[upbeat folk music]
- Inga: After the morning milking,
I transfer the milk from the bulk tank
into the creamery, where my dad,
who's a licensed Wisconsin cheesemaker,
is waiting to receive that milk.
[bright music]
[milk splashing]
Once it's in the vat,
he starts heating that milk up to 88 degrees.
And then we add in our starter cultures.
The starter culture is a beneficial bacteria
that's responsible for creating the textures
and the flavors of our cheese.
[bright music]
Throughout the process of cheesemaking,
we're always monitoring the temperature
and the pH of the cheese.
After adding the starter culture,
it takes about an hour for everything to cure together
and to get the pH where we need it
before the next step.
[bright music]
After our tea break,
and once the pH has reached a certain level,
we add our rennet.
Pour it slow.
The rennet is an enzyme which is gonna help the milk coagulate.
Now, you might remember this from Mrs. Muffet,
that's where we get our curds and our whey.
Over the course of the next 15 minutes,
we'll be checking on that cheese vat regularly.
What we're looking for is a certain consistency in the vat.
What do you think? - I think a little longer.
- Inga: So we're hoping that the milk is gonna come together
and be kind of the consistency of like a crème brûlée
or a panna cotta.
Once it reaches that consistency,
we take our cheese harps and we cut it into curds.
[bright acoustic guitar music]
Now that it's into the curd formation,
we're gonna heat up that whole vat to about 101 degrees.
And this is called cooking the curd.
We're cooking the curd to release more of the whey
and to get the small curds to the right consistency.
As we bring it up in temperature,
we're actually trying to cook out any of the whey.
We're expelling as much whey
from those little curds as possible,
while at the same time creating a nice environment for the curds
to get a little bit firmer around the outsides.
That process usually takes about an hour.
Our whole goal now is to get as much whey out of the curds
as we can throughout the rest of this process.
And once the curds have reached the consistency
that we're looking for, then we can drain off the whey.
[upbeat folk music]