Northern Dairy Cheese School, Seminar 3: Coagulation (Rennet)

Northern Dairy Starter Seminar 2025 – A Roundup

18th September 2025

The slides of the seminar are available for all at: Seminar Slides The slides on the background/history of starter culture: Starter Cultures The more detailed minutes of the seminar and findings/discussion if you want to know more have been recorded at: Minutes This year’s Northern Dairy Cheese Seminar’s held at The Courtyard Dairy was commissioned investigate ‘Starter Culture’. 14 cheesemakers got together from around the UK at The Courtyard Dairy for a seminar to investigate how starter choice and usage can affect the cheese. Background Starter cultures are a unique mix of bacteria designed to ferment milk [turning the lactose in milk into lactic acid]; a key part of the cheesemaking process – helping preserve the cheese, drain out the moisture and influencing end flavour. Since the 1900s bacteria for cheesemaking have largely been cultivated in aseptic techniques by laboratories. They are then purchased by cheesemakers and added in to kick start the process of making cheese (hence the name ‘starter’) – but there are many strains, types, brands and varieties. This seminar was developed to explore how these cultures impact cheesemaking: what affect they have on flavour and texture; and how we can control and use them to our…

The Wensleydale Cheese Project

16th July 2025

“The real Wensleydale died during the War, murdered by a pinstripe power … … what a cheese it was, creamy and moist and white with a totally unique flavour”. [Famous Dalesman and iconic Yorkshire cheesemaker Kit Calvert] Introduction The renowned British territorial cheese, Wensleydale, has changed monumentally over the last century. Dying out as a farmhouse cheese in the 1950s the recipe evolved to be more efficient, stable, fast maturing and economic to produce. It became quite a different beast: the crumbly, tart, dry cheese you would associate with the modern-day Wensleydale cheese, that you will find in supermarkets today. In the late 2010s, as part of a general trend for revival of artisan produce and farm cheesemaking, The Courtyard Dairy, and several local farmers in the Yorkshire Dales looked to reverse that trend. Taking influence from old pre-war recipes and notes, scraps of paper and faded photos, they looked to recreate this iconic cheese and construct a new chapter for farmhouse Wensleydale cheese. Trying to piece together knowledge, recipes, and thoughts to establish how Wensleydale used to be made was a challenge. From these same influences three producers eventually developed their own example of Wensleydale: Curlew Dairy, Whin Yeats…

Northern Dairy Cheese School, Seminar 2: Starter Culture

12th June 2025

Seminar 2: Starter Culture. 8-10 Sept 2025. 2.5 Days An in depth look at how the starter culture you add affects the end results. The objective is to discuss a bit more the role of starters within the make and final flavour/texture and how different starters can affect that so you can improve your cheesemaking. The exact same recipe will be made with four different starter strains and their differences observed: how they grow and acidify (bench top), how this affected the cheesemaking, and how they affected the flavour in the final product. With input from Barbers Maryland Cultures and Standa Cultures we will discuss how better to manage starter and what affect it is having on our end cheese. Using this knowledge, day 2 features a cheesemaking day where you will make cheese (recipe to your choice) altering the starter (varying potentially type, quantity, low/high activity or using a wild starter) to see if you can manage the process and get your desired results. Cost to attend: £250*. Only 10 places available. (Attendees must have previous cheesemaking experience – please get in touch if you want to discuss this). Detail: The seminar is designed for cheesemakers to discuss starter usage and how…

Northern Dairy Cheese School, Seminar 1: Wensledyale Workshop

25th May 2024

Seminar 1: An in-depth look at Wensleydale. September 2024. A look in detail at how differences in the cheese-making process can produce very different cheeses, by examining three slightly different Wensleydale recipes. The seminar attendees will discuss with the cheese-makers how the parameters of making Wensleydale affect the end results, before spending a day in the dairy making a Wensleydale to a recipe they create. Wensleydale offers a great opportunity to help all of us understand the relationship between moisture, acidity and texture. Cost to attend: £200*. Only 10 places available. (Attendees must have previous cheesemaking experience – please get in touch if you want to discuss this). Detail: Earlier in the year three Wensleydales will be made at The Courtyard Dairy to Stonebeck, Fellstone and Yoredale recipes – using exactly the same milk, equipment and maturation time/methods. The only difference will be the cheesemaking recipes; these will then be discussed, sampled and examined with the cheesemakers themselves before designing a Wensleydale recipe as a group to make together. Format Day 1 Attendees arrive in time for lunch. Afternoon classroom session: taste those three different Wensleydale recipes made at Courtyard Dairy, and also taste Yoredale, Fellstone & Stonebeck made that…

Natural cheese-making and making your own lactic acid ‘starter culture’: is it the panacea of farmhouse cheese-making?

30th June 2018

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…

What is starter culture for cheese and what does it do?

28th June 2018

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…