Tag Archives: workshop

Workshops 2014: Mastering Artisan Cheese Making

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DATES: This is a two-day workshop, April 26 and 27th (Saturday and Sunday)

In her 2012 book, Mastering Artisan Cheesemaking (Chelsea Green Publishing) Gianaclis Caldwell explains the art and science that allow milk to be transformed into epicurean masterpieces- with an emphasis on developing intuition through knowledge. Caldwell offers a deep look at the history, science, culture, and art of making artisan cheese as a small-scale creamery. Her first book, The Farmstead Creamery Advisor, (republished in 2014 as The Small Scale Cheese Business) has helped many farmstead cheesemakers get their start. Her most recent book The Small Scale Dairy (also by Chelsea Green) provides similar wisdom for the small raw milk producer.

In this two day session Gianaclis will offer the artisan cheesemaker some hands-on, qualitative and quantitative skills practice for assessing milk’s readiness and appropriatenes, for cheesemaking and environmental practices that effect milk quality. From doing your own standard plate counts and coliform counts, to lacto-fermentation tests; the effect of heat and cold on the availability of calcium and how this affects flocculation; and in house listeria testing prepare to take charge of your cheesemaking in a new way!

Bring an equipment and or milk/brine sample for plate counts, or about 100 ml of fresh, chilled milk in a santized container for a lacto fermentation test. Bring your pH and all other questions as well.

SITE: State of Maine Cheese Co., Rockport

FEE: $175 for Guild Members, $200 for non-members (includes a Guild membership). Registration will be set when deposits are received. Deposits will be refunded for cancellations up to a week before the class begins, after which they are not refundable. If there are more registrations than space available, later registrations will be notified and a waiting list will be started — deposits will be returned for those on the waiting list who cannot be accommodated.

THIS WORKSHOP IS FULL AND HAS A FILLED WAIT LIST; we are looking into the possibility of bringing Ms. Caldwell back to Maine, possibly this fall or next spring, so stay tuned to the Guild web site for an announcement for this.

Maine Cheese Guild
c/o Mark Whitney, Treasurer
Pineland Farms Creamery
92 Creamery Lane
New Gloucester, ME 04260

Workshops 2014: Fundamental Affinage, March 28-29

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In this two-day work shop, Michael Kalish of Third Wheel Cheese Consulting, will guide you through European styles of affinage. Michael’s workshop finds its balance of theory and practice in a colorful blend of film, photography, interactive lecture, anecdotal experience, and hands-on demonstrations.

Michael Kalish co-founded Third Wheel Cheese Consulting in 2012. From 2008 to 2011, Michael worked on artisan cheese farms across France and Northern Italy and in the alps of Gruyère and Valle d’Aosta. Formally trained at the istituto lattiero caseario e delle tecnologie agro-alimentari in Italy’s famed Piedmont Region, Michael apprenticed for Luigi Guffanti, managed Hervé Mons’ Tunnel de la Collonge in the Rhône Alps, and ran operations for Artisanal Premium Cheese in NYC. Michael is on the Education Committee for the American Cheese Society Conference this year and will be leading panels on affinage and food safety in Sacramento. Michael has led workshops for the California, Oregon, and Wisconsin Artisan Cheese Guilds and has taught Affinage portions of Master Classes in NYC.

DATES: This is a two-day workshop, March 28 and 29th (Friday and Saturday)

SITE: Silvery Moon Creamery, Westbrook

FEE: $175 for Guild Members, $200 for non-members (includes a Guild membership). Registration will be set when deposits are received. Deposits will be refunded for cancellations up to a week before the class begins, after which they are not refundable. If there are more registrations than space available, later registrations will be notified and a waiting list will be started — deposits will be returned for those on the waiting list who cannot be accommodated.

To reserve a space, send a $50 deposit (with a note indicate the class you wish to attend) to:

Maine Cheese Guild
c/o Mark Whitney, Treasurer
Pineland Farms Creamery
92 Creamery Lane
New Gloucester, ME 04260

Workshops 2013: Magical Microbiolgical Mystery Tour

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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.