The Intensive Cheesemaking courses 1 and 2 will resume as soon as the Covid-19 cases start to get to a more manageable level.  Everyone at each of the courses needs to feel safe while we are making cheese. The schools where I hold the courses are understandably very cautious about letting outsiders onto their premises and there are travel restrictions depending on the location you are coming from or returning to after the course.I am hoping to be able to host courses later in 2020 for some locations, but I cannot say that with any certainty.

A Brisbane course is about to be scheduled for late September or early October.

The cheese, yoghurt, flavour and ripening cultures are usually freeze dried.  These cultures look like milk powder at first glance. The starter culture companies select the cultures and grow them in a sterile skim milk liquid medium until the culture numbers reach very high levels. This culture filled liquid is cooled to stop further bacterial growth and then frozen. The frozen medium is then freeze dried, technically it is a process called ‘lyophilisation’, or ‘cryodesiccation’. It is a process where the frozen medium is placed under a strong vacuum which causes water to be evaporated at temperatures below freezing.

This process ensures there is no heat damage to the bacterial cells as would occur with traditional drying practices. Freeze drying preserves what is a perishable product and makes it more convenient and less sensitive to temperature fluctuations for storage and transport.

This is an updated Cultures Reference Chart which provides a comparison between many of the cultures that are available to cheesemakers. It aims to provide the cheesemaker with some standardisation of the ‘corporate’ names attached to packets of cultures and the specific names of the bacteria, yeasts and moulds that go together to make up those packets.

If you have a recipe that asks you to use a particular culture, there is several alternatives cultures that you can use. Hopefully, this chart will give you some clarification of what culture to select next time you make cheese. This chart is regularly updated as new names of cultures become available.

There may delays in shipping products around Australia due to Covid-19. This is due to a heavier than usual volume of parcels, reduced flights and the impact of social distancing at postage sorting venues.

When your order is posted you will receive an SMS (a mobile number is required) and an email with the tracking number. It is recommended that you track your parcel using the tracking number provided so that you can monitor its progress.