Advanced Cheesemaking Class - Washed Curd (Gouda Style)

River Whey Creamery is offering an Advanced Cheesemaking Class with Owner and Founder, Susan Rigg. This class will be conducted in two sessions. The first session will be for five hours in the creamery as we make an 80 gallon batch of aged ‘washed curd’ cheese. We will go through all of the steps from bringing the milk to the correct temperature for the cultures, adding cultures, renneting, fermentation and pH measurements, cutting curds, adding water and washing the curds, and then hooping and pressing. While waiting between steps, we will taste a variety of washed curd cheeses, especially Gouda and Gruyere cheeses where this method is prevalent. We will be discussing the history of these kinds of cheeses as well as methods for making other styles of hard and semi-hard cheeses.

Each participant will be allowed to pack their curds to form their own wheels which will be marked. River Whey will then age the cheeses in our temperature and humidity controlled state-of-the-art cheese caves for approximately four months. Our class-made batch of semi-hard cheese will yield nine wheels of approximately six pounds each (one for tasting on Harvest Day, and eight for the participants).

On the Friday evening of the Harvest Day all of the participants will be invited back to the creamery to hand harvest their own marked wheel, and clean them up for packaging. We will serve wine and accompaniments and taste our one wheel from the batch to see how our cheeses have matured. Each participant will then take home their own wheel of hand made aged cheese to share with their family and friends.

See drop down menu below for available dates. The first date is the the day of the hands on class and the second date is the day of the Harvest Celebration. Class size is limited to ten participants.

Class times: Sunday Make Day - 10:30 am to 4 pm & Harvest Days are Friday from 6:30 pm to 9 pm