Our newest cheese looks good after three days. The Saint Marcellin is truly a stinker and we can't wait to try it homemade. If you read our notes page on this cheese you'll see that this cheese had the honor of getting kicked out of the family home in Wheatland, WY. Mom just couldn't take the smell.

 This one is a "7" out of 10 on my beloved Foot Scale (stinky feet scale). Hopefully it lives up to memory!

Tommy Reddicks
www.cheesedesert.com

So  we haven’t had this dilemma yet. But the day is fast approaching. We  recently produced a Valencay without pasteurizing the goat milk prior to  beginning the cheese making process.  This Valencay is looking really  promising.  We already don’t go into details with friends about the cheese  making process.  We have pasteurized all our other cheeses and we haven’t told them that the cheese they are consuming sits on our kitchen countertop for several days prior to it going into a 55 degree cheese cave (a converted wine fridge) where it sits for a few more weeks.  

Enter level two: non-pasteurization. Louis Pasteur originally conceived pasteurization as a way of preventing wine and beer from souring. In 1891 the first pasteurizers were  installed in a US milk processing plant and cheese has been around much longer, so pasteurization can’t be essential to making cheese.  In this day and age of hand sanitizers, are my friends ready for our Valencay?  Tonight my husband declared this Valencay as our best batch ever (and it isn’t pasteurized). 

So my friends, will you sample my cheese?  It’s killer…

Kelly Wensing, www.cheesedesert.com

The Valencay cheese is a peculiar goat's milk cheese. Not only does it need to sit out at room temperature for up to 72 hours, it then gets coated with ash (see our latest young Valencay cheeses from this evening's ashing). Most of us think of milk products turning into monstrous moldy nightmares after being left at room temp for 3 days. But, milk is a curious thing. 

I'm always left wondering who invented cheeses like these. But when you think about what folks had back in the old days (middle ages) it actually makes sense. In a time of no refrigeration, milk was left to turn into all sorts of interesting things (good or bad). Eventually, hunger and economy took over and what didn't kill you became tomorrow's dinner. 

So, let's give a shout out to the folks who tried the old gross sticky, moldy, milk! Way to go old guys and gals! Those of you who navigated day-to-day milk roulette  and intestinal trauma paved the way for cheese freaks worldwide to make really smelly stuff that not only tastes good, but won't kill you!

Things are truly special when our cheese cave is opened for each day's washing and turning. The smell takes over the kitchen and wafts upstairs to the 2nd level.In my most sweaty teenage days, my feet never had such a stout impact on the home.  That's special stuff! But, the question remains, "What is a good cheese smell (gloriously stinky) verses a bad (harmful) cheese smell?"

The answer is fairly simple. If it smells sulfuric, or ammoniated, it's gone over to the dark side. If it smells like bad socks, it's probably good. There is an aromatic "old moldy house" quality to stinky cheese that is an acquired taste (for the nose that is). Happy scenting!

Tommy Reddicks & Kelly Wensing
www.cheesedesert.com