The Cheesemaking Process

Creation of the cheese starts in the field, where the 65 milking cows at Romari Farms are given as much air and good food that the 240 acre farm can sustainably produce. Every Sunday, a milk truck picks up the milk from the dairy and delivers it to Clock Shadow Creamery in Milwaukee where Ron Henningfeld, cheesemaker, produces his small-batch cheeses.

Ron describes the process: “Early Monday morning, we start with about 500 gallons of milk being pasteurized and flowing into the cheese vats.  The milk is warmed, the cheese culture is added. We’ve spent a lot of time choosing the cheese culture to meet the flavor profiles we are looking for in our cheeses. We leave the culture in the milk for an hour where the culture organisms  feed on the lactose and start thriving in the milk. After that we add the coagulate, referred to as rennet, which changes the liquid milk to a semi-solid state. 

We cut this semi-solid state into little ¼ inch cubes with a cheese harp – a metal frame strung with wires. Once cut, a liquid called whey starts to come out of the curds.  The resulting curds and whey are mixed with large paddles. The addition of a little heat starts to shrink the curds and expel more whey. At this point, we need to separate the curds from the whey. We open a small valve on the vat, which releases the whey and keeps the curds in the bottom of the vat. The curds are still stirred while salt, our final ingredient, is added. At this point, the curds will be put in block forms or wheel forms depending if they are to become cheddar or Gouda.  In the absence of the forms, we’ll bag our cheese curds to get our famous delicious cheese curds.”