What kind of cheese is beechers flagship cheese

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Reduced Fat Cheeses. Organic Cheeses. Unpasteurized Cheeses. Eastern Europe. United Kingdom. All States. Middle East. Extra Virgin Olive Oils. After the vat is filled, it's time to turn the milk into cheese by adding cultures. Beecher's uses a proprietary blend of starter cultures that convert the lactose in milk into lactic acid, neutralizing the milk's the pH and prepping it for the rennet.

Making cheese is like watching the snowball effect in action: Small initial changes have big impacts on the final product. In this case, the choice of cultures is a major factor in the final flavor of the cheese, and Beecher's, like most cheesemakers, closely guards their mix.

Flagship is based on Cheddar cultures, with some cultures used for alpine cheeses such as Swiss and Gruyere added in to give the cheese a nutty, earthy quality. Beecher's adds the cultures in a frozen state, and it takes 45 minutes of immersion in the milk for the cultures to "wake up" and begin the lactic acid fermentation.

Once the fermentation starts, it's time to add rennet, an enzyme responsible for separating the milk into solid curd and liquid whey.

It sits in the milk for about half an hour, long enough to solidify the curd but not so long as to turn it brittle. While rennet gets the process of separating curds and whey started, a little mechanical action helps the process along.

The curd needs to be cut to release the whey trapped inside. Cheesemakers drag two wire screens through the long vat; one screen has vertical wires drawn across it, the other horizontal ones.

Together the screens cut the curd into small cubes, which almost immediately leak out the yellow whey. Up until this point, the curds haven't been heated since the milk was pasteurized. Now the curds need to cook to set their structure; rennet is temperature-sensitive, so it'll only fully take effect once the cheese is heated. The cheesemakers agitate the curds during the heating process, starting slow to make ensure the curds don't retain too much moisture, then speeding up once the curds begin to set.

Steps one through five are similar for making plenty of other cheeses. But Cheddars like Flagship have their own specific steps, logically enough called cheddaring. First the cheese is moved into a second vat called the cheddaring table. Here, the whey continues to drain from the curd through a drain running down the center of the vat.

The cheesemakers then pile the small curds into two long blocks. This is where the cheddaring magic happens. Each block is cut in half lengthwise and flipped onto itself. This is intense, physical work—one cheesemaker told me that everyone at Beecher's loses 20 pounds after they start the job.

The blocks sit for about 15 minutes until the tiny individual curds meld together into loaves. Those loaves are sliced into manageable segments about six inches wide, then flipped over several times and stacked three high.

The weight of the loaves then presses out more whey and gives the finished cheese the density one expects from a good Cheddar. After several flips, the cheese reaches a target acidity and whey content. Now the loaves get milled—i. The curds then get salted, both for seasoning and to start the ripening process and lock in that Cheddar and alpine flavor.

Once the curds have fully absorbed their salt, they're ready to form blocks. Cheesecloth lines each hoop to prevent the cheese from sticking. Beecher's works closely with two local cow dairies in Duvall, Washington, that provide excellent quality milk for production. When making Flagship Reserve, Brad creates a curd with a slightly lower moisture and higher salt content than Beecher's regular Flagship cheese.

This results in a richer taste and texture, while maintaining a clean, creamy finish.