New Wave of Maine Cheese on the Radio

Posted on July 3, 2013July 8, 2013 by President

Last night Maine Things Considered broadcast a story about the new wave of Maine cheese makers by reporter Jennifer Mitchell featuring soundbutes from Caitlin and myself. (I gave Mitchell several other names of people that she should talk with, but I’m not sure what happened with that).

In the broadcast piece I told a story about the cheese making history of Monroe, where I live, which she included in the broadcast piece, and after I got home from the interview I dug out a copy of the oral history that had been passed along to me when I started my cheese business in Monroe. I went ahead and typed it up and posted it to the Guild web site so anyone else can learn about “Skipper Cheese.”

Meeting: June 17 at Barred Owl Creamery

Posted on June 4, 2013June 17, 2013 by President

Our June meeting took place in Whitefield at Barred Owl Creamery on Monday, June 17th from 10am to 2pm. We had a long discussion about marketing focus for the Cheese Guild moving forward. We invited a representative to the Maine Dairy Promotion Board to explain how they focus on promoting Maine dairy products, and to offer comments on the Guild’s experiences from the past and ideas for the future. A couple of key questions came up:

–Who are are present customers? How do we reach them?
–How do we reach other customers?

We discussed work that is needed on the Guild web site, on our printed materials, as well as in participating in events around that state that would benefit from adding cheese makers, as well as creating our own Guild events similar to the Open Creamery Day in October, and possibly resurrecting our Maine Cheese Festival event.

Please post your ideas on this issue here to continue this conversation.

Workshops 2013: Magical Microbiolgical Mystery Tour

Posted on May 2, 2013August 30, 2014 by President

This is a lecture
May 6 (Monday), 2013 from 11am to 3pm
Location: Pineland Farms Creamery, New Gloucester, ME

DIRECTIONS (link to PDF document):
http://www.pinelandfarms.org/pdf/Pineland-Farms-Campus-Map.pdf

Building # 19 on the map.

Have you ever wondered what turns a bland lump of salty curd into the amazing diversity of flavors, aromas, and appearances exhibited by the hundreds (if not thousands) of cheese varieties? More often than not these characteristics are initiated and controlled by organisms populating the surfaces of each cheese. Given that, how much do we know about what is happening on the cheese rind? Not much, it turns out. Cheesemakers *think* they know what happens when this mold is added, or a cheese is put into that cave, but microbiologists at Harvard’s FAS Center of Systems Biology have been testing these assumptions and finding that the cheese surface is a much more diverse environment than we could ever have imagined, involving some “usual suspects” as well as utterly alien influences.

This year the Guild has been able to schedule a member of the FAS lab, Benjamine Wolfe (who has worked with the Cheese Nun to figure out the secret lives of Geotrichum candidum) to visit Maine and update us on their research and findings as part of our May meeting to help us better understand our own aging situation, causes, and effects.

COST: This lecture is FREE to Maine Cheese Guild members. Non-members will pay $25 at the door, and their lecture fee will include membership in the Maine Cheese Guild.