Who are we?
Fen Farm Dairy is a 3rd generation family farm; home to a herd of 300 Montbeliarde cows. Keen to diversify, we began production of a French Brie de Meaux style cheese; Baron Bigod. With this a success, we have continued expansion into other products, such as Raw Cultured Butter and Skyr.
Why have you decided to be a part of this competition?
We want to show our support for the Academy of Cheese, as we think that this is a great organisation to have been founded. We have only ever matured our cheese ourselves from the early stages, so it will be interesting for us to see the way others do and potentially gain some new ideas.
What would you expect to see happen to your cheeses?
We would expect to see the growth of yeasts and moulds, which we would expect to see in our building. However, we may see these grow at different rates and quantities. The speed of maturing may also differ, depending on the temperatures that the cheese is being matured in.
Are there any maturation techniques that you would be interested in seeing used?
It will be interesting to see how long the cheese is matured at, at what temperature and at what humidity’s. We normally mature ours for 2 weeks prior to wrapping and boxing, and the range of temperatures is from post-salting 17degrees, down to 11degrees in two weeks. The questions are: what would the cheese do if matured for longer without being wrapped, what would the cheese do if it was matured cooler and what would the cheese do if it was matured warmer?
Are there any tips you can share with our competitors?
The worst thing you can do is dry the cheese out in its early days. If you mature the cheese too warm, you may find that the rind will slip off it and it will potentially taste soapy if it is too warm.
