00:00Wisconsin is known for its orange cheddar.
00:03Wisconsin produces 600 different varieties of cheese.
00:07If Wisconsin was a nation, we'd be the third largest producer in the world.
00:18Our best seller is our five-year cheddar.
00:21I think it's because of the price and the age of the cheese.
00:30So you can see milk in the tank still being stirred.
00:37Milk was being held overnight, what was brought in yesterday afternoon.
00:40And this is the milk we're pasteurizing, running into the vat, and going to make cheese out of today.
00:45First we heat it on water, then we dump the water and start running milk through it, pasteurize all the milk.
00:53Pasteurizing is heating the milk, thermalizing the milk, to try to kill all of the bad bacteria.
01:01On ours, we use a high temperature, short time, HTST.
01:05We typically run 164 to 165, and it has to be held for at least 15 seconds at the minimum.
01:12We want to make sure that the chart is reading exactly what we're showing.
01:17Sometimes you have to adjust the needle.
01:20Now we'll warm it back up again.
01:22It's right on today.
01:24Right now it's circulating all the way through the pasteurizer.
01:28So we ensure that our milk is pasteurized before we're putting it in the vat.
01:34Then we add the starter culture.
01:36It's about 500 grams of mesophilic starter culture, lactose-lactose, and lactose-chromorus.
01:46We're typically at about 86 to 88 degrees Fahrenheit, optimum temperature for bacteria to grow.
01:52We want to ripen the starter culture for about 50 minutes.
01:55We produce a lot of cheese in Wisconsin.
01:57We believe that in southwest Wisconsin especially, the driftless area, that it does affect the flavor of the milk,
02:05the feed, the hay, the grasses, the corn, everything, because of the limestone.
02:10So we do believe that it affects the terroir, affects the flavor of the cheese.
02:16Once the starter culture has been ripened for that long, if we're adding color, we'll add annatto.
02:22A hundred years ago when we were overtaking New York as the dairy state,
02:27we were trying to show, try ours.
02:30Ours is orange, theirs is white.
02:32You know, differentiation.
02:33So we're just mixing the color in.
02:36And that's what basically Wisconsin is known for, is orange cheddar as opposed to east coast white cheddar.
02:43Then we'll add the rennet, which is the enzyme that coagulates milk.
02:47Stir that in, pull the paddles, just let it sit for about 25 minutes and let it thicken up.
02:53So it gets about as thick as Greek yogurt.
02:57Now we're going to cut the coagulated milk.
03:00These are three-eighths inch wired knives.
03:02We'll crosscut the vat, then we'll go all the way up one side, all the way back down the other
03:07with the vertical and the horizontal knives.
03:11We're going to put the paddles back in, so once we do start cooking, we can stir it.
03:16They're pretty delicate at this point.
03:18But see how they're little tiny cubes?
03:20They can start expelling whey out of them.
03:23Ten pounds of milk will get about one pound of cheese and about nine pounds of liquid.
03:29So you have to be able to kick all of that liquid all that way out of the curd.
03:34In Wisconsin, one of the regulations is that every vat of cheese has to be presided over by a licensed cheesemaker.
03:42When I started in 1970, you could get your cheesemaker's license by apprenticing under a cheesemaker for a year and a half
03:49and then sitting for the exam.
03:51And that's what I did.
03:54When we first bought this place, I was about 35 and it was easier on the back.
03:59Everything has to be cleaned and recleaned and sanitized before you use it.
04:06So you want a picture of the thermometer since it's heated to 100.
04:10Now we'll start to push it to the back three quarters, drain away, kind of let it settle to the bottom.
04:16Ditch it in the middle so the whey can drain out of the center.
04:20I can feel the curd down there so I can feel how much is still there to push.
04:25Vats are sloped to the center to the one end.
04:29Drain it out of the valve.
04:32So at this point we're getting down to where the whey is mostly drained off.
04:36So what whey and little bit of cheese is coming out that we're draining on the floor is just what the pump couldn't pump into the whey tank.
04:44The rest of it was already pumped into the whey tank.
04:47And that will be used for fertilizer, bi-tackle, haul it out, land spread it.
04:52We'll get all the whey drained off and then we'll start trimming it up, packing that on top,
04:57and then we'll be able to cut all of the cheese into slabs so we can start cheddaring.
05:03As you turn them over, the weight of the slab keeps kind of pressing itself and making the bottom smoother.
05:09You cut them in half, pile them too high.
05:12Each of those, you're putting more weight on there, kind of pressing them together but also pressing them to stretch out so the texture changes a little bit.
05:20First we go one high, two high, three high, four high, about every 15-20 minutes.
05:25And we'll test the acidity or the pH of the whey to make sure the starter culture is still growing like we want.
05:31Then we'll run them through a cheddar mill and make the cheddar-sized curds.
05:35So I'm just breaking up, sometimes there's some big lumps that have stuck together.
05:39So that when you salt it, the salt can hit all surfaces.
05:44The salt will preserve the cheese.
05:47It slows the starter culture down, prevents it from getting too acidic.
05:52Without salt, pretty bland.
05:54So this is a little bit over half of the salt that we'll put on.
05:58Then I'll put another bucket on.
06:00So once we have those curds, then we'll dip them with a bucket.
06:04From here, we're just dipping it out, weighing it, putting it in the 40-pound forms.
06:08Once we put two pails in each one, they'll be ready to put in the press.
06:12We do it by hand scale in a bucket and we weigh them.
06:15We put about 45-46 pounds of those curds.
06:18They each have cheesecloth in them.
06:20We'll pull the pins, put a lid on there.
06:23We'll press them down to between 41-42 pounds.
06:26We'll press them down to between 41-42 pounds.
06:30So we'll lose about 4 pounds of weight out of every block.
06:33This is the way that's draining out right now.
06:36About 20 pounds of pressure the first 20 minutes,
06:38and then we'll switch it to about 40 pounds of pressure for the last hour and a half.
06:45The cheese has been in the press for about 2 hours now, so we're going to start wrapping these.
06:50We'll pull them out of the forms, take the cheesecloth off.
06:54We're going to have a fully pressed block of just a solid mass of orange cheddar cheese.
06:59We'll put them in a long-hold bag, and then we'll seal them in the multi-bag.
07:07Put it in a cardboard box with a wood liner.
07:09Put it on a pallet.
07:11Start aging it up.
07:13We're going to start sticking them into Cave 1 to start curing them out.
07:17They'll be moved up to another location within about a week,
07:21because most of our cheddar we age in another location.
07:23We can't fit everything in here, so the cheddars are moved out because we age them so long.
07:28Back in the day before refrigeration, most of these factories were built into a hill like this
07:34so that the back end was kind of a cooler spot sort of underground,
07:38so it'd be 55 or 60, and they'd let the cheese cure at that temperature.
07:44The oldest we have ever sold is 20-year-old, and we don't typically have that on hand all of the time.
07:51Some restaurants really want it, but individuals want to buy that.
07:56They want something that's aged that long and hard-sought after,
08:00and it's always fun to try and come up with something new.
08:03Three milks instead of just cow milk, we moved on with cow, sheep, goat, you know, in the combination,
08:09and it's fun to play with all those.
08:11You know, you get different flavor combinations, try to come up with something new,
08:15something nobody else has ever done before.
08:18One of the cheeses, you have to be kidding, Blue, very unique name,
08:23and I actually came up with the name two years before I came up with the cheese.
08:26Most of the cheeses I'll come up with a cheese recipe before I'll come up with a name for it.
08:33We're tiny compared to most.
08:36You know, it'd be kind of nice to be a little more well-known,
08:39but the other part of that problem is how fast can you grow
08:43to supply a double-edged sword in the Madison area?
08:47We're pretty well-known.
08:49Like at the farmer's market where you're actually, people can sample everything we make
08:54and try it and say, wow.
08:56So it's satisfaction with knowing you've made something that consumers will love.
09:01Yes, the making is great too, but it's a lot of work.
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