The art of making cheese is not new. Indeed many theories and legends abound: was cheese first made as far back as 7000BC? During the Neolithic period, as man started to breed livestock, domesticated animals were milked and this milk gradually turned sour, separated into curds and whey and eventually became cheese.

Or was it when a nomadic Middle Eastern wanderer filled a saddlebag with milk to enjoy on his travels? The bag was made from the stomach of a young animal (a lamb?), which, when combined with the heat of the sun, caused the milk to coagulate and the whey to separate from the curd. The effects caused by the movement of the horse broke up the curd into smaller pieces and when our friendly nomad stopped for a refreshing drink he discovered clear whey and jelly-like white lumps. For reasons of his own, out of either courage or desperation, our travelling pioneer tasted these new “creations” only to discover that the whey was drinkable and the curds were edible.

Whatever the true birth of the art of cheesemaking, there is documented proof that it is very early indeed: archaeological finds across Europe and the Middle East show evidence of milk curdling equipment; passages referring to cheese can be found in the Bible and in Homer’s “The Odyssey”, as well as in texts by Aristotle and Pythagoras amongst others.

However, and this may surprise a few people, in all this time, in spite of many technical and scientific advances, the principles of cheesemaking have not changed a great deal. That does not mean that we spend our days riding on horseback around Beechmount Farm with saddlebags full of milk, waiting for it to turn into curds and whey. Nor do we store our Cashel Blue and Crozier Blue cheeses in caves on shelves next to bread, waiting for it to turn mouldy and for this mould to “jump” across to the cheese (another legend, this one unique to blue cheese).

It still takes just 4 ingredients to make cheese: milk (the most common being cow’s, sheep’s or goat’s, but cheese is also made from buffalo, mare, yak, camel etc.), an acidifying agent (generally referred to as starter culture), rennet (a coagulating agent which can be of animal, vegetable or microbial origin) and salt (used both for adding flavour and as a preservative). Anything else is most likely either to add to the flavour, or to the look, or indeed for both of these. In the case of our cheeses, Cashel Blue and Crozier Blue, we add a blue mould to our milk.

Now for the Cashel Blue specifics:

• All the milk going into our cheese is pasteurised but not homogenised, i.e. we do not further treat our milk and therefore the will be subtle differences in Cashel Blue depending on the time of the year and according to what our cows are eating.
• After pasteurisation the milk is piped into our cheese vats ready for the addition of starter culture and rennet. It is also at this stage that we add the blue mould into our milk (some blue cheese makers would add the mould at a later stage).
• Once the rennet has taken effect and the milk has coagulated, the curd is cut and turned to help separate it from the whey. We cut the curd by hand using a “cheese harp” and turn the curd, also by hand, using a shovel-shaped paddle.
• When we judge the curds to be of the required strength, we remove them from the vats and transfer them to cheese moulds for shaping. It is in mould that the curds knit together and Cashel Blue (indeed any cheese) is formed.
• Most of the whey will have been separated from the curds during the transfer to moulds. However, any residual whey present in the curds is allowed to drain out of the newly formed cheese over a period of 48 hours, assisted by turns at regular intervals. As Cashel Blue is a semi-soft cheese, this draining occurs naturally and we do not press the cheese in any way. (Harder cheeses are pressed to expel as much liquid as possible, resulting in a cheese with a higher fat content.)
• Following turning the cheese is then de-moulded and salted. To do this we are currently using brine, although in the past we have also dry salted (i.e. we rubbed salt crystals on the cheese). This is the only stage we add salt into Cashel Blue. For some cheeses (mainly hard cheeses) salt is added to the curd, i.e. pre-moulding.
• Following this period of salting Cashel Blue is pierced top and bottom with a set of stainless steel needles. Sarah Furno (our chief cheese taster and daughter of Jane and Louis Grubb) remembers as a child earning her pocket money by piercing Cashel Blue using a knitting needle. This is to allow oxygen to get into the cheese, encouraging the blue mould to form. This is the Cashel Blue way. Other blue cheese producers would have their own way of encouraging the development of blue in their cheese: some may layer their curds, sprinkling the blue mould in between layers, others impregnate their needles with mould spores, injecting them into the cheese during piercing while others again (and this is a system often used by the Stilton houses) pierce their cheeses top and bottom followed a while later by further piercing from the sides.
• After piercing Cashel Blue is then transferred to our Ripening Rooms. This is the first stage of maturation and internally we would often say that, while technically we already have made cheese, the making of Cashel Blue is not yet finished, as we have to wait for the “blueing” to occur. To achieve this we have to store the cheese rooms with cave-like conditions (i.e. a room that is constantly cool and relatively humid): our Ripening Rooms. This generally takes between two and three weeks, but varies according to the time of year, the lactation cycle of the cows and the fat content of the milk.
• A natural cheese with a natural rind! Having placed our Cashel Blue in the Ripening Rooms all we do now is wait and turn. We wait for the blue to form and we turn the cheese to ensure that any moisture loss is uniform and that the cheeses maintain their shape. We do not treat our rind in any way (i.e. we do not wax it, or coat it with any substance). As a result the rind on Cashel Blue will often have a covering of mould. However, this is on the whole the same as the mould inside the cheese and as a result is edible, if generally stronger than the rest of the cheese.
• And finally Cashel Blue is made! Once the blue veining has formed in the cheese we consider the making of Cashel Blue to be finished.
• The final step in the “making” of Cashel Blue is maturation. Once the blue has developed within the cheese a cheese from each vat made (we can make up to 6 vats at each making) is tasted and assessed for texture profile and level of acidity in order to manage the development of the cheese and to attempt to deliver Cashel Blue as you like it.

Crozier Blue is made in much a similar way, with only a few very minor changes to take into account the difference in the milk.