Utah's peak cheese season

[Darrington Danny]

So i had a customer ask me today when the peak of cheese season was i
of course relied everyday is the best day to enjoy cheese and then
began to wonder when is utah's grasses prime for producing great
cheese? when would Utah's best season for grazing and milking be? any
one know?

[e...@nahmo.com]

If they're referring to when the best time for eating the cheese would be,
that would also depend upon the cheese. There will be seasonal differences
with the milk (I'm sure Jen and Pete can answer that bit more specific in
regards to their cows here) depending on what the cows are eating... and
thus depending upon what time of year the cheeses are formed that will
affect the taste of the product we get to sell.

So each cheese will have it's own season too, really. All depending on how
long it's aged... usually spring-milk-made cheeses having more desireable
characteristics... for instance, why Stilton is such a wonderful winter
cheese (aside from it's richness and friendliness to port wine): you're
getting wheels that have been made from springtime milk... where the cows
are gorging themselves on luscious green grass after their wintering hay
diet.

On the other hand, some cheeses will be fairly uniform year-round...
especially the larger factory-produced cheeses like havarti and jarlsberg
and the like... where you're getting a very homogenized milk to begin
with.

But to answer your question specifically regarding Utah cheeses, I leave
that answer to our friends at Beehive and Rock Hill :)

Cheers,

Emiliano Lee
Cheese Monger
Salt Lake City, UT

[Tim Welsh]

We make cheese from the milk of a single Dairy called Wadeland South in West
Ogden. They have Jersey cows which produce the richest (containing the
highest butterfat) of any cow breed. We do not standardize our milk, which
means that we take the milk directly from the dairy and make cheese. The
milk changes with the season, in the winter, the butterfat goes up and in
the summer, the butterfat goes down. This greatly affects the yield that we
get from milk to cheese. In the winter, we can get as much as 600 lbs from
a batch and in the summer, it can be as low as 400 lbs. From the summer
milk, we make our aged cheeses as the lower fat cheeses age much better for
us. Our cheese curds tend to taste better with higher fat milk from the
winter, and we'll typically age our winter milk cheeses for a shorter period
of time..Our Dairy farm has 350 acres of alfalfa, so much of the feed used
comes from the farm. In the Spring, with the first cutting of the alfalfa,
we find a sweetness in the milk. Bottom-line, the milk changes with the
seasons and so does the cheese. It is a matter of personal taste as to when
our cheese is best. But is always changing. Just keep the cows out of the
garlic patch, Napoleon would be able to tell :)

/tim

[Jen at Rockhill]

Sorry I'm late in replying. First, I love Danny's reply-- that every
day is the best day to enjoy cheese.
I would also ditto what Emi and Tim have already said. There are
definitely seasonal changes in butter fat levels in the cows' milk.
That is dependent on their feed and the length of lactation of the
cows among other factors. Right now, for instance, our cows' milk is
higher in butter fat than it was two months ago. The weather is
getting colder and the cows tend to hunker down and produce slightly
less milk which raises the butter fat. Also, several of our cows are
getting along in their lactation, so they are again producing slightly
less milk. These lactational differences are more pronounced in our
herd since we only have six cows. When two cows are slowing down, that
affects one-third of our milk supply!
There is also the factor of when each particular cheese is at its
peak. It has taken us many years to finally settle in on this
question. While we love our young cheeses (the Dark Canyon is very
creamy at 2 months) we really love our cheeses with a little age on
them. We think now that our Snow Canyon is best at nine months and our
Wasatch Mountain at seven months. As you can imagine, since we make
raw milk cheeses and can't taste a product for 60 days, it's a lot of
trial and error to tweak recipes and then wait a minimum of 2 months
before we can assess the impact of those changes. Being a cheese maker
has definitely taught me patience!
Regarding the flavors of springtime grasses affecting the flavor of
cheeses. There is no doubt that cows love it when they are put out on
pasture after a long winter. (As a side note, it is absolutely a
joyful experience to see our "girls" running and kicking up their
heels with their huge udders swinging when they first get put out.)
Speaking only for myself, I'm not sure I have a discriminating enough
palate to taste the grass in the milk and the cheese. But then, that's
why we appreciate you cheese mongers for being that bridge between us,
the cheese makers, and our customers.
Jen


On Oct 20, 10:38 am, Darrington Danny <dasadarring...@yahoo.com>
wrote: