Fromology (CHEESE) Part 1 with Kyra James

Soft. Hard. Fresh. Aged. Stinky. Illegal. Let’s talk cheese with Certified Cheese Professional (CCP) and Fromologist, Kyra James. We chat about proprietary bacterial slurries, basement caves, cheese knife etiquette, rind eating, vegetarian versus vegan cheeses, cheese history, different warm-blooded animals whose milk is used for cheese, American cheese side-eye, shoe deodorizers, and how to chat up a monger. And come back next week to learn more about plant-based cheese options, how to properly store cheese, the difference between orange and white cheddar, the grilled sandwich debate, DIY cheese, pricey varieties, squeaky curds, the moon’s composition, how cheese changes your brain chemistry, and the ultimate charcuterie board. Plus: holes and crystals and maggots, oh my! [Content warning: we discuss dairy and do make acknowledgments of animal rights concerns, and next week we discuss vegan options in more depth. However this episode and expert’s focus isn’t the ethics of dairy farming as a whole, but rather the process of cheesemaking. We do have a future episode planned about plant-based diets.]

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alie Ward?

  Oh, hi. Just a quick note up top. So this episode is all about cheese. And of course, we touch on the history and the making and the science of it. We don't go into a lot about the dairy industry itself, because that would be a series of episodes. We do talk about veganism. We do talk about plant-based options, especially in part two. We talk about some animal ethics and some more sustainable cheeses. So we do talk about that. But in general, if you are very, very opposed to anything that is animal product related, this one might not be your favorite episode, or you might learn some things that you can put in your toolkit if you were talking to people about a plant-based diet. But I just wanted to give that heads up.

• 0:44Alie Ward?

  I know dairy is not for everyone, and I see you, I hear ya. But for those that do like cheese, here we go. Oh, hey, it's the monster who returns emails at 4:00 PM on a Friday. Sorry, everyone. Ally Ward, this is cheese. This is a topic that you have told me you've been craving for years. It's a hot, stinky delivery that'll melt in your ears. Let's hit it. So I use the internet to do the equivalent of hiding behind a plant, hoping to catch the eye of this ologist, who is at the top of Culture's hot list of nine cheese stars to watch and has been featured in Vogue and Severe magazines. They're also the founder of cheese advocacy group Own Your Funk.

• 1:27Alie Ward?

  They've won awards at the International Cheese Monger Invitational, single-handedly quartering a 50-pound round of Parmesan with a knife and her two hands, which is usually a four-person job. And I slid into their DMs, and when I got a return message, the heavens parted. So excited. So let's talk cheese. But first, thank you to patrons via patreon.com/ologies, who for $1 a month can submit questions ahead of time for the ologists. And wow, record number of questions. We had 64 pages of questions for this ologist. So this will shock absolutely no one. But this will be a two-parter, because it was too large a cheese wheel for one serving. We had to halve it up. So thank you also to everyone for wearing your Ologies merch out in the wild.

• 2:10Alie Ward?

  To find each other, you can get it at ologiesmerch.com. And for no dollars, thank you for leaving us reviews, all of which I read. And then as proof, I highlight a fresh one, such as this one from Great Workout APO, who called Ologies the best podcast for the former curious child. Also, if you're not even a former child, but a current one, and you need some G-rated, shorter, classroom-safe versions of Ologies, we have them. They're called Smologies, S-M-O-L-O-G-I-E-S. And they're available wherever you get your podcasts. They're in their own feed. That's linked in the show notes. Also, thank you to sponsors of the show for making it possible to donate to not one, but two causes of the ologists choosing this time. Picture this: years of guaranteed research support and a vibrant scientific community that has your back.

• 2:55Alie Ward?

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• 3:40Alie Ward?

  If something's broken or just not right, Verbo will work to make it right. Plus, you get 24/7 live human support with every booking. Grab your stuffy, we're going on vacay. So book today on the Verbo app. If you know, you Verbo. Terms apply. See verbo.com/trust for details. This podcast is brought to you by Aura. Your body has a lot going on: sleep, stress, recovery. You would be surprised how connected it all is. Aura Ring tracks more than 50 metrics from your finger, and the Aura app brings that information together to help you see patterns across your sleep and stress, activity, and more, so you can start connecting the dots and figure out what works for you. Learn more at aura ring.com.

• 4:25Alie Ward?

  Wear your best life with Aura. Okay, on to fromology. It comes from the French, fromage for cheese. And in this two-part episode, you will hear about soft cheeses, hard ones, vegetarian ones, vegan ones, what exactly goes into cheese, how to set up a cheese board that will impress the most French of dinner guests, if it's actually aged in caves, the ethics of dairy, cheese history, different warm-blooded animals whose milk is used for cheese, some might not appetize you, American cheese side-eye, the stinkiest cheeses, the orange versus the creamy white, shoe deodorizers, crunchy cheese crystals, and how to chat up a monger.

• 5:07Alie Ward?

  And come back next week to learn how to properly store cheese, the grilled sandwich debate, how to make cheese at home, cheese pricing, squeaky curds, the moon's composition, how cheese changes your brain chemistry, the ultimate charcuterie board, plus, holes, crystals, and maggots, oh my, with this stunning two-parter featuring professional food educator, certified cheese professional, and fromologist, Kyra James.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Kyra James, she/her.

• 5:55Alie Ward?

  And, okay, fromologist, cheese monger, cheese expert. To me, they're all the same, but is there a distinction in the cheese world?

• 6:06Speaker 01

  There isn't so much a distinction in the cheese world. It's such a small, niche, little family that we all kind of work together and have interchanging roles. There are different levels in the industry of sort of your expertise. Over time, after doing anything for a period of time, you get better and better at it. And so there are various scholarly certifications you can take. You can become a certified cheese professional, which is what I did.

• 6:30Alie Ward?

  And now you have a master's in gastronomy. Did you have cheese elements within that? Or did you go into it as cheese oriented? Or were you like in the world of gastronomy studies? Like, the cheese unit really resonated?

• 6:48Speaker 01

  There is a cheese category in the degree now. But at the time, I didn't enter into the master's program with the goal of learning about cheese. There are mentions of it throughout, you know, the history class. So I'm sure there was some cheese sprinkled in throughout the degree. But it was more overall food degree with a lot of social sciences, anthropology, things like that.

• 7:10Alie Ward?

  Oh, I didn't realize that there was so much history and anthropology in that kind of degree. I thought it would all just be like, this boils at this temperature. But what do they cover in a master's of gastronomy?

• 7:23Speaker 01

  So the core classes are history, food and the senses. You learn about how to use your senses and how other people have used their senses to educate and to learn about food and to grow the world of food through the senses. There's lots of focuses, like food marketing. The anthropology of food is another one. So a lot of social sciences. Food and gender was another class that was really, spoke to me a great deal. Food and wine is another sort of aspect of the degree. I took classes in the marketing, in the business school. I took classes in the hospitality and tourism department. So you really can make it your own degree. But it's all centered around the social sciences of food.

• 8:08Alie Ward?

  I feel like you could do a whole degree on just when someone comes around and is like, say when on the Parmesan. I feel like there's so much psychologically that happens in that moment.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  For sure. You're very empowered. It's a very empowering moment, to say one.

• 8:27Alie Ward?

  I'm always like, if I keep going, are they going to judge me?

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:31Alie Ward?

  And if I say that's plenty too early, am I going to think on the whole drive home, I could have gotten more cheese out of this? I don't know.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  You gotta wait it out. No regrets.

• 8:44Speaker 02

  Extra cheese?

• 8:45Alie Ward?

  So can you tell me a little bit about when your life became cheese oriented? What was it that kind of was your entree? And no pun intended on the entree. Oh, God.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I needed a job to finish paying for my master's degree. I had, you know, saved some money, but I needed a job. So I applied for a job on Craigslist at the time, and it was for a cheesemonger position at one of the oldest cheese shops in America. I didn't know at the time how prestigious it was, but I really very quickly learned of its prestige as I started working there. And then I had an aha moment when I tried certain cheeses. So, you know, learning about cheese, you have to taste it. You learn about the stories and where it comes from and all these really fun facts about cheese and all these things that I had never even knew were things that you can do with food, let alone a perishable food like cheese.

• 9:40Speaker 01

  So all the different ways you can create it. And so there was a cheese from Iowa that is a cheddar that I, when I had it, it was like my aha moment. It's called Prairie Breeze. It's very widely available now, but at the time it was a little bit smaller producer. Just it's a delicious cheese. It's made by Mennonite people in Iowa, and they don't use a lot of electricity to create the cheese. So it's a lot of old traditions and old school approach to cheesemaking, and they make these amazing cheddars. And so as I learned more about cheese, I just really became in love with the stories and the flavor and sort of the rest is history from there.

• 10:22Alie Ward?

  So I looked this up, and apparently their twist on an aged cheddar has a pasty, fudgy texture with crunchy crystals and a tangy but nutty umami flavor. And they call this cheese affordable enough for back of the house, yet sophisticated enough for front of the house. But also, this particular creamery boasts that they source milk from small, high-quality and hygienic local dairy farms within 30 miles of their cheesemaking creamery. And now I'm making up a whole backstory narrative about this pastoral dairy community and maybe how they all know each other and like hot tub together or give each other dating advice. I don't know. Is that kind of part of the allure of it is learning all these different backstories?

• 11:08Speaker 01

  I think that's part of it. So from the outside, you think, you know, cheese is mass-produced by a few really big companies and that's it. And yes, they are producing the most cheese out here and serving the most people, but where diversity and all the fun sort of nuances of the industry come into play are with those small producers. And small doesn't have to be, you know, a mom and pop operation. It can be a family-run or a little bit bigger. But the idea is it being something that you can point to and say, this is where this cheese comes from. This is what the animals are eating. This is what the farmers are doing to take care of them. This is what they're doing to make the cheese. So the smaller producers are really where you can learn about who's making the biggest impact in their small, little environments.

• 11:52Alie Ward?

  Just a side note up top here. I know so many listeners are plant-based for environmental and ethical and animal cruelty reasons. I definitely encourage you to look deeper into that. And I'm more than happy to do a future episode on veganism. Actually, we're cooking one up as we speak on that, so stay tuned. But if you're one of the many thousand listeners who really wanted to hear about the science and the history of cheese from an expert because you love cheese, this is a good incentive to consider the types of cheese that you consume and the practices of smaller creameries and just the origin of your food in general. And that good cheese may be pricier, and we'll talk more about why in part two, as well as cover some vegan cheese options. But strike up a convo with

• 12:34Alie Ward?

  your creamery people at the neighborhood farmer's market. Chat up a local monger. That's one thing I love about cheesemongers, especially the ones who are really passionate. I live near a place called Milk Farm, which is a great cheese shop. And my favorite cheesemonger there, Rue, is whenever I go in to get cheeses, they always tell me the backstory of different ones and why I might like something. And I always feel like I leave there with like a history lesson, which is so cool. Like when I eat the cheese, I remember, well, they told me about it. I feel like a lot of that passion really comes through when people are cheese people, you know?

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Yes. Passion is definitely a big consistency throughout any cheesemonger or cheese professional. Having passion for the industry is really important. And being a storyteller is another part of the job. So. We're so excited about the stories that it's hard not to share them with everybody that comes into our, our world, learning about cheese. Uh, it's hard to stop once you start talking about those things. And I love that Ruud keeps it going for you every visit. You, you get another experience that they can explain to you.

• 13:39Alie Ward?

  Yeah. What do you feel like is the most common question people ask you about cheese?

• 13:44Speaker 01

  The most common question I'd say is, can you eat the rind?

• 13:48Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  That's a very big question. People get very hesitant about the rind and if they can eat it. People ask about pasteurization and raw milk pretty consistently. But overall, they just want to know where products are coming from. So the type of cheese that it is, who made it? How old is the cheese? And then another very common question is how to pair it? What do you eat with this cheese? Because everyone likes to know what a cheese professional's preferences are for pairing cheese. So what beverage would you pair with this? So what accoutrement would you pair with this?

• 14:21Alie Ward?

  It's not just me that has charcuterie anxiety of like, do I have enough? Do I have a good balance on this charcuterie board? You know, you want like a soft one and a hard one, maybe a smoky one. Which is why a cheesemonger is the best. If you're like, I got people coming over, they're French, help me out. What do I put on this thing? But, okay, let's start at the basics. What is cheese? Cheese comes from milk, but I don't know curds, whey. What is it?

• 14:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. So cheese is a fermented food. So you start with milk and you add only three ingredients to the milk to create cheese. Each of those ingredients has a very specific role that they play. Cultures, rennet and salt. They're added at different points in the process to the milk. And then through the power of science, the milk is turned into solids and liquid. Curds are the solids, the proteins and the fats. And whey is the liquid, the sugar and the water. And so you separate the two and then you drain out the liquid. The whey is not, is never wasted on a quality farm. There's lots of nutrients in, in the liquid. So that's going to be used for some purpose. And then the curds are used for cheesemaking. And from there. The options are pretty much endless.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  At the beginning of the process, you know what type of cheese you want to make at the end. And so you're going to take the steps to make that type of cheese.

• 15:48Alie Ward?

  So to recap, milk, cultures, rennet, salt.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  So cheese is just those four ingredients. You separate the curds from the whey. And then you take those curds and you create your final cheese. You might serve it fresh. It might be a fresh cheese, like mozzarella or ricotta. Or it might be something that has to be put into a form, put on a shelf for a year, and then consumed, like Parmesan Reggiano.

• 16:12Alie Ward?

  I always wondered with like curds and curdle, if you add an acid to your latte, like, let's say you try to make a lemon latte with the whole milk. It's going to get chunky. Is that kind of what's happening with cheese, but on like a larger curd level?

• 16:30Speaker 01

  Sort of, yeah. There's some interactions between the acid and the lemon and the dairy product. So you can create cheese using acids like lemon juice or vinegar at home. They're going to act as a natural, what we call coagulant. So they're going to naturally separate the curds from the whey. So when you add the lemon to the dairy and you see that happening, you're kind of coagulating your milk. So you're kind of creating those first few steps of the cheese-making process without really trying to. It won't taste much like cheese, but the textures will begin to change just because of that acid and how it interacts with the proteins and the fats in the milk.

• 17:10Alie Ward?

  But in the case of most cheeses, it's the enzymes in rennet, specifically one called chymacin, which cleaves a certain bond of casein proteins in the milk. And we'll talk more about rennet in a minute. But if you want to get specific, chymacin breaks capicasein into hydrophobic paracapicasein, meaning broadly that the liquids and the solids in milk separate because of that enzymatic action. Hence, curds and whey. Which, if you remember from Miss Muffet, her separated milkshake brings all the spiders to the yard. I always wondered what happens to the whey. When you say that they don't waste it, does it get fed back to goats? Or does it become protein powder? Like, what happens with it?

• 17:54Speaker 01

  Great question, yeah. All of the above. So for a smaller farm, they may feed the whey to other animals on the farm. They may make other cheeses from the whey. So you can make ricotta from whey. No. And there's still some proteins and fats in that liquid that you can coagulate and, you know, extract from the whey to create ricotta. For larger producers, that's definitely where the whey is going is to whey powder. So when people are protein powders for athletes or gym rats or people who want to get muscle mass, they might consume whey protein in that form. But it's definitely something that is not wasted.

• 18:35Speaker 01

  They can use it on the grounds, like to help grow grass as a natural fertilizer. So there's lots of ways to use it. There's so much nutrients in there that something's going to be done with it for sure.

• 18:47Alie Ward?

  Take me back in history. How long has planet Earth had cheese? Is there a consensus among the tight-knit cheese community on this?

• 18:58Speaker 01

  The first traces of cheese go back to 8,000 B.C. What? So about, about 10,000 years ago. And it really starts with the Neolithic people when humans went from hunter and gatherers to agricultural communities where they actually planted foods, domesticated animals, and they were milking dairy animals, mostly sheep and goat at the time. There weren't cows. And they would leave the milk out over a period of time in the sun because they were in the first time crescent. So in that part of the world, it's very hot and warm. And so just by sitting the milk out in the field in the sun, they would naturally ferment the milk and create cheese.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  So there's traces of sort of that fresh cheese dating back to 8,000 B.C.

• 19:49Alie Ward?

  That's bonkers. I would have thought it was like, I don't know, 1700s, maybe? The notion that the pastries really didn't pop off until like the 1700s? Like, I would think that cheese is a relatively new invention. Super wrong here, super wrong. As pastries have been around since at least ancient Egyptian times. And I should have known that because we have a stellar episode called Gastro-Egyptology about resurrecting millennia-old yeast from this ancient pottery to bake bread. But while people have been making pastries for thousands of years, I was semi-correct. That baked desserts did indeed pop off in the 1700s when this French guy named Antoine

• 20:31Alie Ward?

  Caramet absolutely began nailing pastry innovations. Why then? Because colonization and the enslavement of humans on sugarcane plantations in places like the Caribbean and what would become the United States, which just exploded sugar consumption and demand in Europe. Now for more on the horrors of plantations and how that history continues to affect ecology now, and for more on the brilliant folks who coined the field of critical ecology, I'll link that episode with Dr. Suzanne Pierre in the show notes. If you have ever eaten sugar, you should hear it. Now, to further kill your boner, the majority of cane sugar refinement still relies on

• 21:15Alie Ward?

  cattle bone char, making it questionably vegan at best. But if that's a concern, you can look for raw sugar, vegan sugar, or labels saying it's organic. That means it's made without cow char. Now, as for cattle, I was like, when were cows invented? Human beings began domesticating cows about 10,000 years ago from this now extinct species of bovine. Speaking of cow parts. I'm so glad you mentioned rennet, because that is a mystery ingredient that I don't quite understand. So cheese is milk, salt, rennet, and cultures.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Or bacteria, yeah.

• 21:54Alie Ward?

  So what's the rennet component?

• 21:57Speaker 01

  So that's the real coagulant. So that's the most powerful thing that you really need to get things moving. Rennet is a natural microorganism, mostly enzymes. There are different types of rennet, but the most traditional rennet is called animal rennet. And that has to be found in certain animals in the linings of their stomachs. When these mammals are born and they're consuming only milk, they need to be able to digest that. So the rennet enzymes in their stomach actually break down the milk when they're consuming it. And so we use those same enzymes to break down milk for cheesemaking in the natural form. So it can be animal rennet. You also can do vegetarian rennet.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  So for any vegetarians out there who don't eat any animal byproducts at all, there are rennits that are not made from animals. Those are from thistle, like artichoke, fig sap are a few of the more common ones. And then there's microbial rennet where you can actually create it in labs now today using natural enzymes that are coming from the plants and coming from molds and yeasts. But the coagulant, the thing that separates the curd from the whey is what rennet is.

• 23:08Alie Ward?

  How is rennet harvested from animals? It seems like it would be cheaper to get it from microorganisms or artichoke or thistle. What do I know? But is it easier to obtain from animals? I have no idea. I am absolutely in the dark about this, so I don't know anything, so.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  Well, today, you know, in the modern times, you can buy rennet online in capsules. That's what I have in my freezer. They stay fresh longer in the freezer. But you can buy rennet online. But you also can purchase stomach linings, like dried stomach lining, to add to your cheesemaking process. So, you know, thinking about the make process, you have to kind of focus on the positive in the make process. But they do come from the stomachs of animals.

• 23:55Alie Ward?

  Okay, so some purists like to say that rennet comes only from the enzymes in the desiccated fourth stomach chamber of young ruminants, which can contain up to 95% chymacin. But most cheesemakers use rennet, the term, as just a catch-all for any enzymes that curd the milk. And a lot of cheeses, including kosher and vegetarian cheese, not vegan, but vegetarian with no animal parts, use enzymes, including chymacin derived from either natural or in 70% of cheeses made worldwide, using genetically modified microorganisms that spit chymacin out, according to the 2022 textbook, Value Addition in Food Products and Processing Through Enzyme Technology,

• 24:38Alie Ward?

  which you can read if you become deeply, deeply curious about cheesemaking. What about the salt? Is that just for like yum yum factor? Or does that help with like osmotic reactions?

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Salt is mostly added for flavor. It's added to slow down the make process. It interacts with the curds to bring out more of the flavor, to extract more of the liquid when you're adding it to the curds. But it's mostly added for flavor. So you'd add it to most cheeses towards the end of the make process, either rubbing it on the outside of the cheese wheel or adding it straight to the curds. For mozzarella, you're adding it to the liquid when you're stretching the curds. So it depends on what type of cheese you're making, but it's usually added towards the end of the make process. And it is added mostly for flavor or to help enhance flavor.

• 25:28Alie Ward?

  Is the make process, is that the right word? Make, M-A-K-E? Is that the forming of the curds? And then there's the aging process? Like, are there different concrete steps that cheesemakers know about?

• 25:41Speaker 01

  I think that's about right. Yeah, there's the make process that sort of gets you from liquid to solid. And then you need to put it into its final form. So you might have a plastic form that you're going to add these curds in. Curds can be large. Curds can be the size of grains of rice. They're different sizes depending on what you're making. And then it goes into the final form. And then, yes, it goes into the aging process. So there's the make process and then the aging process. Because the aging process has its own intricate steps that you have to follow and basically babysit and nurture and care for the cheese until it's at its full ripeness.

• 26:18Alie Ward?

  I've seen places with just, like Home Depot, but all cheese, just stacked, like huge wheels of Parmesan stacked to the ceiling. And I'm curious, where has cheese taken you? Like, do you go on business trips to Wisconsin? Like, do you, are there like weird caves in Italy that you've got to go to?

• 26:44Speaker 01

  So I've been to all of the ends of this country to visit producers, to learn about their products just for fun, just to help educate myself on where these products come from.

• 26:59Alie Ward?

  Okay, Wisconsin. Does it have good cheese or does it have good PR?

• 27:04Speaker 01

  Great question. I would say both.

• 27:06Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  Wisconsin makes the most cheese of any state. Wisconsin's been making cheese since Wisconsin was established as a state. So, I mean, they have come a long way. There's a lot of history there, a lot of European history in Wisconsin. So, the European traditions came over with the settlers. And those traditions have been passed down for generations to generations. So, there's a reason why they make the most cheese and why it's the most consumed, because it's good cheese. Now, at that, when you think about how much they're making, they're also creating a lot of the mass-produced cheeses, things that you can get at restaurants or in fast casual situations. But they also have artists and producers. But they also have really good PR.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  And I think it's roughly a dollar a pound of cheese that they will give for marketing. They have festivals. They do great marketing on social media. They do great marketing in stores. So, yes, marketing is definitely a big part of Wisconsin's success, I think.

• 28:10Speaker 03

  Hey, Sam, the cheese head's here.

• 28:13Alie Ward?

  And run me through the types of cheeses. We talked about the softest cheeses. And it just boggles me that there are goopy camembers. And then there are cheeses, hard cheeses, that like you need a sharp knife or a peeler for. I have no idea how they get that way. Is it the cultures? Is it the amount of time they're sitting in a rind on a shelf? Can you break down how many we should know about so that when we go to our cheesemonger, we're not like lost?

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Yes. I mean, there are over 2,000 types of cheese created around the world, if not more than that. So, to categorize it, you can do it in a few different ways. You can do it by texture. So, fresh, soft, semi-firm, hard.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  Process, or you can go into it more from a style perspective. Now, when you think about it from a style perspective, then you're getting into the make process. Because each style of cheese has a different make process. They use different cultures. They use different techniques for cutting the curds. They use different techniques for aging. So when you're making a camembert versus a gouda, you're doing something very, very different in the beginning steps of your make process to get to that end result. So, yes, they all start as the same four ingredients, but as they age, they become their different style of cheese. So there are seven to eight styles of cheese, depending on who you ask. So fresh is definitely one.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  So fresh cheese is, just as it describes, no rind, only a few days or minutes or hours old. Mozzarella, ricotta, burrata, those cheeses. I'm a little baby. Then you have soft ripened, which are things like brie, camembert. Goat cheeses from France are often soft ripened. These are ones that have a white rind, or a rind that looks sort of like a brain. Those wrinkly rinds, those are soft ripened cheeses. Then you have washed rind cheeses, which are the ones that smell like feet, the super stinky guys, the ones that they're washing to create those aesthetics. What are they washing them with? They can wash them with all sorts of things.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  The most common thing that you wash cheese with is a saltwater solution, so like a brine solution. It helps certain bacterias thrive, and those bacterias are what create the smell and the color of these cheeses. So washed rind cheeses also are typically have an orange or peach hue to the rind, and you can smell them from a mile away. Those are all characteristics of the bacterias that are added or created when you wash the cheese. Oh, okay. And then you can get into the cheddars. You have gouda. You have blue cheese. And then you can still talk about firm cheeses. I still have a category called firm, because some cheeses don't fit into a category, they're

• 31:05Speaker 01

  just a firm cheese. Mm-hmm. A lot of the American originals that we create here don't have a specific name for. The type of cheese that it is, it's just what the cheesemaker made. So you can also just have like a firm cheese, like we say tome style cheese oftentimes, where it's a certain shape.

• 31:24Alie Ward?

  Some makers will just do their own thing and it doesn't necessarily fit the proverbial cheese mold.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  So those are the basic styles of cheese. I mean, those are the ones that I would use to talk to my cheesemonger. If you like a hard cheese, then go with, or a soft cheese, or a semi-soft cheese. Those are perfectly good ways to describe cheese to a monger as well. You don't have to know the styles of cheese to know, to categorize them.

• 31:51Alie Ward?

  Is processed cheese a cheese?

• 31:53Speaker 01

  In my opinion, processed cheese is not a cheese.

• 31:56Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  It's a processed food product. Because of how I define cheese, in terms of those four ingredients and the fermentation process, a cheese product, like American cheese, Kraft Singles, have even more ingredients. They have emulsifiers, they're made of a cheese blend. So you're actually blending cheeses together to make American Kraft cheese. So that in itself makes it not a real cheese, it's a cheese product.

• 32:24Alie Ward?

  So, American cheese, it can be a chimera of at least two cheeses. Usually, a cheddar and a Colby cheese. Colby being named after Colby, Wisconsin, population 2,000, which on July 18th, hosts its annual three-day Colby Cheese Days festival, which involves a bench press contest, bingo, tractor pulls, food stalls, and a quote, "real cheese parade," which is as American as it gets. But yes, American cheese is a combo of a few varieties, plus one of three salts derived from citric acid, affectionately known as E-number E331. Fun fact, sodium citrate is also added to blood donations as an anticoagulant, because

• 33:06Alie Ward?

  it tends to befriend and bind with calcium ions, which prevents the calcium from staying too cozy with the proteins that love to clump, especially, in the case of cheeses, the more aged cheeses. And we'll get to more on cheese and digesting it in a moment. But first, let's take a quick break to talk about sponsors of Ologies, who make it possible to donate to a cause of the ologist's choosing. And this week, Kyra shows two, one for each part of this cheese duo episode. And they are the Cheese Culture Coalition, which works to create a more equitable and inclusive cheese industry for Black, Indigenous, and people of color through education and grant programs. And via cheeseculturecoalition.org, you can find out more about their programs.

• 33:49Alie Ward?

  You can donate, or you can fill out a form to volunteer on their committees and fundraisers. And the second donation is going to Team Up's Building Schools in Kenya, which Kira says is a great organization run by a dear friend of hers. And they work to ensure that Kenyan children receive the education they need and provide communities with easily accessible, clean, and sustainable water sources. You can find out more or donate at goteamup.org. We'll link those in the show notes. And thank you to sponsors for making those donations possible. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. If you haven't heard me gushing about Squarespace for years, it's an all-in-one website platform. Whether you're trying to grow a business you have, or if you're just a baby business getting started, it has everything you need. That's where I secured my domain name.

• 34:33Alie Ward?

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• 35:18Alie Ward?

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• 35:49Alie Ward?

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• 36:32Alie Ward?

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• 37:23Speaker 05

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• 37:46Alie Ward?

  Okay, so next week, we're going to tackle your heap of questions, patrons. But since this is a mega episode, let's keep this cheese wheel rolling through the basics. Perhaps the thought of cheese is making your stomach rumble, and it's not good. Let's say lactose is an issue. Which cheeses are more friendly to your guts?

• 38:09Speaker 01

  Another very popular question, so I'm glad you asked. So to start, most cheeses have little to no lactose.

• 38:17Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 38:18Speaker 01

  So that is a misconception that we as mongers will forever be fighting against because so many people think that they're lactose intolerant because they have stomach issues when they eat cheese. But it's not always the type of cheese, but the amount of it. It's still a fermented product. It's still dairy where our bodies are not fully able to digest. No matter how much intolerant or tolerant you are, there's still a threshold of how much you can eat before it begins to upset your stomach. When you melt cheese also, that changes the dynamic of it. So you could be more sensitive to melted cheese than you are to hard cheese. So that's something else to think about.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  But most cheeses have no lactose. And so to avoid lactose, you want to look to harder cheeses. So the cheeses that have lactose will be softer because I mentioned that the lactose are the sugars in the cheese and the sugars are found in the moisture, in the liquid. So the less liquid or less moisture you have in your cheese, the less lactose you'll have in your cheese. So a fresh cheese will have the most.

• 39:30Alie Ward?

  So maybe avoid a young, spongy cheddar or Havarti or pizza with mozzarella or ricotta in lasagna. Those younger ones will have less of their lactose broken down into lactic acid. So harder cheeses have less lactose because it's been broken down. And according to the Cheese and Death website article, "How to Eat Cheese When You're Lactose Intolerant," yes, you can eat cheese without destroying your insides. Even if ice cream destroys you, cheese can be your friend. And any cheese aged two months or more is virtually lactose free. So go sharper, go home to the toilet.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  And then also goat's milk. Goat's milk has the least amount of lactose in terms of the main milk types that are used to make cheese. Goat's milk cheeses are the ones that I would suggest for people with very sensitive lactose issues.

• 40:21Alie Ward?

  Are there any animal cheeses that have surprised you, that you've had? Like, have you ever had, like, horse milk? What animals do we make cheese from, their milk?

• 40:33Speaker 01

  So the most common and the ones that are legal in America are cow, sheep, and goat. But then there are also cheeses made from camels. Donkeys are the other two most popular. There's also water buffalo.

• 40:46Alie Ward?

  What?

• 40:46Speaker 01

  That we have here in America. So buffalo mozzarella, when you hear that, that's made from water buffalo.

• 40:53Alie Ward?

  Oh, it's not bison?

• 40:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 40:55Alie Ward?

  I had no, I always pictured a bison, like, in Yellowstone, pulling over and, like, someone with a pail, just being like, "Thanks, go on your way."

• 41:05Speaker 01

  I mean, they look sort of similar.

• 41:06Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, yeah.

• 41:09Alie Ward?

  So we have a whole bisonology episode with several guests, including some bovine scholars and a few indigenous bison ranchers on northern Montana's Blackfoot Confederacy Reservation, who also are my cousins. Hello to the Evanses. So to learn all about bison, you can check that one, which is linked in the show notes. But yes, a water buffalo, they're native to parts of Asia and Africa, and you will recognize a water buffalo. It has these long curved horns. They look like robust curtain bangs on either side of its face. Buy water buffalo milk. They seem hard to milk. Well, to those of Hindu faith, a cow is sacred, so hands off cow udders.

• 41:50Alie Ward?

  But it's kind of like how the Vatican says that capybaras are fish. We have an episode on that. The water buffalo is like, mm, it's okay to milk. Now, water buffalo milk, also lower in cholesterol, but higher in fat, so it is creamy as hell. Now, on some menus, should you be lucky enough to see them, is human milk cheese, like that made by New York-based artist Marion Simon, who accepts, or accepted in the past, milk donations from, in one case, a woman who made too much. But- She didn't want to donate it because there are a lot of dietary restrictions she would have to adhere to in order to give it to other's infants. So she's like, sure, I'll give you some boob milk.

• 42:32Alie Ward?

  And on Miriam's website, she has video art titled "Making Human Cheese 2011 HD Video with Audio 4:10." It shows the process in this beautifully shot but stark and clinical studio setting.

• 42:47Speaker 06

  But I think of it more as like a labor rather than a commodity. And having been in a labor industry like cooking, I feel like it's not all that different. I feel like it's kind of the same as me sort of spending an hour making someone a pasta or something like that.

• 43:02Alie Ward?

  And I understand the texture is creamy. It's not unlike a provolone. I often work in cafes, and today I am grateful to have watched this high-definition video of a woman with dripping nipples, full out, while a cheesemaker stands by wearing gloves, not in public. Happened to be home when I watched that. Now, some detractors say that this is just a breath away from cannibalism, eating human milk cheese. But animal rights activists have gone so far as to urge Ben and Jerry's to just swap out all ruminant milk with people milk to make a point, maybe getting it from a woman named Sheila or Heather. And if all of this grosses you out, just take a seat in a rocking chair, stare into

• 43:43Alie Ward?

  the horizon, and ponder, why the teats of a cow or a sheep you've never even met gives less of a nick? I have no answers. I only have questions.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  I've had camel milk in caramel form, but I haven't had any cheeses outside of those four. So I've had water buffalo, cow, sheep, and goat. Some of the weirder, you know, unusual types of cheeses that I have are often mixed milk. So you can mix the milks together to create another style of cheese, another flavor profile. By mixing cow's milk with goat's milk, you get one flavor. By mixing sheep's milk with cow's milk, you get another flavor. So those are some of the more unusual types of cheeses that I've had.

• 44:27Speaker 04

  Hybrid, you might say.

• 44:29Alie Ward?

  When I think of goat's milk cheese, I always think of it as a soft cheese. But are there like Parmesan goat cheeses?

• 44:36Speaker 01

  Definitely, yeah. So you can make any type of cheese with any style of milk. There are classifications and what we call rules to some of the cheese making process. Especially when you go to Europe, there are certain cheeses that are only made with cow's milk, only made with sheep's milk, only made with goat's milk.

• 44:56Alie Ward?

  So in France, chèvre is goat's milk cheese. It has an R in there. I'm not sure how to say it. Now, Grecian feta is sheep or a mix of sheep and goat milk. Although in America, you can just get cow's milk feta. And apparently, Greece just has to live with Americans' decision to take the name. Now, pecorino just means sheep's milk, and it comes from the Italian word for sheep. Now, both goat and sheep milk have more fat than cow milk. And those with a dairy allergy can sometimes more easily digest goat milk because its proteins are similar to that made by the animal, your mom, according to a chapter titled "The Nutritional Value and Health Benefits of Goat Milk Components"

• 45:38Alie Ward?

  from the textbook "Nutrients in Dairy and Their Implications on Health and Disease." Also, goat milk is more commonly consumed globally than cow milk? What? Yes. Goats are easier to keep, and people tend to prefer the taste. How many people? About 75% of the world consumes goat milk, or I should say chèvre. Why does France have such a good cheese reputation?

• 46:02Speaker 01

  Similar to other parts of Europe, they've been making cheese for a long period of time. For centuries, they've been making cheese, and they've perfected the craft of it. They also invest in the quality of the milk and the animals. They know that they make high-quality cheeses, so they invest. So the government and the people invest a lot of money into those manufacturers. So there are rules that you need to follow in parts of France to make certain cheeses. They've been crafting these cheeses for so long that they've just gotten better and better over time.

• 46:37Alie Ward?

  They have a good cheese culture.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  Yes, they have a great cheese culture.

• 46:41Alie Ward?

  Speaking of cultures, I read once that stinky cheeses have the same bacteria that stinky feet do. And I'm curious, like, the cultures now are probably handed down and handed down. But how much of the culture is just like wild-caught bacteria or yeasts? Or like, where is it coming from? How do people know, like, this is gonna make a really good Gorgonzola? And this is gonna make a really good Gouda? Are they in secret jars where someone protects them? Like, where are they coming from?

• 47:17Speaker 01

  In some cases, yeah. The idea of cultures to some cheesemakers are their bread and butter. It's the secret sauce to make their cheese special and different. Because they're natural microbes that are found in the environment naturally. So you can harvest them. Now, today, we harvest cultures. And so now you can basically pick out, just like buying Reddit. You can pick up the cultures that you want to add to your cheese, just like a recipe. And you can buy them online. But in some cases, like raw milk cheesemakers, they're actually cultivating their own cultures. And so they're in-house and they're creating them through fermenting the milk. They create a clabber or some kind of substance that they then add to the next batch of milk

• 48:01Speaker 01

  to help start the fermentation process, which is what the cheese cultures are doing. They're really helping transform the milk and also adding flavor.

• 48:11Alie Ward?

  Did I know what a clabber was? Of course not. I thought it was some sort of wooden paddle. But evidently, it's a type of fermented sour milk that's curd-like, but the whey hasn't yet separated. So if you have ever dusted off a canister of Clabber Girl baking powder in your pantry, that's because clabber, milk, was a leavening agent before you could just buy powder in a can, which is not made of dairy. Also, what is with raw milk cheese? Well, some folks say that the curd structure is far superior in milk that hasn't been pasteurized or heated to kill pathogens. And the absolutely bogglingly appointed U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr.

• 48:53Alie Ward?

  prefers raw milk, although his favorite brand was recalled for containing bird flu, which is perhaps why his strategy for the bird flu epidemic is to just let her rip. But from my curled lips to your scrunched nose, what's the stinkiest cheese?

• 49:10Speaker 01

  The stinkiest cheeses are probably from France.

• 49:13Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  They have a few popular cheeses. Epoisse is one that's very stinky. It's a smaller format cheese.

• 49:22Alie Ward?

  These are just little cheeses?

• 49:24Speaker 01

  It's actually banned on the train rails in France.

• 49:29Alie Ward?

  Oh, my God.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  I don't know if it's the whole country, but I know in parts you can't have Epoisse on the train because of the smell of it and the stink of it.

• 49:38Alie Ward?

  And while some Parisians say they have never been cited for this offense, Epoisse is said to have a soft, pungent, and unapologetically meaty scent and flavor, according to the New York City purveyor Maurice Cheese. Hence, there you go, the origin of the euphemism to cut the cheese.

• 49:58Speaker 01

  There's also from Italy, there's washline cheeses like Telleggio. It's not super pungent in flavor like Epoisse. Epoisse has a pretty robust flavor. But Telleggio actually has a more milky and subtle flavor overall, but the stink is still there. So you're right. You definitely read that correctly. The bacteria called Brevi bacteria linens, or B. linens for short, are the bacteria that are close relatives to the bacteria that grow between your toes. So that's where the stinky feet reference comes from. So we try to embrace this in the cheese world and not look at it as a negative. We try to embrace it as a positive. These are just natural organisms around us.

• 50:41Speaker 01

  And we know to clean ourselves if we smell our feet. And so that's fine. But when it comes to cheese, the stinkier, the better for some people. So.

• 50:50Alie Ward?

  Heads up. Feet stink is technically called bromodosis. And if you are a victim of it from the foot or the nose perspective, it's coming from, yep, an overgrowth of bacteria or maybe a bonus fungus thrown in there. And it could be because you are blessed with feet sweat glands that are working overtime. Or you could have a hormonal issue. Either way, podiatrists recommend. recommend washing the feet and letting them dry totally before socking them up. And you can alternate between a few pairs of shoes so that they can fully dry out between wears. Also, you can pull an at home bowling alley move and Lysol your shoes down between wears.

• 51:31Alie Ward?

  There are UV light shoe sterilizers you can tuck in there overnight. You can also add some vinegar to your sock laundry. And just for you, I went deep into forums on foot stink. And I read one story about someone who developed absolutely rancid foot whiff. And it turned out their shower drain was sluggish from buildup and like rather than snake it because they just sloshed around in the water during their showers, not realizing that all the stuff they washed off their dirty body mingled with whatever demon was clogging the bathtub drain. And can I tell you that if you live in a house, any house that has a shower or a bathtub, get yourself something called a drain weasel.

• 52:14Alie Ward?

  It's a sort of barbed implement you shove down your drain and it brings up ungodly horrors. They look like a greased dead rat and they smell even worse. And if you like poor extraction videos, you will love using a drain weasel. I'm one of you. If you're asking me why, why, why? You can see our disgustology episode about what grosses out whom and why. Also, some people swear by ina perspirant deodorant on their feet or even a salt crystal, the hippie kind that works to kill germs. I hope I have saved some friendships or healed some marriages. Let love bloom.

• 52:51Alie Ward?

  Are there any conversations between cheese people about why we might not want like our roommate's feet to smell that way? But why we want our charcuterie board, like that unctuousness, that like animal quality? Like, do we know why the brain says no in some cases and yes in others?

• 53:12Speaker 01

  That's a great question. I mean, I know it's a lot of personal preference. For me, I didn't love a lot of the cheeses that I love now when I first started tasting cheese. I think working in the industry, you gain respect for all categories of cheese, and you try them all with no judgment. And then, over time, you begin to advance your palate and make decisions on preference. So I don't think that there are scientific reasonings behind it, but I know that it takes a lot of time to sort of work your way there. Some people just like stinky cheese because they like robust flavors. They like to be surprised. Other people like more mellow flavors.

• 53:54Speaker 01

  They don't want to be surprised. So I think it really just comes down to preference.

• 53:58Alie Ward?

  Sharp cheddar all the way. Why sharper cheese is just aged longer. Lactose breaks down further into lactic acid, giving that kind of vinegary punch that is no contest better than mild cheese. Do you get so many cheese gifts? Like, do people constantly give you cheese fridge magnets and cheese boards?

• 54:22Speaker 01

  I definitely, yes. I'm definitely the cheese lady in my, in my community. So everything cheese-related, I'll get mugs, I'll get bags. All the cheese gifts, yes, definitely something that I am familiar with. Yeah.

• 54:37Alie Ward?

  If you have a cheese board at home, how many knives do you really need? Because sometimes a cheese board set, I'll be like, I don't know what this teardrop-shaped knife does. And how come some have a fork and some don't? Like, how many cheese knives do you need?

• 54:49Speaker 01

  I mean, each one has a purpose. Each shape of cheese knife is designed for a certain style of cheese or to be used in a certain way. I think four to six is the right amount. I mean, most sets come with one of each type of knife, which doesn't always work because you might need the soft knife or because you have two soft cheeses. And so you have to... Finagle it and find a different knife or just use this knife for this cheese. So I'll look for sets that also give me some instructions, too, if I was looking for some knives.

• 55:25Alie Ward?

  I never know. I just set them out and I hope whoever's eating the cheese board is.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:31Alie Ward?

  Okay, let's break this down for you. So in real, basic terms, if the knife has holes in it, that's for soft cheeses. So there's less surface area for the cheese to stick to. The knife with the fork at the tip is for any kind of cheese that you can slice off, but you don't want to use your dirty little fingers to pick it up off the board in front of people. And the square or wedged shaped cheese knife is for harder cheeses. So you can kind of chisel a slice off. And then the teardrop shaped cheese knife is the one for the drier hard cheeses like Parm. So you can cut a little divot and then poke at the cut with the tip and then break a chunk off. Now, another handy rule of thumb when it comes to

• 56:14Alie Ward?

  what cheese knife you should use is so fucking what? We're all gonna die, nothing matters. Do you have a kind of cheese where when you see it, you're like, oh, hell, yeah?

• 56:24Speaker 01

  I like things from the mountains. So we call them Alpine cheeses. So the Alps are a mountain range that run in Switzerland and France. And so cheeses are made high up in these mountains and they're made in a very specific way. Gruyere is one of them. So if you've had Gruyere, that's what we call an Alpine style cheese. And so I look for those types of cheese in the stores, especially more rare, hard to find cheeses from that part of the world. Or domestically, there are a lot of small producers that I don't get to try because they're more regional based. So when I travel, there are cheeses that I'm gonna look for that are local to that area that I can't find anywhere else.

• 57:04Alie Ward?

  Let's talk about aging a little bit because the longer you age, the harder the cheese? Is that right or no?

• 57:12Speaker 01

  It depends on the style. So yes, for the majority of styles of cheese. So anything like a cheddar, a Gouda, the Alpine style that I talked about, those styles and anything firm will definitely get harder as they age. As they age, they're losing more moisture. And so when you lose more moisture, it's getting more dry and therefore the texture is gonna be firmer. But there are styles like the soft ripened cheese that I mentioned and washed rind. Those two styles of cheese could age backwards. So like a brie or camembert style cheese. Brie are the the soft cheese with the white rind.

• 57:52Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm.

• 57:53Speaker 01

  As those cheeses age, the proteins actually break down in a different way than the hard cheeses do. And so they actually will get softer over time.

• 58:01Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 58:02Speaker 01

  So when we say a cheese is ripe, oftentimes you hear someone say, oh, this is ripe. This is a ripe cheese. They're usually talking about these softer cheeses that are that are more runny and spreadable. Brie can be firm when you slice it, but over time it'll actually get softer and more creamy.

• 58:21Speaker 02

  You smell particularly ripe this evening.

• 58:25Alie Ward?

  What is the rind on those soft cheeses? Because it looks papery and then I'm like, is this just mold? And can I eat it?

• 58:34Speaker 01

  Yes, so those cheeses specifically, you definitely can eat it.

• 58:38Alie Ward?

  Ooh.

• 58:38Speaker 01

  The the rind is mold. We call them soft ripened, but specifically for brie and camembert, we'll say bloomy rind. So a bloomy rind cheese is one where the the molds that were added and the cultures that were added to the cheese actually begin to form on the exterior. Mold needs oxygen to thrive. So the molds and the microorganisms are going to seek out the oxygen and that's going to be on the exterior of the cheese. So just like anything, you'll see mold growth on the outside, just like your bread when you leave it too long. But in this case, these are good molds that bring a lot of flavor. And so what the cheesemaker will do is they're actually watch the molds bloom and then pat them down over time.

• 59:23Speaker 01

  And then watch it bloom some more and pat that down over time. And then as you pat it down, it creates a dense sort of crust, if you will, that's perfectly edible and actually is part of the reason why the cheeses break down. In the opposite way that the hard cheeses do is partly because of the rind itself. The rind breaks down the paste of the cheese and makes everything softer.

• 59:46Alie Ward?

  I've always wondered that on a cheese board, when people are scooping around the rind, I'm always like, I feel like you can eat that, but I don't know. Like, I've heard people who have been on dates and like their date ate the entire edamame, including the shell, and they're like, oh, no, like, what is happening here? And I was like, is that the same for a rind? Is it like sitting down to eat crab and then just like eating the shell also? But no, you don't have to scoop around it. You can eat that thing.

• 1:00:12Speaker 02

  Right? I mean, right?

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's totally edible and you can totally eat it. And what I say is that if it doesn't add to your experience, then leave it behind.

• 1:00:23Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 1:00:24Speaker 01

  If it doesn't make things taste better, then it's okay to leave it behind. For me, the bloomy rind cheeses, I leave those rinds behind. So I would be one of those people that you're talking about that would scoop out the cheese. So that's my confession. I would, that would be the one. But, you know, then I would just try to find a friend to eat the rind. So I would definitely, yes, not leave it behind totally.

• 1:00:47Alie Ward?

  You could pass it on to me.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:00:49Alie Ward?

  I'd put it on a cracker. I'm also like a everyone's pizza crust. I'm always eyeing them, like the crust is my favorite part, like, you gonna eat that? So, okay, that's good. I'll take care of it for you.

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  Yes, and I would say that when you eat any rind, don't save it to the end like a, like a, like a treat. Eat the rind with the paste. Eat the rind with the cheese itself, because that's where you're going to really understand the full flavor of it. But oftentimes, people will eat the cheese and then like pop the rind in their mouth at the end. And I'm just like, that's not going to be a good experience for you because it's going to be a very specific flavor profile that isn't going to be the same as the cheese itself. So that's my tip for that.

• 1:01:28Alie Ward?

  So, yes, that bloomy rind, which is usually mostly a species of penicillin, actually breaks down fat into a much creamier and kind of goopy, spreadable texture. And yes, you can eat the rind and you may want to if you like umami or mushroomy tastes. Also, if you've ever had a bloomed soft cheese that tasted like ammonia, which I have, that means it overaged. So don't save that brie in your cheese drawer for a rainy day. Just eat the thing. Try the rind. Well, you mentioned Alpine cheeses and Gruyere, and we're talking about Camembert and soft cheeses right now. Is it the same as champagne? Like, can you call something a Gruyere if it's made in New Jersey? Or is it only like in the Gruyere region of the Alps?

• 1:02:13Alie Ward?

  Are there proprietary names?

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  Yes, there are. So there are certain countries that make certain cheeses that they're the only ones that will make those cheeses. Gruyere being one of them. Gruyere is only made in Switzerland by certain cheesemakers in certain regions. Only certain people are even allowed to make it. The government would stop you if you tried to make Gruyere outside of the parameters that they've set. Camembert isn't as strict. It is made in certain parts of France, and it's mostly raw milk. But we can't get that cheese in America. So there are some sort of workarounds in that respect. Now, when talking about Gruyere specifically, in America, the government has ruled that anyone can use the name Gruyere. So you will see cheeses that are made in Wisconsin

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  that say Gruyere on the label. But technically, those are not going to be Gruyere. But any country can make their own rules. We've allowed this to happen. But if you talk to a cheese professional, Gruyere is only made in Switzerland.

• 1:03:12Alie Ward?

  Just a footnote here. So Gruyere is in fact a place in the Alps. And I need you to know that sci fi artist and legend H. R. Giger of Alien fame purchased a medieval castle fortress there and has turned it into a museum of his goopy creepy alien sculptures and artwork. And you can visit it in between plates of earthy, nutty, semi-soft cow's milk cheese. Do cheese professionals get in cheese fights? Or is it pretty tight knit? I also understand that cheese is pretty matriarchal. Historically, like, there's more women that work in cheese. Is that true of the cheese culture?

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  Definitely. So throughout history, cheese was often looked at as a woman's work. So the men will be outside with the animals, taking care of the farmland and doing all of the manual labor, as they say, even though cheesemaking is manually labor too. But it would be considered a woman's work. So there'd be, the woman would be taken care of. Today, it's the same in some respects, but there are more women in the industry. I think there's a lot to do with the passion behind it and the work that is done to make cheese. It's very Nurturing, it's very passionate, like I said, specifically to work with animals, to work with mother animals specifically. All of these things are very matriarchal.

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  So in the industry, there's definitely more women than men today. There aren't as many female cheesemakers as men. It's probably more balanced. But in the industry as a whole, like in distribution and sales and education like myself, there's a lot more women.

• 1:04:48Alie Ward?

  That was a surprise to me, you know, reading about that. And also reading about that cheese tends to be like a queer-friendly industry, too. And all of hospitality really is kind of toward that bent.

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 1:05:02Alie Ward?

  Which is great to hear.

• 1:05:03Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 1:05:04Alie Ward?

  And those in the cheese industry likely already know this, but to those on the other side of the cheese case, there is a strong queer culture folded into the cheese world. In a 2019 Vice piece titled "Meet the Lesbian Cheesemongers of the LGBTQ Community," a cheese vendor named Cara Warren explained the appeal, that it's the storytelling and the fact that cheese is kind of like this outsider food already. She said, "It's a subculture that somehow works in the realm of gay culture. They intersect at the point where it can be artsy and fantastic and over the top, and you can be loud and proud." So cheese is inherently queer, as outlined in the 2024 Eater article, "Why Cheese is Inherently Queer."

• 1:05:47Alie Ward?

  And Kyra is quoted in that piece explaining that a passion of hers is trying to make cheese approachable and relatable to people in America who may see it as unobtainable and to allow people to enjoy cheese on a more casual level. And Kyra also told Eater that as a person of color in a white-dominated industry, she knows of only two other brown female cheesemongers, and that one of her many, many goals is doing more for young people of color and young queer people. And that's also what she's fostering at her cheese consulting business, Own Your Funk. And that's a company that's inspired and motivated by this urgent need for more diversity and who's buying, selling, and producing artisan food, specifically value-added dairy, as it's called.

• 1:06:29Alie Ward?

  And she does that by crafting these intentional, educational food experiences. And you can learn more, of course, at ownyourfunk.com. Oh, wait, I had another rind question. I'm sorry. Oh, wax rinds. Don't eat the wax rinds, right?

• 1:06:43Speaker 01

  Don't eat the wax rinds, yes.

• 1:06:44Alie Ward?

  Okay. Why do some cheeses? Why are they dipped in wax and other cheeses are just like cool having a moldy rind?

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  Great question. Again, it goes back to style. So traditionally cheeses dipped in wax are going to create certain nuances and flavor profiles within the cheese. So the most well-known wax dipped cheeses would be Goudas or Goudas from the Netherlands and Holland. So when you dip the cheese in wax, you're sort of creating a barrier around it to allow for the microbes and the cheese itself to age while not losing its moisture.

• 1:07:22Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 1:07:23Speaker 01

  So you've created this protective barrier where nothing can get out or in. And so what that means is it can't get dried out. It's going to stay protected by the wax and that moisture helps with sweetness. That's why a lot of Goudas are going to be more sweet in flavor profile, partly because of the wax dipping. So you'll see it in a few other cheeses, like there are some blue cheeses that are dipped in wax. There are cheddars dipped in wax, all for the same sort of purpose, to protect it from losing its moisture.

• 1:07:54Alie Ward?

  One of my fears about the future, and I have many, but one of them is, you know those Baby Bell cheeses?

• 1:08:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:08:02Alie Ward?

  When you got one of those in your lunch, you're like, oh, today's going to be a good day. I have a Baby Bell cheese in my lunch. And not to mention, you could make like weird wax fingernails and you could sculpt it. It was like, today's the best. But I'm so afraid of the day when Baby Bell has to announce, their poor social media expert has to announce that like they're going to be wrapped in plastic or they stopped making the wax. Like, it's such a treat, but I imagine it must be so expensive.

• 1:08:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't think it's that expensive in today's modern world. It's food-grade wax. It's not very thick. It doesn't take a lot to create. I think it's more, in my opinion, more of an environmental aspect to things. So.

• 1:08:46Speaker 01

  To tradition out of wax could be for an environmental purpose, to create less waste in that respect. But it is food grade, so it does decompose over time. But yeah, that would be a terrible day. I don't know if it would have. It wouldn't be the same cheese anymore. It would taste completely different.

• 1:09:02Alie Ward?

  OK, I had to look this up. And apparently, the red wax is a microcrystalline wax. It's food safe. And the cellophane around the cheese is compostable. Also, if you're subsisting entirely on Baby Bell cheeses, good for you. But you're feeling guilty about the wax consumption, you can, according to their website, collect all the wax, the cellophane, the netting, and the metal clip, and you can ship it back to them with a prepaid packing label, and they'll recycle it all for you. They purify the wax and make candles. But the wax, I'm told, also makes an excellent campfire starter. Or you can sculpt things. Baby Bell has even run competitions for the finest sculptures made from its cheese wax discards. So dream big, get in there. I know.

• 1:09:47Alie Ward?

  It's just that it's such an experience when you unwrap it. You're just like, oh, so exciting. I wanted to ask about blue cheeses, too. Sometimes you'll see, like, cave aged. And I picture a weird, remote, tiny cave that no one knows the location to. But when they say cave aged, is that like, is a basement a cave? What does that mean?

• 1:10:10Speaker 01

  So cave aged is used pretty loosely today. But traditionally, cave aged means just that, in a naturally formed cave. Cheeses are put into the cave to age. Caves, again, traditionally, true caves are sort of a naturally controlled environment. So they have cool temperatures, about like 55 degrees. So it's not super cold. Kind of keeps things at a nice temperature. But then very high humidity. And so with those two attributes, it makes for a great environment, again, for certain cheeses. Certain cheeses want high humidity and cool temperatures to thrive in the aging process. So that's when you're going to put things in caves.

• 1:10:52Speaker 01

  And you'll see blue cheeses where it started with Roquefort. They started in caves and so people follow suit. And so today, you can define a cave as any controlled temperature environment.

• 1:11:05Alie Ward?

  Any controlled temperature environment?

• 1:11:08Speaker 01

  So a basement, if you have the temperature controlled, if there's a door and the humidity and the temperature are controlled, then you can definitely call it a cave or a cheese aging room. Even a refrigerator can be called a cave if you're aging cheese in it. But traditionally and today, there are still many, many cheeses that are aged in real caves, even right here in America.

• 1:11:30Alie Ward?

  So we have an episode on caves, Speleology, I'll link it for you. Also, the blue veins in cheeses like Roquefort and Gorgonzola, those appear because there are tunnels of air in the aging cheese. And those pockets of oxygen allow the mold to flourish. And then they appear like threads of gold before a miner's eyes, priceless to some.

• 1:11:55Speaker 01

  So to be considered to be a blue cheese, the only really rule to being a blue cheese is that you have some blue molding in there. So, yeah.

• 1:12:03Alie Ward?

  I feel like blue cheese has to be the most polarizing.

• 1:12:06Speaker 01

  It's definitely the most polarizing, yes.

• 1:12:08Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:08Speaker 01

  I mean, you have some fans of it and then you have people who will never try it.

• 1:12:13Alie Ward?

  Yeah. My friend Todd, who has French citizenship, an amazing chef. And I was shocked to be like, that's one cheese he just won't touch. Because he's like, he'll try anything. He'll cook anything. And it's so personal, what cheeses you like, which is one of the things that's amazing about cheese. Can I do a lightning round of listener questions?

• 1:12:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 1:12:42Alie Ward?

  So ask salt of the earth people cheesy questions because like a snack, knowledge is best shared. Thank you so much, Cara, for being here not only this week, but next week as well. You can follow her and learn more about her work, linked in the show notes, or at our website, aliward.com/ologies/fromyology, or at ownyourfunk.com. Donations went to the Cheese Culture Coalition and team-ups building schools in Kenya. We've got those linked in the show notes as well. Next week, come back for wall-to-wall Patreon questions to learn how to properly store cheese, the difference between orange and white cheddar, the grilled sandwich debate, how to make cheese at home, cheese pricing, squeaky curds, the moon's composition, how cheese changes your brain chemistry, the ultimate

• 1:13:25Alie Ward?

  charcuterie board build, plus holes and crystals and maggots. Oh my. And again, if you need kid-friendly episodes, check out Smologies, S-M-O-L-O-G-I-E-S, and Ologies merch is available at ologiesmerch.com. Thank you, patrons of the show, for making it possible via patreon.com/ologies. We are at Ologies on Instagram at Blue Sky. I'm at Ali Ward on both. Erin Talbert admins our Ologies Podcast Facebook group. Aveline Malik makes our professional transcripts. Noelle Dilworth arranges time as a scheduling producer. Susan Hale is our managing monger and director of all things Ologies. Editors are the extra sharp, Jake Chaffee, and lead editor and big cheese Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio, with some additional sprinklings of Jared Sleeper of Mindjam Media. Nick Thorburn made the theme music. And if you stick around to the very

• 1:14:10Alie Ward?

  end of the episode, I'll tell you a secret. This one is that my legs, not my best feature, pasty, ashy, no matter how much moisturizer, it's not a good scene. But summer is hard for lingering aging goths. And so I've taken to wearing like old-school fishnets under my shorts, and specifically, the ones made for professional dancers, like Capizio brand. Indestructible. I don't know what in the name of Kevlar these things are made of, but you could run thigh first into a barbed wire fence, and these things wouldn't feel it while you bled out underneath them. I thought this was the most genius summer decision I've ever made. I wear them all the time. I have several Pairs.

• 1:14:52Alie Ward?

  And also, it's a great way to avoid needing self-tanner or explaining bruises. You don't know how they got there. But I ran into my neighbor yesterday. He's a rocket scientist at NASA. So I tend to trust his judgment. And he pointed to my ensemble of fishnet tights under black shorts. And he just paused, just taking out the garbage. And he just was like, why? This is a burn? Yeah. But was it a deterrent? No. Sorry, Ben. I'm still wearing them. Okay. Next week, more cheese. Provide. Pachydermatology, omeology, cryptozoology, lithology, nanotechnology, meteorology, geology, nephology, seriology, cellology.

• 1:15:41Speaker 07

  And you ate a whole wheel of cheese? How'd you do that? It's actually, I'm not even mad. That's amazing.

• 1:15:49Speaker 05

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