There are thousands of cheese-making books out there. And they all vary. Some are uncomplicated and easy to use, others go into great detail. Over the years at The Courtyard Dairy we have read and studied a lot of cheese-making books! Here are my top five best cheese-making books for any budding cheese-maker (in no particular order): Home-Made Cheese: Artisan Cheesemaking Made Simple – Paul Thomas A really great place to start for those new to cheese-making. Lots of cheese-making recipes, lots of explanations and handy tips and tricks, and, usefully, lots of pictures of each step. Sometimes, however, the ingredients for a recipe can be tricky to source. But treat the ingredients list like one in a cookbook – if you can source something similar than that it might well work. The Art of Natural Cheesemaking – David Asher David’s method of cheese-making is a bit unconventional, using natural methods to make cheese. Yet this book gives lots of good information as well as handy recipes. A great read, but be wary of using Kefir to make cheese – it works OK for soft/fresher types, but for longer-keeping cheese, lactic acid bacterial cultures are much better. Mastering Artisan Cheesemaking…

The rapid growth of farmhouse and small-scale artisan cheese-making in the UK has seen a matching growth of suppliers of cheese-making equipment, starter cultures, moulds and bacteria, keen to supply the UK market. Listed below are some of the best places to buy cheese-making equipment and cultures (in no particular order), either for home-scale size (listed first) or artisan/farmhouse size (listed later). If you are a farmer and are thinking about diversifying into cheese-making, please do contact The Courtyard Dairy as early as possible – we’d love to offer our assistance. We are really keen to assist in helping new farmhouse cheese-makers set up and succeed in the challenging business of cheese-making. Here are some examples of successful farms we’ve already helped: Yoredale, Long Swale, Whin Yeats, Stonebeck (Low Riggs), Lowfields. Small-scale cheese-making equipment Moorlands Cheesemakers (cheesemaking.co.uk) The Cheese Making Shop (cheesemakingshop.co.uk) Goat Nutrition (gnltd.co.uk) Homestead Farm Supplies (homesteadfarmsupplies.co.uk) Cheese Yogurt Making (cheese-yogurt-making.com) Larger (farm/artisan-scale) cheese equipment suppliers Orchard Valley Dairy Supplies (https://www.ovdairysupplies.co.uk/) – starter bacteria and cheese maturing cultures, e.g. brie/blue/washed rind/geotricium Barbers Farmhouse Cheesemakers (barbers.co.uk/pages/starter-culture) – starter bacteria (barbers.co.uk/pages/starter-culture) Westcombe Dairy (westcombedairy.com) – starter bacteria and cheese maturing cultures Jongia UK – (jongiauk.com) OR JKM Foods (jkm-foods.com) –…

What is natural cheese-making? Natural cheese-making essentially involves cheese-makers making their own starter cultures rather than buying-in commercial starter cultures to make cheese.  But it is difficult to do, and fraught with potential issues. What is a starter culture? Making cheese involves acidifying the lactose sugar within milk, turning it into lactic acid. This key step in cheese-making helps set the milk into curd, assists in giving the cheese its flavour, and makes the cheese long-lasting and safe to eat. This process needs bacteria, specifically ‘lactic acid bacteria’. Nearly all cheese makers within the UK buy these bacteria in. Much like bakers buy yeast to make bread, cheese-makers buy bacteria to make cheese. They add it to the milk at the beginning of the cheese-making process so it helps kick-start the process. The lactic acid bacteria are grown by scientists in laboratories, and are sold in sachets, called ‘starter culture’, and are well-tried and tested. The milk will then acidify as it’s supposed to and this will help to produce consistent cheese results. The availability of this ‘off-the-shelf starter culture’ has helped improved cheese consistency and flavour in many ways. These sachets are, however, ‘some-one else’s’ bacteria; bacteria not perhaps…

The term ‘starter culture’ is used to describe bacteria specially grown to ‘start’ the transformation of milk into cheese. A starter culture is used in the making of the vast majority of cheese, go turn the milk’s natural lactose sugar into lactic acid. This is beneficial for cheese-making for several reasons: Firstly, acidifying the milk forces it to curdle and split, helping to form the curd which are the essential ingredient in cheese. Secondly, creating lactic acid ‘uses up’ the lactose sugar and milk nutrient resources and the milk becomes more acid. These two factors make it harder for ‘bad’ pathogenic and spoilage bacteria to grow – they don’t like acid, and to grow they also need the sugar in milk. Preventing the growth of bad bacteria, therefore, naturally helps preserve the cheese (and is one of the reasons why cheese keeps longer than milk). Thirdly, the process starts to create flavour which will go on to influence the final texture, smell and taste of the cheese. In order for all of this to happen bacteria are essential. The bacteria are more often than not added to the milk right at the beginning of the cheese-making process, hence the term…

A couple of years ago, Andy got a visit from Gillian . Gillian loves goats, specifically Anglo Nubian (big floppy eared) goats. Her passion had taken her to breed (and show) some of these lovely animals on her small ten-acre holding near Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire. But breeding goats means making milk. Quite a bit of it. So Gillian went on a few courses in order to find a use for this milk. She ended up making a fresh curd cheese called Gāt, the old English name for goat. Gillian came to chat with us at The Courtyard Dairy and we decided that it would be a good idea to go to see Gillian’s farm, to see if we could maybe help her develop something really special. Anglo Nubian goats are renowned for producing some of the best quality milk in the industry and we thought that with Gillian’s small holding of marginal pastureland it should be possible to make a fabulous unpasteurised Yorkshire goats’ cheese which would really showcase Gillian’s delicious goat milk (Anglo Nubian goats are prized for their extremely rich milk – perfect for cheesemaking). So we set out to persuade her to develop a cheese that…

Advice for shop owners on how to mature, look after and age cheese; most cheese shops across the land will state that they ‘mature’ or ‘age’ cheese.  But what does this mean, and can you do it yourself on a small scale?  

I frequently get contacted by budding keen cheese-makers, including owners of small farms that want to find a way to use their milk, looking to make cheese on a commercial scale.

If you want to know what I tell them, click below to read on…

If you want to learn how to make your own cheese, the best place to start may be a cheese-making course, of which there are many throughout the UK.

View a list of providers by clicking below.