Making Sheep's Cheese

During February I spent a few weeks making cheese at Ram Hall Dairy, near Coventry. This was one of my chosen work experiance placements for the School of Artisan Food.

    Some of Ram Hall's Friesland Sheep making their way to the milking parlour                                             

Ram Hall Farm is part of the Berkswell estate, comprising of 600 acres of permanent pasture and arable land. The farm is tenanted by Peter and Shelia Fletcher and is now run by their son, Stephan who made the decision to stop farming dairy cows in the late 80s due to falling liquid milk prices. Stephan started to build up a flock of dairy sheep for liquid milk sales, whilst his mother, Sheila went on a cheese making course at Nantwich, where she learnt how to make Caerphilly. After a couple of years building up the milking flock, the Fletchers found themselves with a surplus of milk, causing the cheese production to expand. Until this point, Shelia had been making small batches of cheese, about 12 a day, in buckets in the farmhouse kitchen. Soon the family found they needed a full time cheese maker in order to give the required attention to the cheese. One of the relief milkers, Linda Dutch was interested and went of a cheese making course, and Berkswell cheese was born!

Berkswell Cheese at Neal's Yard Dairy                         

                                                     

Almost 20 years later, and Berkswell has become know as one of the best Sheep's milk cheeses in the UK, a cheesey household name!

Whilst I was at Ram Hall, around 300 Sheep were being milked, giving enough milk to make around  300 cheeses a week, each weighing between 2-2.5kg.

Making Berkswell is hard work, but enormous fun! The curds are cut and scalded before being scooped out of the vats and squeezed, pressed and filled into the colanders. After a few days of turning the cheeses in the mould to allow for even drainage of whey and uniform shape, salt is rubbed on to each side of the cheese. The cheeses absorb the salt, over the next few days before being washed, and taken into a temperature and humidity controlled drying room for a week, and then into one of the cool maturing rooms, where the cheeses sit on wooded shelves for 4-6 months.

A few of the hundreds of Berkswell Cheeses maturing in the cheese store



In the maturing rooms, the cheeses grow wonderful rinds of multiple harmless moulds and yeasts, adding an indervidual character and unique aspect to every cheese.

No two batches of Berkswell taste the same, one of the exciting qualities which constantly draws me to artisan cheeses. I tried an 11 month old cheese, a cheese made in March the previous year when the sheep were on silage. It had an almost granular texture, like that of an aged Pecorino, but with extraordinarily complex and deep flavours: nutty, toasty, lanolin and savoury. In contrast I tried a cheese made in July when the sheep were grazing on ancient pastures surrounding the farm. A moister cheese, tasting of sweet hay and summer meadows but with a lively, fruity acidity. Both very different but equally wonderful cheeses.