Cheesy does it

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Liz Hands takes a turn at cheesemaking, courtesy of the team at Northumberland Cheese Company

If you buy wheel number 06722 of the Northumberland Cheese Company Reiver you’re in for a treat. I like to think it’s going to taste extra special as its been made (well almost) by my own fair hand.

We’re wearing particularly fetching blue plastic hats and ponchos while peering into a metal vat full of cows’ milk, which has travelled just a oj6a5741mile from its source on the Blagdon Estate. It may not be the best outfit when it comes to making a fashion statement, but it’s worth it for the experience at Northumberland Cheese Company.

Besides, we wouldn’t dare argue with our tour guide. If production manager Martin Atkinson tells us to wear something, we wear it. A Navy chef who served on the flagship vessel of the Falklands War, HMS Hermes, Martin went on to HMS Invincible, sailing around the Med. He and the crew were about to set off for the Bahamas when the Gulf War broke out and he had to change course. “You do see and hear some action,” says Martin, “but thankfully I was in the galley”.

After 25 years he changed course again and what Martin doesn’t know about cheese probably isn’t worth knowing. Who knew, for example, that the brine used to age cheese is so highly prized? The same brine is used year-upon-year as, such is the high salt content, there’s no unwanted bacterial growth. The brine is the cheese equivalent of the oak barrels used to age wine.

But before rounds of the likes of Cheviot, Reiver or Hadrian bathe in brine, there’s a well-honed process to go through. It all starts with the milk. Cows’ milk from Blagdon, goats’ milk from Cumbria, Jersey milk from Wheelbirks in Stocksfield and sheeps’ milk from suppliers across the UK is pumped into a holding tank before it is piped into two vast vats.

Northumberland Cheese Company has been making farmhouse cheeses since 1984, moving to its home in a 19th Century granary on the Blagdon Estate in 1996.

“We pasteurise ourselves because we want to take control of the whole process,” says Martin. “We don’t want to bash our milk up. We heat to 63 degrees before cooling. We used to use a heat pump that came from Rothbury Swimming Pool but we’ve now upgraded our equipment.

“The milk automatically starts heating up at 3.30am and the lads get in at 6am to start working with it. The hot water from that vat is then pumped to the next to save energy. It’s amazing what you can make with milk, starter culture, rennet and salt. It’s about how you juggle those ingredients. Little changes can make a huge difference to the end product. Once our goats’ milk was a bit gassy and it was because the supplier had started to use a cheaper feed. We had to ask them to go back to the original.”

PH levels are regularly checked to make sure alkaline levels are just so before the cutting begins with multi-bladed cheese knives. “Left to right and right to left,” says Martin. “It’s about the cleanliness of the cut. You want to capture the curd and get rid of the whey. The farmer on the estate here takes the whey and spreads it on the fields as fertiliser.”

Curds are cut either into rice or baked bean sizes or 2cm cubes, depending on which cheese is being made. For my Reiver, it’s baked beans. Bending over the vats and pushing the cheese into moulds is back breaking work. The cheese is left to compress under its own weight before going into mechanical presses.

Although, says cheese maker Craig Smith, “I’ve learned the hard way not to turn the pressure up too high to begin with, otherwise all the rounds fire out at you and, believe me, it hurts.”

oj6a5683One pressed, cheese is left to bob away in aged brine. It might be sent for smoking at MacKenzies Smokehouse in North Yorkshire for extra flavour. “We did use a smokehouse which also smoked kippers,” says Martin, “but the cheese came back with a distinctly fishy tang.” Or it might already have its flavours added in; nettle is most popular. The latest cheese here is the black waxed Northumberlandia, the black used to signify its North East heritage, with its history of coal mining.

If it is to finish life as blue cheese, mould added during production is pierced through. The ripening room which holds white-moulded cheese smells horrendous, the unmistakable mustinesss catching you in the back of the throat as you go in. “The only thing I’m missing really is a cave,” says Martin.

Every wheel of cheese is turned on its storeroom shelf every week by hand so it matures and settles at an even rate. Wedges are cut by hand too. Every batch has to pass a strict taste test before it is sold. Let’s just hope number 06722 makes the grade.

Recipe: Apple and Kielder Jersey milk cheesecake 

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