Next Meeting: June 18 at Kennebec Cheesery
Our next meeting will take place on Monday, June 18th at the Kennebec Cheesery hosted by Jean Koons. The meeting will take place between 10am and 2pm. Directions will be posted about a week before the meeting
Guild ACS Opportunities For 2012
–Once again the Guild will pay for your FIRST ACS competition entry ($60 per entry — you need to be an ACS member to enter)
—the deadline for on-time competition entries is May 18th, so if you haven’t already submitted your entry forms, do so soon, and then send Mark Whitney your receipt for reimbursement.
–Once again the Guild will help pay for shipping your entries — up to $50 per participating Guild member. Once you have notified the Guild that you will be sending entries, we will attempt to coordinate a best and most cost-effective means of transport.
–This year the Guild will reimburse ONE Guild cheese maker for an ACS Level 1 Professional membership (a $199 value).
—To qualify to be chosen to receive this free membership for 2012 please respond to this email me your name and say “Add Me For A Free Membership” in the body of the email BEFORE Sunday, May 13th and your name will go into a hat. The randomly chosen member will be notified, and once they get receipt for joining the ACS the Guild will reimburse them.
–Once again The Guild wants to send up to FOUR Guild members to the ACS Conference for the full conference experience. The Guild will offer scholarships of at least $900 in expenses toward attending, which will cover the Conference fee of $465 plus some of the travel and lodging expenses.
—To obtain a scholarship email me your name and write “Add Me For A Conference Scholarship” in the body of the email BEFORE Sunday, May 13th and your name will pass on to all non-entered board members who will vote for the four Guild scholarship winners. If fewer than four Guild members apply for the scholarships, the total scholarship money will divided among the attending Guild winners up to but not exceeding their total expenses. The scholarship winners will each be responsible for at least one newsletter article about their conference experience, and for bringing as much of the information they’ve gathered back to future Guild meetings.
–The scholarship winners will be notified on Monday, May 14th so that they can register for the conference BEFORE the early bird deadline of May 23rd.
Guild Statement Related To Local Food Ordinances
The Maine Cheese Guild stands by it’s Quality Statement, issued in May 2009, with regard to the Local Food Ordinance proposals we have seen, and to the legislative bills introduced for the 2011 session (LD330 and LD366).
Our testimony against LD330, given to the Joint Standing Committee on Agriculture, Conservation, and Forestry at the March hearing on this bill follows:
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Rennet Workshops May 6th
Posted by JessieDowling in Learning on February 28th, 2012
Rennet Harvesting and Goat Kid Butchering Workshop
Every year, dairy farmers are faced with what to do with the male offspring of their cows, sheep, and goats. Come learn one creative way to use this resource and preserve one of the vital cheesemaking ingredients yourself. Participants will learn how to slaughter, butcher, and harvest rennet from a goat kid.
March 25 at Appleton Creamery in Appleton, 10am – 4pm (CONCLUDED)
May 6 at Fuzzy Udder Creamery/South Paw Farm in Unity, 10am – 4pm
$25-$75 workshop fee, sliding scale. Please email fuzzyudder@gmail.com to register or more information about work-trade/scholarships, or call 948-5268
Food Security Fears Discussed
At our last meeting (May 7th at Fuzzy Udder Creamery in Unity) we had a guest join our group — G. W. Martin, of Montville, who had worked to get his town to adopt the “Food Sovereignty Ordinance” that several other towns in Maine have passed in the last few years. He also marched on the State House on April 17th in support of “Farmer Brown” who is being prosecuted for selling unlicensed dairy products to the public. Martin had been invited to the Guild meeting by Jessie Dowling of Fuzzy Udder to try to provide some perspective to the Guild about the concern of food producers and farmers who feel that state licensing is an impediment to supporting their local communities by producing food for their neighbors.
Even though the discussion was not on the agenda for the meeting, there was a lot of interest expressed by the group to hear from Martin about his perspective, as well as to educate Martin about why the Guild has adopted a Quality Statement insisting that state licensing be the minimum level of oversight for any commercial cheese maker in Maine to insure the quality of their products.
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UMaine Dairy Research 2012
Posted by BethCalder in Guild on May 10th, 2012
Beth Calder worked on a collaborative research project with Barbara Brooks, Seal Cove Farm, and her colleagues at the UMaine Department of Food Science & Human Nutrition. Their graduate student worked on a product development project to incorporate fish oils into soft goat cheese. The research was published and picked up by IFT News, which is an international Food Science organization. To read more, please visit this web site: http://www.ift.org/newsroom/news-releases/2012/february/16/fish-oil.aspx.
UMaine Workshops in June 2012
Posted by BethCalder in Learning on May 10th, 2012
A Sanitation Workshop will be held at UMaine on June 5, 2012. Although not dairy specific, it is a great refresher course on general sanitation for the food industry. A separate workshop for meat and poultry HACCP will be held at UMaine on June 19 and 20, 2012. For more information and to register online, please visit this web site: http://umaine.edu/food-health/food-safety/sanitation-and-haccp-workshops/.
Cheesemaker wanted
Posted by silverymoon in Guild, Learning, Opportunities on May 9th, 2012
Silvery Moon Creamery at Smiling Hill Farm in Westbrook, Maine is looking for a cheesemaker, preferably full time. Learn all steps in the cheese making process: basics about different cheese families and how they are made, affinage, packaging, and marketing. Reliability and attention to detail are a must. Hard, rigorous work, early mornings, long days, but rewarding. Physically demanding. Experience in cheesemaking a plus. For more information and to apply, please email info@silverymooncheese.com
News About Raw Milk Oversight at Federal Level
Posted by Monroe Cheese Studio in News on April 25th, 2012
In March 2012 the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) released the results of a study titled “Nonpasteurized Dairy Products, Disease Outbreaks, and State Laws—United States, 1993–2006″ which is now posted on their web site.
In response to this report, the American Cheese Society issued a “Statement on the Safety of Raw Milk Cheese” which put some of the findings of the CDC study into context, as well as made corrections to some of its statements (such as that it is illegal to sell raw milk cheese in the US). Among the assertions in the ACS statement are: “Raw milk cheese, when produced and sold under current FDA guidelines, can be consumed without unnecessary risk” when that cheese is produced under the following circumstances:
- producing cheese in licensed facilities that are routinely inspected on the local, regional, and
federal level - producing cheese under the oversight of licensed dairy handlers
- aging cheese for a minimum of 60 days before it is sold
According to the ACS’s latest newsletter: “In light of continued scrutiny, and with the goal of helping cheesemakers adhere to the highest standards of cheesemaking, ACS’s Regulatory & Academic Committee is at work compiling Best Practices for Cheesemakers. This document, as well as a related Best Practices for Retailers document, will serve as a resource for the industry to ensure awareness of current regulations and requirements, and to provide tools that can be implemented to meet those requirements.”
Now, We’ve Got The Blues
Posted by Monroe Cheese Studio in Events, Guild, Learning on April 24th, 2012
The British Blue Cheese Workshop led by Kathy Biss from West Highland Dairy in Scotland took place last weekend and the participating Guild members all took a lot away from it — information as well as workshop cheese that they will now age!
We made four recipes in two different milks for contrast:
- Blue Leicester — goats milk
- Ascaig Blue — cows milk
- Strathdon Blue — goats and cows milk
- Lymeswold — goats and cows milk
The first two are made with scalded curd for a firmer texture, more mechanical holes, and longer aging potential. The last two have a much higher moisture content, and the Lymeswold actually incorporates a bloomy rind with the blue interior, though it will age no more than four to six weeks.
The contrast between all of these recipes provided and excellent background on what is needed to adapt any recipe to a blue recipe, and how to work with Penicillium roqueforti, which digests the milk fats for its distinctive flavors, but requires oxygen to grow. That’s why piercing cheese wheels is necessary to allow blue to grow inside.
As with any workshop, much of the information applied to cheese making of all kinds, and most importantly what to do when your make isn’t progressing the way you would like. In this case we needed to re-warm the buckets in which we were making the Strathdon Blue on the second day because the acid was not developing, which was evident because the curd was slow to reach the right texture.
Overall a great experience for Maine (and beyond Maine) cheese makers.
Kathy Biss will return the following weekend to lead a workshop on making Hard British Cheeses.
Monroe Cheesemaker Ruffles Some Feathers
Posted by Monroe Cheese Studio in Guild, News on April 19th, 2012
Last weeks some folks in the Guild asked if I would go to the State House when the Farmer Brown supports marched on April 17th to provide the prospective of a licensed dairy processor.
There was a bunch of media there for the march (much of it was there for the Governor’s signing of new domestic violence laws earlier in the day), and I was interviewed after the media finished talking with the demonstrators. Here are links (WLBZ, and WABI) to the two stories that have been broadcast on TV news so far about the issue.
(I made it clear to reports that I was also President of the Maine Cheese Guild and that I supported the Guild’s Quality Statement, but so far they have preferred to identify me only as the owner of Monroe Cheese Studio.)
Use the comments section to let me know what you think.
How do you wash your cheese?
Posted by silverymoon in Learning on April 10th, 2012
I am washing some cheese wheels with beer or mead. Glengarry used to carry sponges for washing cheese, but they discontinued and now only carry brushes. I cannot find sponges at other cheesemaking suppliers (New England Cheesemaking, Dairy Connection) or dairy processing suppliers (Nelson Jameson, Weber Scientific). Supermarket sponges might be treated with antimicrobials (like triclosan), so I want to avoid them. Do you wash any of your cheeses? If so - what do you use, do you like it, where to you get it? Thank you for any information!
