User:John Dominick

2009-02-04T22:23:42Z

John Dominick: New page: <h5>The Cheese Evangelist</h5> Kurt Dammeier ’82 is a cheese evangelist. He traces the roots of his passion and faith to discovering Cougar Gold during his days at Washington State Un...

<h5>The Cheese Evangelist</h5>
Kurt Dammeier ’82 is a cheese evangelist. He traces the roots of
his passion and faith to discovering Cougar Gold during his days at
Washington State University. In November, his Beecher’s Handmade
Cheese celebrates a year of business at Seattle’s Pike Place Market
with the release of its aged Flagship cheese, which is inspired by
Cougar Gold.
Even though it is only seven months old, Dammeier gives me a
slice and waits expectantly as I taste it. And yes, it reminds me
of Cougar Gold. A cheddar style, but with a creamy finish rather
than the normal sharp finish of a cheddar. But it is different. A
little denser. A little creamier. It is fabulous.
Dammeier is pleased by my response, but not surprised. He knows
how good it is.
The butterfat is higher than in Cougar Gold, he explains. The
milk Beecher’s uses contains 3.9 percent butterfat. “We’d like to
get to 4.2 percent.” Cougar Gold uses milk that contains 3.8
percent butterfat. This translates to about 35 percent butterfat in
the cheese.
The milk that makes Cougar Gold comes from the University’s 135
Holstein cows. Beecher’s buys its milk exclusively from Cherry
Valley, a small dairy farm outside of Duvall. Their cows are
primarily Jersey and Brown Swiss, lovely breeds that have largely
disappeared from American dairies, because even though they produce
a higher-fat milk, they are not so prolific as the Holsteins. In
order to boost the fat, Beecher’s itself bought an additional 40
Jerseys to add to the herd.
When he noticed one morning that Molbak’s garden store at Pike
Place was closing, Dammeier suddenly realized what route his cheese
quest would take. His initial foray had reached an apparent dead
end. He recalls consulting with former WSU Creamery manager Marc
Bates ’70, ’76 and an agricultural economist when he was still
contemplating making a farmstead cheese.
“They thought I was really naïve,” says Dammeier. ”They tried to
talk me out of it.”
What Bates and the economist had not considered was that
Dammeier is, as he calls himself, a marketing guy.
Dammeier’s Sugar Mountain Capital owns Pasta & Co. and holds
a major share of Pyramid Breweries.
“The usual problem,” he says, “is you know what you want to
make, but don’t know how to sell it.
“I knew how to sell it. I didn’t know how to make it.”
So he hired Brad Sinko as his cheese maker. Sinko had been
creating artisan cheeses for his family’s Bandon Cheese Company in
Oregon until Tillamook bought it. Now at Beecher’s, Sinko makes the
cheese. Dammeier sells it. They’re a great pair.
Beecher’s cheese is made on site, the production area enclosed
by glass. “You can always tell when little kids have been here,”
says Sinko, “because there’s lip and nose marks everywhere.”
Beecher’s makes and sells a number of cheeses other than the
forthcoming Flagship and also features a small café, serving
assorted cheese-based dishes, including what Dammeier calls the
world’s best macaroni and cheese.
The store also sells cheese by a number of cheese makers
throughout the Northwest. And it’s here, when talking about other
people’s cheese, that Dammeier’s true evangelism shines.

Dammeier wants Beecher’s to be Seattle’s first cheese—but not
its only cheese.
“I’ll bet you on an average day there’s a hundred people enter
our store who’ve never thought of cheese beyond the yellow
Kroger-variety cheddar,” he says. However, you don’t convert people
to premium cheese by providing them with something fuzzy and blue
that stinks of a barnyard, no matter how exquisite that cheese
might be to the gourmand.
Rather, you make it familiar. But better. People are comfortable
with cheddar and jack and even the frenchy-sounding fromage
blanc—which Beecher’s calls “blank slate.”
But give the people a familiar cheese that tastes like cheese
should, and before you know it, they’re trying that fuzzy blue
stuff. In other words, they’re buying more cheese. They’re buying
more not only of Beecher’s cheese, but of the many regional
farmstead and artisan cheeses that Beecher’s also sells. Dammeier
sees his store as a way to both market small production cheeses and
also build a market.
“The same thing happened in the early days of craft brewing,” he
says. “It took a while for consumers to understand the value of a
$7.99 six-pack versus a $4.99 six-pack and why it’s more flavorful,
more authentic, more interesting.
“When you’re making things in small batches, it costs more.”
Dammeier ticks off the three tenets that underlie his approach
to business. Full-flavored, great-tasting food. Fun and theatrical.
Finally, he says, “Not a single thing produced by us has any
additives, any preservatives. It’s pure, simple food.”
Along those lines, Dammeier announced in August that 1 percent
of Beecher’s sales will go to a foundation dedicated to educating
the public, especially children, about food production, how it is
grown, processed, and transported, as well as what’s in it and what
those ingredients mean to the health of the consumer and of the
planet.
<h5 style="text-align: left;">Not Your Average Cheddar</h5>
In the 1930s, Washington State College food scientists started
research on packaging hard cheese in cans. Responding to a need for
more canned foods during World War II, the U.S. government and
American Can Company invested in the research in the 1940s. Cheese
at the time was sealed in wax, as much still is. Wax can crack,
allowing spoilage.
The main obstacle toward putting cheese in a can was the
production of carbon dioxide by bacteria in the cheese, which
caused the cans to bulge and even burst. Finally, N.S. Golding, a
professor of dairy husbandry, discovered that adding a second
starter culture to the cheese greatly reduced the carbon dioxide
production. This second culture, known to us non-initiates simply
as “WSU 19,” is what sets Cougar Gold apart.
This “adjunct culture” transforms a cheese that starts with a
standard cheddar culture into the unique flavor and finish of
Cougar Gold. Whereas cheddars generally have some bitter notes and
finish on the palate with a sour milk sharpness, Cougar Gold
finishes softer and creamier.
The texture is also different from most cheddars, more crumbly,
largely due to its being aged for a year.
This uniqueness presents a certain difficulty in cheese
competitions. Even though Cougar Gold is basically a cheddar in its
youth, the texture, as well as its extra flavors, prohibits its
entry in cheddar categories, which are quite specific in their
criteria. Despite the categorical difficulty, though, Cougar Gold
won the top of its class (hard pressed non-cheddar cheeses) in the
World Cheese Awards in England in 2000.
Cougar Gold today is much the same cheese as it was when first
produced in 1948. Of course the cows that produce the milk come and
go, and their feed will vary over the years in nutritional makeup.
A few years ago, the salt was reduced slightly. But the starters
and recipe remain the same.
“We just try not to break it,” says Marc Bates, who was Creamery
manager for 27 years and is now a consultant.

Other cheese makers are now experimenting with using a second
culture to achieve the same effect as Cougar Gold, says current
Creamery manager Russ Salvadalena ’77. Indeed, Beecher’s uses an
adjunct culture with its Flagship, their homage to Cougar Gold.
Close as it may be, however, it is not the same culture. The actual
identity of WSU 19 is closely guarded.
Although the Creamery also makes a traditional cheddar, a jack,
and several flavored cheeses, Cougar Gold accounts for 75 percent
of its sales. In fact, because of steadily increasing demand, the
Creamery recently dropped a couple of its less popular varieties in
order to increase Cougar Gold production. It has also started
buying milk from a herd managed by the WSU student dairy club, CUDS
(Cooperative University Dairy Students). In all, the Creamery
produced last year 375,000 pounds of cheese, in 200,000 cans. Sixty
percent of their cheese sells between October and Christmas. The
campus store accounts for 20 to 25 percent of revenue. Most sales
are by mail. The newest outlet is the Washington State Connections
store in Seattle.
All that cheese requires someone to make it, of course.
Including Salvadalena, the Creamery supports seven staff positions,
a full-time faculty member and a staff member in Food Sciences and
Human Nutrition, two research graduate assistants, and part-time
work for 50 students. Many people working in the dairy and cheese
industry today got their cheese education at the Creamery.
The Creamery’s cheese-making education is not restricted to
undergraduates. For the past 20 years, WSU has offered an annual
four-day cheese-making course. The bulk of the class entails
lectures by cheese experts from around the country. But one day is
devoted to hands-on cheese making. This year, the class made gouda,
havarti, mozzarella, cheddar, feta, cottage cheese, queso fresco,
and ricotta.
Beecher’s Sinko, who took the class in 1993 (Dammeier has also
taken it), calls the course “way, way, way better” than any of the
others offered around the country. Class size is limited to 27
students. This year, says Salvadalena, they didn’t even have to
advertise. They simply called up everyone on the waiting list and
filled the class.
The makeup of the class has changed significantly over the
years, says Salvadalena. Originally, students were primarily from
big cheese making plants such as Tillamook and Darigold. “Now more
than half are farmstead.”
“Farmstead” describes small-scale cheese makers who make cheese
from their own animals rather than buying their milk.
After 20 years, the influence of the cheese making class has
spread around the country. Students this year came from Vermont,
British Columbia, and Louisiana, as well as Oregon, Washington, and
Montana. Bates knows of four cheese makers in California in
business today who date back to the third or fourth class. Here in
Washington, a number of successful cheese makers list the course on
their cheese-making resume. Sandra Aguilar, Quesaria Bendita, in
Yakima. Roger and Suzanne Wechsler, Samish Bay Cheese, in Bow. Lora
Lea Misterly, Quillasacut Cheese Company, in Rice.
And not all of the students are neophytes. Joyce Snook has been
making cheese for 20 years, she says. She took a week off from her
role as cheese maker at Pleasant Valley Farm in Ferndale.
“I didn’t know the science,” she says. Fortunately, she says,
smiling, the course was confirming her practices.

<h5>Older and Sharper</h5>
“The older I get, the sharper I like it,” says Snook, in the
cheese house at Pleasant Valley Farm near Ferndale. “At my house,
I’m eating a 15-month-old Mutschli.”
As she packs curd into molds, Snook talks about the cheese that
she’s made for the last 20 years. Today she is making gouda, which
will be five months old by Christmas. On other days she makes a
farmstead cheese from a French culture, or a Mutschli, using a
Swiss culture and recipe. She also makes flavored goudas and a
Norwegian holiday cheese with cloves, cumin, and caraway. (This
cheese, Snook instructs, should be eaten as dessert, with ginger
cookies or dark beer.)
Because she makes her cheese from unpasteurized milk, it must be
aged at least 60 days before sale. That is fortunate for us. Her
aged gouda is divine—rich, complex, and tangy.
Snook is adamant about her milk. “You can make a good cheese
with pasteurized milk,” she says, quoting another cheese maker.
“You can make a better cheese with unpasteurized.”
Cheese from unpasteurized milk is a living product, she says.
“It leaves you satisfied. When you pasteurize, you kill all the
good stuff, too.”
Although Snook’s observation echoes one of the principal
controversies in cheese making, the fact that WSU and Beecher’s use
pasteurized milk complicates the argument.
Snook’s father, George Train, who milks the farm’s 70 cows,
attended WSU in the 1950s and was a member of CUDS. Train and his
wife Dolores bought the farm in 1963 and started building a herd,
which now numbers about 70, a mix of Jersey, Guernsey, Brown Swiss,
Holstein, and Milking Shorthorn. Originally, the Trains bottled and
delivered milk. But Train figured there had to be a way to get more
value from his milk. He decided to make cheese. In spite of the
skepticism of the Creamery manager at the time, whom Train
consulted, he forged ahead, experimenting with different cultures
and working toward the fine cheese made by his daughter today.
Snook packs the curds into rounded molds and stacks them nine
high, then places a metal weight on top and leaves them for two
hours. Tomorrow she will soak them in brine for 24 to 48 hours,
then coat them in wax and place them in the aging room.
Aging is what turns the bland, rubbery curds into anything from
simple workaday cheese to works of gustatory art, again depending
on the ingredients and the cheese maker.
After the first three weeks or so, most of the bacteria have
died, having consumed the nutrients that they can use. But the
enzymes they produced continue to break down the fat and protein
into fatty acids, peptides, and some amino acids. It is this
process from which the flavor develops.
Snook makes 130 pounds of cheese a day, four days a week.
Beecher’s sells about 80 pounds a month. Most of the rest of their
cheese is sold through their farm store, though at Christmas their
cheese goes worldwide. This in spite of their not advertising at
all. There is no Pleasant Valley Web site. But the New York
Times food editor has visited the farm a couple of times. With
such occasional coverage and word of mouth, the only business
problem Pleasant Valley seems to have is not being able to produce
enough cheese to keep the aging room full.
Later, in the house, we taste Snook’s cheeses chronologically.
Two months. Nice flavor, mild, creamy. Six months. Umm. Getting
interesting, a little sharpness developing.
And a year. Yes. This is what getting older is really all
about.
<h5>The Time is Ripe</h5>
The dairy industry has just gone through a century of
consolidation, says Marc Bates. As an industry matures, it
consolidates. The result is the identical-looking and -tasting
cheddars and jacks that filled grocery store coolers not too long
ago.
But that was then. Fortunately, we live on the downside of that
cycle. Lack of diversity can last only so long. Those industrial
cheeses are still clogging up the coolers, but joining them are
fine, deeply luxurious farmstead cheeses from around the country.
The bottom end of the market, says Bates, is opening up again.
Industry preference for consistency and shelf life over flavor
and variety has provided opportunity.
“We also have organic and sustainable ag movements encouraging
small manufacturers,” says Bates. “Everything is ripe for this to
happen.”
We may not have reached cheese heaven quite yet. But we’re well
past the purgatory of cheese sameness. There is a lot more cheese
to go with our wine than there was a few years ago. Besides the
cheese course alumni mentioned earlier, Pierre Louis Monteillet,
who attended this year’s cheese making class, is making a fine goat
cheese in Dayton. The already legendary Sally Jackson in Omak
produces eccentric cow, goat, and sheep cheeses that hold their own
with the finest cheese in the world. Appel Farms in Lynden,
Estrella Family Creamery in Montesano, Grace Harbor Farms in
Blaine, Port Madison Farm on Bainbridge Island, and White Oak
Farmstead in Battle Ground are all building Washington’s new cheese
culture.
And of course, all along we’ve had Cougar Gold, rich, tangy,
with that smooth creamy finish. We live in a wonderful time.

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