ACS 2013 Madison Wednesday

Posted on August 1, 2013August 6, 2013 by President

Outside of Janesville, WI

This was my travel day, and I reached Madison by bus from Chicago’s airport which gave me a chance to soak in the upper Midwestern landscape on my way into Madison, which is separated from the surrounding farmland by being squeezed between two lakes (Mendola and Monona). The land is not table flat but has a pleasant roll to it, with large fields of corn andn soy broken by tree lines. Almost every farm visible from the highway has a large series of silos.

The bus also dropped well north of the conference center (on the shores of Lake Monona) right in the middle of the University of Wisconsin campus. That made for a pleasant stroll down State Street to the Capital where the last in their series of outdoor symphony concerts was taking place as families picniced on the grounds around the domed building. On one corner was a bit of edible landscaping.

2013 ACS Opportunities For Guild Members

Posted on April 25, 2013July 8, 2013 by President

At our April meeting the members approved supporting the following subsidies in 2013 that relate to the American Cheese Society Conference to be held in Madison, WI between July 31st and August 3rd:

–The Guild will reimburse for ONE Individual Producer membership to ACS (a $199 value) for a Maine Cheese Guild member who applies for that;

[ACS membership is required to submit cheeses to the competition, as well as to attend the conference.]

–The Guild will reimburse any Maine Cheese Guild member who submits entries to the ACS Conference Competition for their first on-time competition entry (due May 17th, a $60 value per participating member);

–The Guild will arrange for and pay up to $500 for a group shipment of all ACS Conference Competition entries from the Maine Cheese Guild to arrive in good condition (if the shipping costs exceed $500, the participants agree to split the additional costs by the number of entries);

–The Guild will reimburse half of the expenses (registration, travel, lodging) up to $900 for FOUR Maine Cheese Guild members to attend the 2013 ACS Conference as part of the Guild’s delegation;

–The Guild will reimburse ALL expenses (conference registration, travel, lodging) up to $1800 for ONE Maine Cheese Guild member to attend the conference as the Guild’s designated representative;

There is no application required to participate in the Guild competition reimbursement and/or group shipment — participants must be a Maine Cheese Guild member in good standing for the time period between the competition entry and the competition itself. Instructions on participating will be posted in a separate Guild web site article.

All applicants must be a Maine Cheese Guild member in good standing for the time period between the request for consideration and the conference itself. The Guild Board will then vote on who will be awarded each stipend, and the selections will be announced by mid-May to allow the designated members time to make their arrangements, including to register for the conference before the Early-Bird deadline.

As has been the case in the past, recipients of stipends to attend the ACS conference will be asked to contribute materials of interest to the Guild at large based on the information delivered at the conference. This material will then be posted on the web site and/or published in a future issue of the Guild newsletter.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR APPLYING FOR A ONE YEAR MEMBERSHIP* TO THE American Cheese Society PAID FOR BY THE GUILD:

(*Producer – Professional Individual Membership, worth $199)

1. Please provide short paragraph with a description about your personal history, including why you got into cheese making, what are your cheese making goals (eg: where would you like to see your cheese adventure take you), and how will you use an ACS membership to benefit your cheese making?

Email your application to [email protected]/MCG-build together with the title “ACS MEMBERSHIP”, your name, the name of your cheese operation, your email address, and your physical address BY SUNDAY MAY 5th. The Maine Cheese Guild board will review all applications (unless they are also an applicant) and vote for their choice. You will be notified before SUNDAY, MAY 12th if you have been chosen.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR APPLYING FOR A GUILD SCHOLARSHIP TO ATTEND THE 2013 American Cheese Society CONFERENCE

1. Please provide short paragraph with a description about your personal history, including why you got into cheese making, and what are your cheese making goals (eg: where would you like to see your cheese adventure take you)?

Next, please address these questions (a sentence or two for each would suffice):

2. Why is attending the ACS conference important to you?
3. What three items in the 2013 Conference Agenda interest you the most?
4. How do you plan to share the experience with the Guild?

Email your application to [email protected]/MCG-build together with the title “ACS SCHOLARSHIP”, your name, the name of your cheese operation, your email address, and your physical address BY SUNDAY MAY 5th. The Maine Cheese Guild board will review all applications (unless they are also an applicant) and vote for their choice. You will be notified before SUNDAY, MAY 12th if you have been chosen.

Recommended pH Meter

Posted on September 11, 2012October 31, 2012 by President

An often raised topic for our cheese makers is how to measure acidity, and what are the best tools for the task. Titratable Acidity kits are traditional, but messy and somewhat subjective (because it depends on the eye of the user to see pink); pH meters can be precise, but have been very expensive, delicate, and finicky.

As we learn in each workshop TA and pH both measure different aspects of the acid in our milk, whey, and curds, and they do NOT correlate, so the *best* practice is to use both methods to tell you as much as possible about what’s going on at the chemical level. Practically we all know that you can make cheese without measuring acidity at all, except by feel and taste of the curds, just as they have done for thousands of years. But the risks of bad, un-sellable batches for unknowable reasons imposes a real cost to this method of production as well.

Dave Potter of Dairy Connection, Inc. led a Havarti workshop that I attended at the 2012 ACS conference, and during the make process he told everyone that he had found the “perfect” pH meter because it was waterproof, rugged (his first electrodes worked for four years before requiring replacement), the electrodes were flat so they weren’t at risk of breaking and could be used directly on the surface of draining wet cheese, it had a cap with a sponge to keep the electrodes moist, and it was relatively inexpensive. It’s the ExTech ExStik EC500 which also measures temperature and a few other things. Not surprisingly Dairy Connection sells them, but *surprisingly* they list it $20 cheaper than I could find anywhere else the Internet: $115 plus shipping. If this is your first pH meter you would also have to purchase buffers to use for recalibration (around $30 for the pH7 and pH4 buffers). You can also purchase the complete kit for the ExStik that includes cups, all the buffers, a carrying case, and other goodies. DCI doesn’t sell the kit, but you can find it elsewhere by searching for the ExTech EC510.