Producer Profile: Beehive Cheese Company

It's a story that's become more and more common - business professionals trading in their briefcases for cheesemaking, taking a step back from the "grind" to pursue their passions. Tim Welsh, Pat Ford, and Stew Christensen are no exception to this trend.

Hailing from the realms of real estate and software, they were encouraged by friends to see the world. In doing so, they discovered their enjoyment and appreciation of cheese - how through dedication and hard work, its flavors and aromas are first harnessed from the land, then from the milk, and finally through their own careful eye as the cheese ages to perfection.

In the Fall of 2004, they started Beehive Cheese Company and quickly began producing unique, delicious cow's milk cheeses. The Barely Buzzed always draws a raised eyebrow at the Beecher's cheese counter, followed by oohs and ahs as our customers taste it.

The outside of the cheese is rubbed with a Turkish grind of Colorado Legacy Coffee Company's "Beehive Blend". In addition, French Superior Lavender Buds are ground into the coffee. The combination imparts notes of burnt butterscotch and lavender to the cheese's naturally nutty and creamy flavors. In 2007, Barely Buzzed received a 1st Place award by the American Cheese Society for being the Best Flavored Cheese in North America.

You can find several of Beehive Cheese Company's cheeses at the Beecher's store in the Pike Place Market, including their Aggiano and Full Moon. For more information, call (206) 956-1964.

A Crowd Pleasing Holiday Cheese Plate

We often get asked for tips and tricks on creating a delicious cheese plate. The answer to this question is that there is no real magic involved in assembling the perfect cheese plate, just pick cheeses you love and no one will ever be disappointed.

Here are a few cheeses we particularly enjoy right now - all are available at Beecher's shop in the Pike Place Market.

Barely Buzzed
This cheese from Utah's Beehive Cheese Company is strangely addictive! The rind is rubbed with a combination of lavendar and coffee, with the flavors slowly penetrating the delicious cheese inside. One bite and you'll see why this cheese has won 1st place in the flavored cheddar category at the American Cheese Society's annual competition for two years in a row!

Humboldt Fog
You've probably heard of – and tasted – this cheese before... but there's a reason why it's so popular on everyone's cheese plate. It's just that good! You simply can't go wrong with this soft-ripened goat's milk cheese from Cypress Grove. It's creamy and delicious – and the soft ribbon of ash running through the center of the cheese easily sets it apart on any cheese plate.

Crater Lake Blue
This cheese easily satisfies the palate of blue cheese lovers everywhere. Made with a blend of blue molds, Rogue Creamery's Crater Lake Blue is a perfect balance of cream, fruit and salt. Top with honey and serve with marcona almonds and port for the perfect dessert.

The Summer Fruit & Cheese Place

July is a great month for fruit. From strawberries and plums to cherries, nectarines and figs, there's a wide selection of fresh fruit to add to your cheese platter. Below are some winning combinations.

Cherries and Beecher's Marco Polo
The sweet tartness of the cherry and the spicy pepper in our award-winning Marco Polo makes for an irresistible combination. To take your cherries a step further, make a compote by pitting the cherries and cooking them in a small sauce pan with sugar water and lemon juice. Let cool before spooning over shaved Marco Polo on toasted, thin slices of a sourdough baguette.

Strawberries and Port Madison Fresh Chèvre
There is rarely a more satisfying combination than plump, local strawberries paired with creamy fresh cheese - especially chèvre from Port Madison Farm. This cheese is so white and fluffy with a fresh cream aroma that you'll want to eat it with a spoon. For the perfect bite, spread the fresh chèvre on a Beecher's Original Cracker, layer on sliced strawberries and garnish with fresh mint.

Apricot and Rogue Creamery Crater Lake Blue
For adventurous taste buds, pair the savory flavors of Rogue Creamery's most robust blue cheese with the delicate sweetness of apricots. To finish this combination, top with a candied, toasted walnut. Delicious!

Producer Profile: Rivers Edge Chèvre

To a young Pat Morford, goats were the perfect pet. After receiving one as a gift when she was 8 years old, Pat always had goats around. In 1986, she and her husband purchased a farm in Logsden, Oregon and began a business in the goat dairying world by producing quaility milk as well as selling her prized breeding lines of bucks on the international market.

With the milk, Pat had been making cheese for her family since the 70s, but now that she had a substantial herd of goats to take care of, she recognized the opportunity to take her handcrafted line of goat's milk cheeses into the market. With the support of her daughters as assistant cheesemakers, Rivers Edge Chèvre  became available for sale in 2005 and quickly rose as one of the best goat's milk cheesemakers in the country.

Rivers Edge makes several variations of cheeses from fresh chèvres to bloomy rinds to aged tommes. You can find several of Rivers Edge cheeses at the Beecher's store in the Pike Place Market, including the fresh chèvre staff-favorite Basil Pesto. For more information, call (206) 956-1964.

Make Your Cheese Plate Stand Out

With the variety of fresh fruits and vegetables that become available in the summer, meals become famous for the variety of exquisite entrees and delectable desserts that fill the table. To stand up to the barbecues and fruit pies, you'll need a cheese platter full-flavored enough to leave enthusiastic palates wanting more.

1. Beecher's Flagship Cheese
COW / SEMI-HARD / PASTEURIZED
We haven't met a cheese lover yet who didn't crave more of our signature Flagship cheese. Robust and nutty, Flagship pairs well with wines and food alike.

2. Mt. Townsend Sea Stack
COW / BLOOMY RIND / PASTEURIZED
The rind is soft, the paste is smooth and rich. To add to this, Seastack has a dusting of sea salt that gives it a bit of bite. Considered to be Mt. Townsend's best cheese.

3. Rogue Creamery Oregonzola
COW / BLUE / RAW
We use this cheese for cream sauces, salad dressings, and as a stand-alone on a cheese plate. As the name implies, Oregonzola is a gorgonzola-style cow’s milk cheese that's sharp, tangy and fruity with a lush, buttery texture.

4. Sally Jackson Sheep
SHEEP / SEMI-SOFT / RAW
Washington's own Sally Jackson - one of the most respected cheesemakers in the world - wraps her cheeses in chestnut leaves, adding a sweet, earthy character. Be sure to taste the leaves with the cheese to get the full, delicious effect!

5. Juniper Grove Tumalo Tomme
GOAT / SEMI-HARD / RAW
Considered to be one of the best cheeses made in the northwest, Tumalo Tomme is a semi-hard washed rind cheese that is nutty and creamy with a subtle, musty pungency that washed rinds are famous for.

Sound good enough to eat? If you would like to sample any of the above, visit our Beecher's shop or call (206) 956-1964 to place an order.

Producer Profile: Mt. Townsend Creamery

Located in Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington, Mt. Townsend Creamery is a relative fledgling to the artisan cheese world - and yet they're already well-known for their delicious and beautiful cheeses.

Mt. Townsend opened its doors in March 2006 with a focus on French-style cheeses. From their camembert-style Cirrus to the soft-ripened Seastack to the semi-hard, nutty Trailhead, Mt. Townsend cheeses have already garnered a devoted following.

Like Beecher's, the Creamery believes that making excellent cheese begins with having high-quality milk. They source their milk from two dairies located just 30 miles from their cheesemaking facility. The milk has no added growth hormones and the cows feed in grassy pastures, allowing the flavors of the cheeses to fluctuate with the seasonal nuances of the land.

The “Stinky” Cheese

Have you ever run across a cheese that you thought smelled more like old shoes than edible food?  Well, next time you’re faced with an offensive cheese odor, don’t look away – try it!  What you think smells bad, might actually be a delicious cheese in hiding.

We are always amazed by the varying opinions attached to “stinky” cheeses.  Beecher’s has a Cheese 101 class where, at one point in the class, we pull out the washed rind cheese – the ultimate in ‘stinky’ cheese.  As soon as that cheese comes out, half the class makes a face – and not a happy one – while the other half is intrigued by the earthy odor.  After much encouragement, even the participants who swore they’d never eat that cheese, taste it and are surprised to find a robust, creamy flavor more like an intense brie than a rotten apple.

Personally, this cheeseblogger loves the smell of “stinky” cheeses, as they often deliver on a rich, buttery flavor. Need a second opinion? Ask Wallace, of Wallace & Gromit fame, who loves the Stinking Bishop, a washed rind cheese which is said to live up to its name.

Some of our favorites? Bingham Hill’s Harvest Moon or Cowgirl Creamery’s Red Hawk .

Eating Cheese When You’re Lactose Intolerant

There’s an ongoing debate regarding lactose intolerance and cheese.  We wanted to get to the bottom of this, so we did a little digging and here’s what we came up with. 

Generally, when a person eats cheese and then doesn’t feel well, they claim lactose intolerance which is the inability to digest lactose, the primary sugar found in milk.  Through a little bit of sleuthing, we found that this isn’t actually the case. Luckily for cheese lovers, the majority of the lactose in milk is removed with the whey during the manufacturing process.  In fact, most aged, hard cheeses contain almost no lactose, making them safe to eat.

If you’re still unsure but want to give cheese another try, another rule of thumb when looking for low lactose cheeses is to watch the fat content. The higher the fat, the less lactose there is.

Ever Wonder Where Cheese Comes From?

We’ve often asked ourselves, “How did it all begin?” We could not have known this was going to be such a tricky question. As it turns out, the true origin of cheese is based around much guesswork. Was it 7,500 years ago or 4,000 years ago? Should we thank the Sumerians or the Greek?

The most compelling and most commonly told story on the origin of cheese is based on a mysterious Arabian merchant who discovered cheese around 3500 B.C. by complete accident. Apparently, he was carrying his cheese in a saddlebag made from the stomach of a young animal. While traveling in the hot sun, the milk reacted with the rennet in the lining of the stomach, causing the milk to curdle – and thus, cheese was born.

The story must continue, however, as the Middle East is not often considered to be the foremost expert on cheesemaking. More plausible as the original King of Cheese would be Europe – and particularly, France. So how did the cheese get from the bag of this Arabian merchant into the hands of European monasteries? Again, a little guesswork. It’s suspected that cheese crossed into Europe via travelers from Asia.

Our conclusion? Though we may never really know how it all began, we’re just glad the curd did not go unnoticed.

Cooking With Cheese

Wondering why your cheese separates when you cook it? Looking for new ways to add cheese to your meal? We’ve done a lot of experimenting and have discovered a few things along the way that we’ll gladly share with anyone who is interested.

First off, a word to the wise – use heat sensibly when melting down your cheese or cooking it in your favorite dish. Cheese that is cooked on high or heated for too long will separate. Suddenly your cheesy entree can become an oily, clumpy mess. To avoid this:

• Cook cheese over low to medium heat.
• If microwaving your cheese, cook at lower power settings.
• When your favorite casserole calls for a topping of cheese, add it at the very end of the cooking cycle. In some cases, add the cheese after removing it from the oven and let it melt naturally on the hot dish.
• Check the fat content! Higher fat cheeses handle the heat better than low fat or reduced fat cheeses.

Note: Sharper flavored cheeses mellow when melted. What tastes too strong now may be perfect when melted over vegetables.

And, by the way, we discovered that you can freeze your leftover cheese. Grated or shredded dry cheeses, as well as goat and sheep milk cheeses, can be easily frozen in a tightly sealed bag and saved for later.

We suspect this is just the tip of the iceberg and would love to learn about what others have discovered on their own personal cooking-with-cheese learning journey!