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Thank You IRT!

4/13/2013

Our Latest GoJack at the IRT Party in East Indy.

Thanks to all of the wonderful folks from IRT who tried our cheeses and shared such positive feedback. It seems the latest GoJack was all the rave tonight as this Cow-Goat milk washed-rind blend was a very yummy appetizer for all.

The latest Manchego did not go unnoticed, and our Rebclechon, althought the smallest of the three on display this evening was a closet favorite of the hosts, Mike and Jeannie Dinius!

Cheers to everyone. What a great event and an awesome season at IRT!

For those who were interested in more, send us an email by clicking here.

Tommy Reddicks
www.cheesedesert.com

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Stink Factor 10!

4/7/2013

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We found new heights in the family fridge with four St. Marcellin's, 3 Reblechons, our new GoJack, and our Chevre. Those St. Marcellin's are leading the charge, and there is no stopping their ability to make our fridge smell like a European Cheese Store.

I love it...but I'm on a bit of an Island with that thought!

God bless stinky cheese!!

Tommy Reddicks
www.cheesedesert.com

2 Comments

"Go Jack" is Back!

3/3/2013

1 Comment

We've named our half-cow, half-goat jack cheese, "Go Jack". The first run of this cheese was so wonderful that is has found its way into our regular rotation. And, in the winter months when goat's milk is harder to come by, this cheese allows us to use smaller amounts of goat and still produce a quality cheese.

This picture is about 9 hours int the process. It's just out of the press (8 pounds for 7 hours) and freshly salted. It'll sit at room temp for 24 hours and then head into the cave for daily turning.

We'll share back in late March or early April when we taste this beauty.

Tommy Reddicks
www.cheesedesert.com

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St. Marcellin Still Going!

1/16/2013

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After a small break in Cancun, we are getting ramped up for winter cheese production. We taste-tested our first St. Marcellin on Christmas Day. While young, it was very tasty. The cool little crocs have been softening for four weeks now. Six weeks is our target. They look and smell wonderful at four, so hopefully the results in early February will be worthy of the wait!

Tommy Reddicks
www.cheesedesert.com

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Stinky Cheese = Christmas Joy

12/23/2012

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Our latest batch of St. Marcellin has moved from the cave to the fridge in their new ceramic crock homes (pictured here). These beauties will spend the next few days softening up under plastic wrap before a Christmas tasting. These cheeses can age in the fridge for up to six weeks. For us though, Tuesday will be our first day of tasting. There is no sense in not enjoying the spoils of our work on Christmas Day!

Our Christmas Dinner Menu: Reblechon, Valencay, St. Marcellin, Herbed Chevre, Fromage Blanc, Chorizo, Salami, Fresh Fruit, Artisan Sourdough, Oil & Balsamic for dipping, and a couple select Christmas wines. Yum!
Happy holidays everyone!

Tommy Reddicks & Kelly Wensing
www.cheesedesert.com

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Taste Tests Bring on Great Suffering!

12/8/2012

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We had the pleasure of taste-testing one of our latest Reblechons today. This one finished well, but started out a bit too humid. If you've been following our previous posts on humidity, you know we've been adjusting to the more humid fall indoors (40% rh indoors in Indy this year). This led to a very tender and thin rind, which needed extra babying during washing. We saved this cheese from near-death by fixing the humidity issue early. If left to it's early humid track, the rind would have over-molded, and would have lost its ability to support the cheese.

In the end all worked out okay, and the reward was today's taste test. It had a great salty-butter outer rind with a nice buttery cream paste on the inside. Admittedly, I ate about a third of this round in a sitting before wrapping for later.

A taste test is indeed great suffering, but someone has to ensure quality control!!

Today we start a new batch of FETA. We're also excited to start a batch of St. Marcellin. It's a cows milk cheese made in smaller molds and finished in 4 small ceramic crocks. This was a cheese that always made appearances at our cheese parties. For whatever reason, we saved our ceramic crocs from those days in Colorado. Now they enable us to put the true finishing touch on this oozy gooey stinker!

Tommy Reddicks
www.cheesedesert.com

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The End of Raw Milk??

12/3/2012

5 Comments

Goat's milk Valencay

Say it isn't so!

Our friend Anna has informed us that there is a new bit of legislation being introduced that could either stop the sale of raw milk in Indiana or open up sales statewide with better safety standards. (Click here to view the link she shared with us.) I sure hope for the latter!

While there is plenty to be made from store-bought milk, access to raw milk enables the home cheese maker to really perfect the craft without having to own a farm! Speaking of farms, a shout out must go to Copper Creek Farms in Kokomo. We own a herd share through Copper Creek and they provide us with raw goat's milk weekly. From that great raw product we are able t produce our Valencay cheese (pictured here looking spectacular after 6 days in the cave). So, here's to hoping the law bends our direction and opens up further avenues for home cheese makers statewide!

Tommy Reddicks
www.cheesedesert.com

5 Comments

Primordial Ooze

11/27/2012

1 Comment

The ooze of tonight's Reblechon at temperature.

Abiogenesis is the theory of how biological life could arise from inorganic matter through natural processes. This Darwinian spontaneous generation theory utilized a concept of Primordial Soup or Primordial Ooze as the basis by saying that this "ooze" or "soup" was a collection of key ingredients needing only the right catalyst to spontaneously generate living matter. Lost yet? Well, this sounds an awful lot like the beauty of the chemistry behind oozy, ripening cheese. Cheese is nothing more than a collection of ingredients and conditions that appear to just spontaneously form, grow, and break down. And amazingly enough, many of the ingredients described by early scientists as being necessary for Primordial Ooze (ammonia, phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity, etc) are key to the creation of ooze in cheese. That's not all. There are more primordial connections to this story.

Guess who finally dispelled the theory of Abiogenesis (or spontaneous generation)? It was none other than Milk's Grandfather, Louis Pasteur himself. That's right. Pasteur conducted bacterial experiments (along the way to his pasteurization process) that proved that generation from static compounds or combinations cannot occur without reaction from an outside living force (in his case, outside bacteria). Pasteur said the following in 1864 after his biogenesis experiments with bacteria, "Never will the doctrine of spontaneous generation recover from the mortal blow struck by this simple experiment." And just like that, Darwin had begun to lose key scientific ground. His nemesis...ooze.

But wait, there's more! Just when we thought Primordial Ooze was a dead theory, scientists studying the deep oceans still coin the phase "Primordial Ooze" to represent the layer of ooze at the bottom of deep oceans (2 miles or more deep). Historically connected to Abiogenesis, this "ooze" today is a combination of decomposing plant material and animal matter, silt, ingredients like ammonia, phosphorus, sulfur, and of course salt (sound familiar?). Of course there are still theorists that claim many of the great unsolved scientific mysteries surrounding origins of life have yet to be explained because the answers lie hidden underwater. It's hard to argue that point when thousands of new species are discovered every year in the deep oceans, and-

WAIT!!

What's this got to do with cheese you say?

It's simple. Ooze is gross, cool, yucky, sticky, fun, ever so mysterious, and for whatever reason scientifically significant. It can gross us out or excite us, and scientists in multiple disciplines have tried to argue that all life itself came from ooze. Some scientists say deep-ocean ooze represents origins of our species, and other simply credit it as the lifeblood of a healthy ocean (settling and upwelling). And then there is Louis. Louis Pasteur studied ooze with great intention, and today's cheese would not be the same without his "ooze-work". And last but not least, cheese fans will tell you that the gooey ooze of a perfectly ripe cheese can be a wonderful reason for living.

Now, time to go finish that Reblechon...

Tommy Reddicks
www.cheesedesert.com

1 Comment

Thank You IRT!

Stink Factor 10!

"Go Jack" is Back!

St. Marcellin Still Going!

Stinky Cheese = Christmas Joy

Taste Tests Bring on Great Suffering!

The End of Raw Milk??

Primordial Ooze

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