My Trip to Ellie’s Dairy and the Young British Foodies

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amateur cheese, animal rennet, camembert, cheese, cheese making, cheeseawards, diy, diyfood, ellies dairy, food, goat milk, goats milk, kid rennet, local, organic, raw milk, urban cheese

Good news!  I have been shortlisted for the Young British Foodies in the “Honorary Young British Foodie” category, with my entry which involved making cheese from a single animal, a goat from Ellie’s Dairy called Footsie.  The results will be announced on May 29th at the Young British Foodie awards event.

The event will feature food created by entrants to the Young British Foodies, and I’ve teamed up with Kiren Puri of the Bladebone Inn to create a canape featuring my cheese.  Obviously since cheese making is a hobby for me, this requires some careful planning to ensure I have sufficient cheese available, as the event will be attended by around 200 people.

After some careful calculations, I decided to make 45 small raw goat white cheeses, over the course of three days, and matured for around a week.  This meant tripling my usual milk order from Ellie’s Dairy from 24 pints to 72, so rather than ask Debbie to lug them all the way to Franklins for me to pick up, I thought I’d take the opportunity to visit the dairy in person, and meet Footsie, who had helped me get to the finals with her lovely milk!

Ellie’s Dairy

Situated in Kent, just over an hour from my home in South East London, the dairy is home to the happiest goats I’ve ever seen.

Happy goats

A few seconds after I took the photo above, the goats noticed I was a new person and came over to investigate.

Inquisitive

Goats have a fantastic habit of staying perfectly still until you’ve pressed the button on your camera to take a photo, at which point they bob their head around.

Little kids

It wasn’t long until the little kids got in on the action and started bleating for attention and running around to see what was going on.

Standing on a bucket

Kidding season has just finished, so there were plenty of newborns vying for prime position, which apparently for a young goat is standing on a bucket.

The wonderful Footsie

After a bit of cajoling, and luring with bananas, Footsie came back in from the field to see what was going on.

Feeding Footsie

Having never fed a goat before, I started peeling one of the bananas I’d brought for her, only to have her grab the whole thing and chew it down, skin and all.

Jake the Peg

I also got to meet famous Jake the Peg, who had jumped on fence too many and broken his leg, which is now in a little cast.

Goats wandering round outside

We took a little wander out into the field, where we were quickly surrounded by inquisitive grazing goats, who seemed to enjoy nibbling the pegs on my duffle coat and shoes quite a lot!

Julie, Debbie & Francesca

Thank you to Debbie, Julie and Francesca for letting me come and take a look around, it was so heart-warming to see how healthy and happy all the goats are.  The importance of good quality milk in cheese making is absolutely paramount, and it was fantastic to meet them in person, especially Footsie!

Young British Foodies – Single Animal Cheese

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amateur cheese, animal rennet, camembert, cheese, cheese making, cheeseawards, diy, food, goat milk, goats milk, kid rennet, organic, raw milk, salt, sea salt, urban cheese, ybfs, young british foodie

A few months ago I entered a competition to become a Young British Foodie (YBF):

Who are the YBFs? They’re the people putting food and drink back at the heart of our communities. They’re the men and women using lost arts and new skills to bring craft back to the kitchen.

I certainly feel like cheese making is a bit of a lost art, and love encouraging people to have a go themselves.  As part of the entry, we were required to come up with a unique idea in our area, and mine was single animal cheese – that is, cheese made entirely from the milk of a single animal, be it goat, cow or sheep.  The second round of the competition requires successful finalists to turn their idea into reality, and present it to the judges.

Previous experiments into what type of milk to use in cheese making, as well as my great experiences in the past made Ellie’s Dairy raw goat milk the natural choice for this project.  I contacted Debbie from Ellie’s Dairy who was very interested in helping out, and suggested one of her best milkers Footsie, as a candidate.

Footsie is on the right in the video above, enjoying one of her favourite foods – bananas!  According to Debbie, Footsie’s life revolves around food (even enjoying the occasional Weetabix!), making it even more interesting to see how that food flavour made its way into the resulting cheese.

So a couple of weeks ago, Footsie was brought in to milk first, to ensure the milk was only from her.

Footsie enjoying a meal on her own

According to Debbie, Footsie loved the attention, and given her love of food was quite happy not to have to compete with the other goats for food!

Footsie’s milk

She produced around 14 pints in total, which will be made into Footsie cheese.

Footsie enjoying the attention

It seems the attention may have gone to Footsie’s head now though, as Debbie writes:

She was most put out this morning when she didn’t get to come into the parlour before everyone else.  She came running over and stood up on the gate waiting to be let out and looked most upset when David walked out of the barn pushing the feed trolley, without her following.  She looked slightly confused, and then bleated at me a couple of times just to remind me that she was there.  I explained to her that we were very grateful for her milk but that she could now come in for milking with the other girls.  This prompted a very hard stare and a snort as she then wandered off.  Poor Footsie!

Footsie’s milk will be coagulated using kid rennet, and matured into a soft white cheese using my usual recipe – I’m really intrigued to see how it will turn out!

Debbie also wrote a great piece on the Ellie’s Dairy blog here.

Bermondsey Spa

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ale, cheese, diy, food, goats milk, golden cenarth, india pale ale, IPA, kernel, kernel brewery, organic, raw milk, urban cheese, washed cheese, washing cheese

As a cheese-maker, people often ask me what my favourite cheese is.  My answer changes almost on a daily basis – sometimes I’m in the mood for mild and subtle Childwickbury, sometimes strong and earthy Stichelton, and other times (most often!) a chunk of well-aged Montgomery cheddar.

However, as of last month, I have a new favourite cheese – Bermondsey Spa.  A washed-in-local-ale upgrade of the Welsh cheese Golden Cenarth.

Back in February, I saw a tweet from Mootown, who sell Welsh cheeses at Northcross Road Market in East Dulwich, which sparked my interest:

Mootown cheese tweet

Golden Cenarth won Supreme Cheese at the British Cheese Awards in 2010, but I didn’t warm to it at the time (its flavours were too subtle for me).  Kernel Brewery on the other hand, make fantastic ales in an arch in Bermondsey, and I’ve been buying their India Pale Ale since I first tasted it a few years ago.

The combination of this particular cheese with this ale sounded very promising, so I asked Mootown when I might be able to sample some.

Golden Cenarth – before and after Kernel washing

A week later, I found myself invited along to a tasting of this cheese-ale hybrid at the Great Exhibition with a few other interested parties (including the Ginger Gourmand, who took the excellent photo below).

Kernel washed Cenarth (picture courtesy of Ginger Gourmand)

Wow.  What a cheese.  Just look at it.  All kinds of wrong, but in the best possible way.  Meaty and full of intense flavour, it immediately became my new favourite cheese, and one I wanted to get more involved with.  A few emails later, I was on my way to Druid Street industrial estate to help out with the washing.

Stacks of washed cheese

The cheeses arrive as standard Golden Cenarths, which are immediately unwrapped and placed on in plastic containers (which keeps the humidity around 90-95%), where they sit on stainless steel racks, lined with wax paper.  They are kept in their sealed containers at 12c, and washed three times a week – Sunday, Wednesday and Friday.

Washing cheese in ale

Washing involves dribbling a couple of drops of ale onto each cheese over the sink, then gently rubbing until they surface was of similar stickiness to a postage stamp.

We washed almost 100 cheeses in total, from those which had just arrived as Golden Cenarth, to some which had been washed for the past four weeks and were oozing from the sides.  Interestingly, we used bottles of Kernel India Pale Ale which had been deemed too yeasty and not quite the right flavour to be sold for drinking.  I haven’t done any experiments on the effect of yeast on brevibacterium linens growth, but it seems to work pretty well!

Kernel washed Golden Cenarth

Mootown cheese recently launched the cheese under the name “Bermondsey Spa” (it was previously called “London Gold”, which I preferred), and it’s available on their stall every Saturday in Northcross Road.  I would heartily recommend you give it a try, as it really is quite exceptional – you might even get one that I washed!

Rennet Type Experiments – The Background

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amateur cheese, animal rennet, ayrshire milk, calf rennet, camembert, cheese, cheese making, diy, ewe rennet, food, goats milk, guernsey milk, jersey milk, kid rennet, organic, raw milk, rennet, salt, sea salt, vegetarian rennet

Rennet is one of the most fascinating elements of cheese making.  It is often portrayed as a magical chemical which turns milk from a liquid into a solid, but the reality is it’s actually a very natural process.

When a calf suckles milk from it’s mother, the milk it ingests is solidified by enzymes in it’s 4th stomach, allowing the milk to be retained in the stomach long enough for digestion to occur.

Where rennet comes from

The story goes that rennet was originally discovered by accident, when travelers used stomach linings as canteens to transport milk, and noticed that with sufficient temperature, the milk would turn solid.

Wikipedia describes rennet as follows:

Natural calf rennet is extracted from the inner mucosa of the fourth stomach chamber (the abomasum) of slaughtered young, unweaned calves.

Over the years, this process has been refined to use only the required enzymes in the stomach to coagulate the milk, but the process has remained the same.  Recently, there has been a focus towards vegetarian rennet, either from natural sources (nettles, or any other weak acid), or artificially created in a laboratory.  Even those cheese makers who still use animal rennet have mostly switched to generic animal rennet, rather than using extracts from a specific animal.

THE EXPERIMENT

Following on from my experiments into milk type, salt type and rennet quantity, I thought it would be interesting to perform an experiment to compare different types of rennet.  My aim is to find whether there is a discernible difference in the cheese produced in terms of yield, texture and flavour.

Each rennet was kindly provided by Jaap of Jongia, who also runs the excellent Cheese Making Shop, and has this to say:

Rennet is not a chemical, it is an ingredient

The types of rennet I used were as follows:

1. Vegetarian Rennet (available here)

Vegetarian rennet

This rennet is microbial, although some vegetarian rennets are genetically engineered.  There are some interesting notes on microbial rennet on BioRen’s site,  although they are heavily biased, since they produce animal rennet.

2. Generic Animal Rennet (available here)

Generic animal rennet

Generic animal rennet generally comes calves, although may contain other animal extracts.  It’s termed as “Super Industrial Strength”, although the dosage instructions are similar to the other rennets in the experiment.

3. Premium Animal Rennet

Premium natural animal rennet

Available from BioRen, this rennet is produced exclusively from the stomachs of young calves, and extracted into liquid form.

4. Calf Rennet Paste (liquid form available here)

Calf rennet paste

Another rennet from BioRen, it should naturally be more adept at coagulating cow’s milk, with the description citing “spicier and tastier maturation flavours”.  The paste form makes it slightly more tricky to work with than liquid rennet due to the difficulty of getting it into a syringe.

5. Lamb Rennet Paste (available here)

Lamb rennet paste

From BioRen again, termed “Semi-Piccante” it’s said to give a spicier flavour than normal rennet when used with ewe or even cow cheese.

6. Kid Rennet Paste (available here)

Kid rennet paste

The final rennet from BioRen, said to impart a typical goat cheese flavour to all types of milk.

So that’s the background, now on with the cheese making!

Milk Type Experiments – The Results

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amateur cheese, animal rennet, ayrshire milk, camembert, cheese, cheese making, diy, diyfood, ellies dairy, food, goat milk, goats milk, guernsey milk, jersey milk, jess's ladies, local, organic, raw milk, salt, sea salt, urban cheese, vegetarian rennet

The cheeses I made using different milks have been maturing for 14 days, so its time to crack them open for a tasting session!

Cheese made from different milks

From top left to right: Ellie’s Dairy raw goat milk, Ivy House Jersey mixed with Ellie’s Dairy raw goat milk, Ivy House Jersey milk, Taste the Difference Jersey milk, Sainsbury’s Basic whole milk.

The first thing to note is that there is a fair bit of natural blue mould growth this time around.  I used the mild white mould geotrichum candidum rather than the aggressive penicillium camembertii as I wanted the flavour to develop naturally and aggressive moulds can overtake the flavour.  However, being less aggressive, geotrichum candidum can also act as a blank canvas for other moulds to grow on.

Since I had no idea what moulds would develop (good / bad), I decided to take on this tasting on my own, rather than sharing around any potential illness – all in the name of cheese science!

Ellie’s Dairy Raw Goat

Ellie's Dairy raw goat

First up, the Ellie’s Dairy raw goat milk cheese – note the mottled rind, which is remarkably thin, rather than the thick, leathery coat of the previous cheeses I’ve made.

Ellie's Dairy raw goat cheese cut open

Cutting it open shows a beautiful white curd, with the rind under a millimetre thick. In the firm paste, the flavour is huge – smooth and goaty, with just a hint of butteryness.  The natural blue mould adds a little aftertaste which is quite interesting.

Ellie’s Dairy Raw Goat & Ivy House pasteurised Jersey mix

Jersey & goat curd mixed

Next up, an experiment in itself – when the St Helen’s farm goat milk failed to coagulate at all, I decided to mix up a couple of the curds – Jersey and goat.  These are two completely different types of milk, so I didn’t really know what would happen.  Jersey is full of fat, and a bright yellow colour, whereas goat curd is less fatty, and sheer white.  Note that this cheese shows both natural blue and non-natural fluffy white mould, due to cross-contamination between another batch in the same fridge.

Jersey / goat mixed curd cheese

How cool does that look?!  The Jersey curd was showing a yellow, broken down line right the way through the cheese.  Interestingly, the Jersey curd had reduced a lot in depth – when I ladelled them they were pretty much equal, but after maturing, it seems the white paste of the goat milk dominates.

Cutting into the cheese it’s obvious that something’s not quite right with it.  The skin is very slippery, and almost seems detached from the the paste inside.  Scooping up the slice as best I could, with a dribble of Jersey seeping out, I bit into it.  The flavour wasn’t altogether unpleasant, it just wasn’t very nice.  The pastes were so different, with the fatty Jersey wrapping round the goat flavour and making it a bit acrid.

Ivy House Farm pasteurised Jersey

Ivy House Farm cheese

Ivy House Farm Jersey cheese next.  The skin was a little bit loose from the inner paste, with a slight yellow breakdown below the rind.

Ivy House Farm cheese

The paste itself was quite firm, with a buttery, mild flavour, followed by a pleasant aftertaste.  The fatty breakdown below the rind softened it even further, making it very easy to bite through.  This cheese showed least amount of natural blue mould, and ended up sitting in my (actual) fridge for a fair few days after the tasting, being consumed alongside other shop-bought cheeses.

Taste the Difference pasteurised Jersey

Taste the Difference cheese

Next up, the Taste the Difference Jersey milk, which showed a fair amount of blue mould, and surprisingly little white.  There were fairly large areas completely uncovered by natural or inoculated mould, which is a little strange.

Taste the Difference cheese

Unfortunately there’s not much to say about this cheese in terms of tasting.  It was literally so uninspiring I actually wrote down in my notes: “nothing”.

Sainsbury’s Basic

Sainsbury's Basic cheese

Cheese made from Sainsbury’s basic milk was the one I was most excited about trying.  The others – raw goat milk, good quality pasteurised cow milk – I expected to perform well, but I had no idea what would happen with this one.  The curd was weak from coagulation, but through some careful flipping and gentle handling, it prevailed with only the tiniest loss of curd, and a tiny blob of disconcertingly black mould, which I decided against eating.

Sainsbury's whole milk cheese

Seriously.  What on earth is that?!  It’s a complete mix of textures and pastes – liquid on the right hand side, yet firm and pasty on the left.  I sampled a few different areas of the cheese to see if it made a difference to the flavour, but unfortunately it didn’t.  I was really hoping that I might be able to write that the cheese was outstanding, or at least reasonable, but the reality is it was rank.  The paste was bitter, the aftertaste made me wince, not to mention the fact it smelt strangely of chlorine.

In Conclusion…

Homemade cheese tasting plate

Laid out in true cheese tasting fashion, the above plate shows clockwise from top: Ellie’s Dairy raw goat, Jersey / goat mixed curd, Ivy House Farm Jersey, Taste the Difference Jersey, Sainsbury’s Basic.

In summary I think the conclusion is clear – better quality milk gives better quality cheese.  Not exactly groundbreaking stuff, but at least now you know: don’t make cheese from bad milk, the results won’t be pretty!