Cheesemaking 101

Guild Board member Eric Rector will be teaching a beginning cheesemaking workshop for MOFGA in January — here is the info and a link to the sign-up page:

January 20, 2020
Monday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Cumberland County UMaine Cooperative Extension office
75 Clearwater Dr., Suite 104, Falmouth, Maine
Fee: $75 general, $65 for MOFGA members, free for journeypersons; lunch included

Learn how to make cheese at home at MOFGA’s beginner home cheesemaking course. Eric Rector, owner of Monroe Cheese Studio and board member of the Maine Cheese Guild, will teach the basics of turning organic raw milk into delicious cheese through a hands-on demo. We will make a quick fresh cheese to slice and taste during class. Additional demonstrations will feature the differences between fresh, aged and acid-set cheeses and rennet-set cheeses. We will also learn how to make ricotta and mozzarella, and some history of cheese.”

Maine REPRESENTS!

Maine cheese was well represented at the recent Inaugural Festivities for Maine’s new governor. State of Maine Cheese Co. and Pineland Farms Creamery cheeses and spreads were offered on the “crudités” tables throughout the Augusta Civic Center amid the music and celebration of our state’s first female governor being sworn in.

LEARN

VERY Well Aged Cheese

Two of the four pillars from the Tomb of Ptahmes in the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden, the Netherlands. Photo credit: Alexander Van Loon

Researchers have analysed a “whitish mass” found in a cloth covered jar in the tomb of an ancient Egyptian nobleman named Ptahmes, and they’ve determined that it must have been an ancient cheese! The tomb was sealed in the 13th century BCE, they think the cheese was made from cow, sheep, AND goat milk, and the cheese also shows the presence of the Brucellosis bacterium in one or more of the milked animals.