachs, however there are now vegetarian alternatives and we took one of those.

Then we waited. There is a lot of waiting involved in cheese-making. As with other fermented foods such as wine and bread, time is an important ingredient.

When we returned to our stoves, we could see the milk had set – it was springy to the touch. We cut the curd gently with a long knife, aiming for evenly cut blocks, but instead creating crazy paving. Mark assured us that it didn’t matter very much, so we ladled the curd into a cheese cloth to drain and hoped for the best. 

While our cheeses dripped, we ate lunch. The meal ended (of course) with cheese, and we tasted all of the Dairy’s wares - from a light, creamy fresh cheese only a few days old to a crumbly, blue cheese which had been maturing for several months.

Three High Weald cheeses: Brighton Blue, Sister Sarah and Saint Giles

Up to this point, our hard cheese had been made in a similar way to the soft cheese. But now things got a bit more hands-on. We were told to slowly heat up the curds and whey, roll up our sleeves, and put one hand into the pot. We then slowly stirred the chunks of curd with our fingers so they did not stick together.

This was enjoyable work, one arm up to the elbow in the curds, trying to slowly tickle our cheese to the point of readiness. We then poured it into a cheese cloth to drain.

Hard cheese needs to lose as much moisture as possible. We had to cut ours and drain it again, tear it up, mix salt into it, and finally put it in a cheese press. By contrast, the soft cheese just needed to be mixed with salt and it was ready.

Looking round the Dairy. Photo courtesy of the High Weald Dairy

While our hard cheese was squeezed, Mark showed us around the Dairy. It was housed in a converted barn, where the process we’d been following was recreated on a grand scale in gleaming steel. Our pot and utensils were replaced by an enormous mixer, heating, stirring and slicing the curds and whey. However there was one job that still had to be done by hand: the curd tickling. And two men stood with their arms in a trough methodically moving the blobs of curd with their fingers.

Back in the converted granary, we packed up our cheeses ready to go home. The soft cheese could be eaten the next day (and very nice it was too), but the hard cheese had to be stored for up to 12 weeks, at the right temperature, and turned every other day.

And so three months later, it is finally time to eat our hard cheese. We take it out of its box in the larder, cut it into slices, and take our first bite. It is hard, tangy, and goat-y in a good way. If you were feeling generous, you might compare it to parmesan. We shave it onto salads and toast, eating it slowly, not because it is the best cheese we’ve ever eaten but because we made it ourselves. Cheesy, yet true.

Cutting into our hard cheese for the first time