St. Germain Cheese from Blakesville Creamery

What’s the shelf life on cheese?

• Hard, aged cheeses stay good for a long time. Many days for sure. Sometimes weeks. Bigger hunks of cheese last longer. If it looks and smelled as expected, it’s likely still great.

• What if it’s got a little mold on it? A little mold is no problem. It’s a good sign, it means the cheese is alive. Scrape it off with a knife. But if there’s a lot of mold and it’s turning dark and funky it’s time to say goodbye.

• Soft cheeses and cheese spreads (like pimento and liptauer) are best eaten within a week or two of receiving them.

How do we ship artisan cheese year-round across the country?

In warmer months (early April to mid September), we ship cheese with two business day service plus warm weather care. We employ an ice pack and insulation defensive strategy to protect against warm delivery trucks and warm warehouses and ensure your shipment arrives in great shape.

The rest of the year (late September to the end of March), the shipping method will either be flat rate service (1-4 business days) for our durable hard, aged cheeses or two business day service for our more perishable soft cheeses and cheese spreads.

Hard cheeses have been carefully selected to withstand a longer transit time. Don’t worry if it arrives a bit warm or a bit cold – cheese is durable.

How should the cheese be stored once it arrives?

• Store cheese in the fridge, ideally in the spot closest to 50 degrees. That will likely be the door of your refrigerator or in a drawer where the temperature is consistent but not too cold.

• We wrap hand-cut wedges of cheese in a cheese bag before shipment, and you can continue to keep the cheese in that cheese bag. The next best option would be parchment or wax paper.

• After you open the cheese for a nibble, any remainders can be put back into the bag and closed with a simple roll or fold. 

• Do not freeze your cheese! Cheese is a living thing. Freezing will stop the natural processes that keep cheese so tasty. 

How should the cheese be served?

Regardless of the kind of cheese, it’s best to take it out of the fridge about 20 to 30 minutes before serving it. Cheese tastes better at room temperature. It makes a world of difference: the aromas expand, becoming more complex; more of the fat spreads on your tongue, which makes the flavor more intense. When cheese is warm you’ll eat less of it and enjoy it more.

Goat’s milk cheeses run the gamut of flavors, but when most of us hear the term one type comes to mind: soft, earthy cheese with a chalky edge and a barnyardy bite. We don’t lump all cow’s milk cheeses into one flavor category. Why are we so cavalier with goats?

Goat’s milk is very fragile compared to cow’s milk.

Flavors reminiscent of a barn likely indicate that the milk wasn’t treated well. As goat’s milk sits, it starts to break up which leads to soapy and rancid flavors that comes through in the final cheese, which is why using fresh milk is important. Goat’s milk also has smaller fats and different acids compared to cow’s milk, so it needs to be processed gently and acidified slowly in order to bring out the desired flavors.

Large commercial producers of goat’s milk cheese are not so gentle. They’re working with large quantities of not-so-fresh milk, pasteurizing it hot and fast, then sealing it up in plastic. All of which lead to unsavory flavors.

You really can taste the difference from small producers.

Zingerman’s Creamery uses fresh milk sourced from small Michigan goat farmers. Blakesville Creamery relies on the milk of the herd of 1500 goats that live on site at Blakesville Dairy Farm. Less time in transit and more carefully handled cheese results in better tasting cheese.

Zingerman’s Creamery gently heats their milk and pasteurizes it at lower temperatures. The milk is then allowed to slowly acidify over a longer period of time to retain those delicate, earthy flavors you want in goat cheese.

Another shortcut of industrial producers is to use GMO-modified rennet and veal rennet in their cheesemaking. They’re cheaper, but not made for goat’s milk. Zingerman’s Creamery uses rennet specifically created for goat’s milk. Although it’s more expensive, it leads to a better final flavor and supports better aging.

What about aged goat cheese?

Fresh goat cheese highlight the milk’s lovely qualities, fruity sweet flavors and a soft, chalky dryness. As they get older the “goaty” flavors can be accentuated, but well made and well aged goat’s milk cheeses will have more strength and character without any taste of barn. A great example is Brabander – aged six to nine months, the goat gouda cheese turns into a vanilla milkshake of rich flavor. St. Germain goat cheese is aged less, only about four months, so some of the delicate, bright, lemony flavors remain.

That may seem like a crazy question, but there are a few ways to answer it. Obviously milk is from the mammary glands of mammals, making cheese an animal product… but the animals who make the milk are vegetarians (besides the wayward goat here and there).

What folks really mean when they ask this question is: “is the rennet used to make this cheese vegetarian?”

Rennet is the first step in cheesemaking. It’s added to heated milk and separates the solids (curd) from the liquid (whey). But that’s a very simple definition.

For all you food science fans out there, get ready to get geeked! Rennet is a blend of enzymes (mainly chymosin and pepsin) extracted from the fourth stomach cavity of young ruminant animals such as calves, kids, and lambs. The technical definition of the term “rennet” is restricted to enzymes that are derived from the stomachs of mammals, so all cheeses made with true rennet are not vegetarian.

But in common usage, the term “rennet” includes milk-coagulating enzymes that come from plant sources, too. We consider those “rennets” vegetarian. Plant-derived rennets are enzymes harvested from plants that can coagulate the milk and serve the same purpose in cheesemaking as animal-derived rennet. Folks commonly refer to this type as “thistle rennet.” The two most common sources are the cardoon and the globe artichoke, but fig leaves and sap, nettles, safflower, and other plants can be used and earn the label 100% vegetarian rennet.

But the question doesn’t end there. Rennets can also come from microbial sources such as molds and genetically modified organisms like yeasts. As a matter of fact, the two main sources of rennet worldwide are produced either by one of the most common molds, Aspergillus niger, or by the yeast Kluyveromyces lactis. While no animal source is used to make these rennets, their genetic makeup resembles something that originated with animals. So not 100% vegetarian, but not really animal.

The most traditional cheesemakers use true animal rennet because that’s the way it’s always been. But nearly all newer cheesemakers prefer to use the microbial-derived rennets because they’re cheaper, they’re more consistent and they get more bang for their buck. So in most cases, the answer to the question “Is this cheese vegetarian?” is a resounding “It depends.”

When you’re browsing our cheese selection online, we’ll specify whether the rennet is traditional or vegetarian so you know exactly what you’re getting.