The Coop Ep. #02: Mastering Home Cheesemaking with Robyn Jackson

Anna Sakawsky:

Wow. Welcome everybody to this edition of The Coop. That was an amazing intro. First time I’ve seen that. So, welcome! If this is your first time here, welcome to The Coop. This is Homestead Living’s new live monthly show for homesteaders to connect with our contributors, our talk contributors, and other experts at the forefront of the modern home setting movement. So this is episode two and I’m so excited to be here today with Robyn Jackson of Cheese from Scratch. But first, if you don’t know me, my name is Anna Sakawsky and I am the editor-in-chief of Homestead Living Magazine. Fun fact about me, I am actually the only Canadian on our team. I’m looking out at the snow right now, and Robyn is actually Canadian as well. So she is joining in from, I’m on Vancouver Island and she is in the interior of BC, so not too, too far, but that’s the amazing thing about shows like this, and just about the online homesteading community in general, is that we all get to connect from all over the place and learn from one another.

So I’ve seen there’s been a lot of comments already coming in from people all over the place just looking through… We’ve got people from Georgia, Florida, Ohio, Texas, Illinois, Idaho, Nebraska, Arizona, Tennessee. So if you haven’t popped it in yet, let me know where you’re from in the chat. Let’s get that going and warmed up because we’re also going to be utilizing that chat a little bit later on to do some live q and as. So pop your location in the chat. Cape Bretton, New York. Awesome. That’s so great. Okay, so I would also love to know while we’re warming up the chat, how much cheese making experience you have, if any. So on kind of a scale of let’s say zero to five, zero being “no cheese making experience at all” and five being like “you’ve got the milk cow and you’re already doing it and milking and cheese making every day”, let me know where you’re at.

Zero to zero, none. I have no experience. Greetings from Alaska, Maine, Connecticut. Awesome. No experience. No experience. Wow. And so pretty much for some ones, some twos, but for the most part we are all beginners here. And honestly, I am a beginner too. I had the pleasure of interviewing Robyn for the march issue of Homestead Living Magazine and learned so much from her and gained a lot of confidence myself actually, because as somebody who lives on only a quarter acre and does not have a milk cow of my own, but who is interested in cheese making, I wanted to know if it was something that I was viably able to kind of pursue. And she absolutely assured me that it is something that you can do even without a milk cow. I’ve started dabbling in it a bit, but I know kind of what the limitations are.

So we are going to talk a lot about that today. So if you are a complete beginner, if you don’t have a milk cow, you are still in the right place and if you do or if you’re thinking about getting one, we’re going to talk about all of that as well, just starting. It’s made some mozzarella ricotta. Awesome. Perfect. 

Alright, so before we dive in, I would just like to thank our sponsor today. So The Coop is brought to you by the Homestead documentary. So the Homestead documentary is your ticket to modern homesteading inspiration. With 20 episodes across two incredible seasons, you’ll meet 50 real life homesteaders that are turning their dreams into reality, from growing your own food to raising livestock and starting profitable homestead businesses. This series covers it all. You can instantly binge season one and two for just $59 and start your homestead journey today and head over to homesteaddocumentary.com right now to get started.

That’s homesteaddocumentary.com. 

Alright, so lots of no experience. Well you guys, oh, level four. Right on. So there’s a few that are a little more advanced. Imani has just had 18 baby goats born this past week and getting a jersey count a few weeks need to learn. Yeah, no kidding. And need to learn quick. Alright, well let’s dive in. So welcome Robyn Jackson to The Coop. So Robyn, sorry, before we dive in, I’ll just kind of let people know who you are just in case they don’t know. So Robyn Jackson is the owner and creator of Cheese from Scratch, a thriving business dedicated to teaching homesteaders how to turn their milk pasteurized or raw into delicious artisan quality cheese. So what began as a simple blog to share cheese making tips and tricks quickly grew into a trusted resource for aspiring and experienced cheese makers alike.

Today, cheese from Scratch has bloomed into a community of over 150,000 followers on Instagram, drawn to Robyn’s real life approachable guidance on making cheese and managing milk cows. Through her blog, YouTube channel and courses, Robyn has made the art of cheese making accessible and enjoyable for home sitters around the globe. And as I mentioned, she’s also featured in the March issue of Homestead Living Magazine. If you’re not subscribed yet, you can actually subscribe by clicking the link below the video and you still have time if you subscribe now to get on the mailing list for that March issue. And she’s got a book coming out soon too, which we’ll catch on. So lots of exciting things happening with Robyn and it’s exciting for me to watch. I actually met you when you were at the very beginning of this whole journey.

Robyn Jackson:

Yeah, exactly like month one or maybe month one or month two of my business, I think.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah. And I’m not surprised that it took off the way it did because when we first connected, it was the first time I had actually ever talked to anybody who was doing cheese making in the homesteading community.

Robyn Jackson:

Yeah, yeah. No, I think definitely with Covid and everything, everyone is wanting to learn a little bit more about how to bring food back to their home and then once you start setting the natural kind of thing is like, oh, I want to learn how to ferment things and dairy is a really good fermented food. So

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, I think some people might actually not even realize that it is actually technically a fermented food cheese. Yeah, exactly.

Robyn Jackson:

And that’s the cool thing about it. If you know how to ferment one thing or you’re kind of fermenting other things like sourdough or vegetables or anything like that, it’s a really natural kind of just segue into dairy, which is cool.

Anna Sakawsky:

Okay, well that’s good to know because I feel like that is something that a lot of people maybe find a little bit less intimidating or maybe they’ve done a little bit of already. So if you have a little bit of that under your belt, then maybe this is kind of a natural next step. Can you tell me a little bit about what was your background for anybody who doesn’t know your story and how you actually got started?

Robyn Jackson:

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, so my husband and I, like Anna said, we are in northern British Columbia here. We have three children ages 11, seven and five, and my husband Zach and I have a pretty large cattle ranch. We have about 240 beef cows. So 10 years ago, my husband, he had always been kind of talking about having a dairy cow. He grew up in Wisconsin dairy country. I know I saw there’s a few Wisconsin friends on here today. So he grew up in Wisconsin on a dairy farm, moved to Canada, we bought a beef ranch, but he always kind of was talking about having a dairy cow again. He missed having the fresh milk, he missed the cheese from Wisconsin because–cheese state. So about 10 years ago he surprised me and brought home a milk cow and I came home from work, there was a milk cow and he’s like, can you try and make me some cheese?

At that point I had grown a garden and I’d dabbled in a few little things. I made yogurt from grocery store milk, that kind of thing. So it wasn’t like this absolutely out there kind of request, but I was like, okay. And I didn’t realize how much I’d like it, but I kind of dived in, just started doing it. There was a lot of resources out there, but there were a lot of resources created from commercial cheese makers and kind of trickled down into homesteaders. So it was a little bit hard to just sift through everything that there was, but I just kind of started and started learning and practicing and failing and failed forward sometimes and kind of got to where I am now.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, that’s awesome. So I mean in your case the cow came first. If it’s the question of which came first or which maybe should come first, the cow or the cheese in your case, it just naturally happened to be that the cow came first, but you were doing some of this stuff already. So like you said, you had been gardening and home setting and making some yogurt and things like that, so it wasn’t like you were brand new to it. For someone who is brand new and maybe doesn’t have a dairy animal yet or maybe isn’t in a position where they’re going to be getting one, where would you say they should start? Should they just dive into cheese making? What other types should they start with making yogurt? Where would you recommend if someone’s just completely new to all this?

Robyn Jackson:

Yeah, for sure. I feel like I started the hard way. I don’t know if just getting a milk cow out of the blue and then diving into cheese making, it was a lot, especially because we had a baby at that time and added to our family as we went along. So I would kind of say the first step is probably to start researching a milk source. Milk is the mother to all cheese. Cheese cannot be made without milk, and I think it’s often kind of forgotten that milk really matters when you’re making cheese. So you can make cheese from raw milk, you can make cheese from pasteurized milk. You can’t make cheese from ultra pasteurized milk. So that’s kind your first starting point, just deciding what type of milk that you’re going to use and finding a good milk source, whether that’s going to be, you’re going to research how to get a dairy animal and really throw yourself into researching and getting a good dairy animal for your homestead, or whether that’s going to be researching a good milk share in your area or depending on where you live.

If raw milk is legal, if you’re in Canada like Anna and I, raw milk is not legal, but maybe talking to some local farmers or looking what you have at your grocery store. As far as pasteurized milk goes, you want to choose the milk that has been the least processed basically. So milk that hasn’t gone through homogenization, if you’re looking at pasteurized milk is better. So milk that hasn’t gone through that artificial homogenization where they blast the fat globules basically to make them very tiny, that makes she’s making a little bit more difficult, not impossible, but a little bit more difficult. So I would say that is your first spot is just looking for a good milk source, seeing what’s available to you. And then I would say kind of start with something really simple like yogurt. I think a lot of times people don’t really think of yogurt as a cheese, but it actually is, it’s a curd mass, it’s fermenting dairy into a curd mass and it’s a great place to start because it teaches you kind of how dairy works and how it reacts and how acidification can causes coagulation. So I think that it’s a really great place to start and then you can kind of expand from there. You can even just expand with the yogurt itself and strain it off into cream cheese or strain it off into more of a feta style cheese. So you can just expand in that and keep going a little bit farther.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, I never thought about yogurt being like a cheese, but you’re right, it’s forming into this curd. And then I know another one that a lot of people tend to start with is a ricotta or something. That’s what I started with. And variations of that, you’ll see ricotta, cottage cheese, farmer’s cheese, they’re all kind of variations on that. So those kind of fresh cheeses

Robyn Jackson:

And if you have a raw milk source, clabber is a really cool thing to start. I talk about clabber quite a bit on my Instagram and I talk about clabber everywhere. If you’ve ever met me, you heard me talk about clabber, my favorite thing in the world. But clabber is basically a raw milk starter culture. So you take raw milk and you let it ferment and then it coagulates on your counter and then instead of just using that right away, you take a little bit of it and you feed it to new raw milk and then it’s going to coagulate and you continue on that kind of feed ferment cycle basically. And so it’s sort of like the sourdough starter of the cheese making world, and you can use it as a cheese making starter culture, but you can also use the clabber itself just as a really cool kitchen product. You can have it add into your baking or strain it off into cream cheese or cook it down into cottage cheese. So it’s a pretty cool product. So if you have a really good raw milk source or if you have a dairy animal, I would like 10 out of 10 recommend just starting to learn how to keep a clabber culture and that’s slowly going to expand your cheese making.

Anna Sakawsky:

So sorry, did you say that you would need a raw milk source for-

Robyn Jackson:

Yeah, you definitely need a raw milk source for that, and it’s kind of preferable if it is your own dairy animal just because I know there’s a few people that set on here that they do have dairy animals, so a little bit preferable if it is your own dairy animal just because it’s nicer when you can have the milk warm, which if you’re getting milk from a raw milk share and stuff, it’s coming to you cold. It is possible. I know people that have clabber culture with cold milk, but it’s just going to be a little bit easier for you if you are able to feed it and start it with warm milk.

Anna Sakawsky:

Okay. I’m trying not to let my brain go in a million different directions because there’s so many questions that I want to ask you next, but let’s just stay on clabber just for a moment. I think that this is really cool, had never heard about this. I mean I’m not deep in the cheese making community. Some people are, but I had never heard about this even being an option. When you read cheese making books, that sort of thing, a lot of the other resources information out there kind of fail to mention clabber. So how did you discover this and can you just talk a little bit about what–we’ll get into the science of cheese making maybe next–but what kind of culture, what the different cultures are? Sometimes you can purchase them I know, and how maybe you can substitute clabber for those things and create those kind of closed loop system that a lot of us as homesteaders want to create, right? We don’t want to always have to be purchasing in buying new cultures and adding them in. And it sounds like clabber is a great way to do that, just like a sourdough starter. You always have something to start the next batch with. So yeah, just talk to me a little bit more about how the cultures actually work and cheese’s making.

Robyn Jackson:

Yeah, for sure. So I have a little bit of a clabber story because I am relatively new to successfully keeping clabber in the last three years I’ve been able to successfully keep clabber, but before that I actually didn’t. So I came across a book about five years ago, so I was about five years into my cheese making journey, came across a book called The Art of Natural Cheese Making by David Asher. So he is really the person that has talked about clabber the most and really brought it to light for everyone. It was kind of a lost art. So he spoke in that book about keeping clabber culture. I tried it, I switched, I was like, this is amazing. I switched to making all of my cheeses with it and unfortunately I started eating those cheeses and they were really disgusting. But about three years ago I had the chance to go and learn live from David Asher.

And so he taught us that you really have to maintain your clabber culture like a sourdough starter. You have to be feeding it even though you’re not really noticing any differences in it, if you’re not feeding it for three days versus one day, there’s actual microbiology differences in it. You have to be maintaining it and keeping it good. So he taught me how to properly maintain my clabber culture. I went home, started using it and just saw so much success in my cheese making–completely stopped using freeze starter cultures. And so now I only use this clabber culture for all of the different cheeses that I make, whether they are mesophilic cheeses or whether they are thermophilic cheeses. So that was something really cool. But in terms of cultures, there is the option of going onto the cheese supply websites and buying freeze strike starter cultures, and I never want to discourage anyone from doing either.

So going on to the cheese supply store and buying these freeze dried starter cultures, maybe sometimes that’s easier for where you’re at in your life and the access to melts that you have. So when you go on there, what you’re going to want to do is you’re going to want to pick one mesophilic, which is a lower temperature culture and one thermophilic, which is a higher temperature loving culture. So different cheeses that you’re making are going to ask for different cultures and there is a bunch, when you go onto the cheese supply website, they’re going to see, there’s so many different options and it can be really confusing. They have really long confusing names, but usually on the cheese supply websites, they’re going to say that this mesophilic culture is good for gouda and cheddar and colby, and it’s going to list a little bit of the cheeses that it’s good for. And so you’re going to want to pick one of that kind of speaks to the kinds of cheeses that you’re going to make. So I recommend grabbing one of each of those and then just bringing them all home and starting to make cheese. But clabber is definitely an option for you if you do have that raw milk source. Okay,

Anna Sakawsky:

Cool. So before we keep going with other things that you’re going to need to make cheese and other ingredients, there are a few questions that are coming in related to clabber. So I want to stop and take a couple here. Here. I can pop this one on the screen. Amanda asked, what are the pros to clabber culture over using kefir–Can you use kefir for cheese making?

Robyn Jackson:

Yeah, so David, in his book, The Art of Natural Cheese Making, he uses kefir as a culture as well in his new book that he has a new book out now too. He moved more towards clabber, but he still does recommend kefir if you don’t have a good raw milk source because if you don’t know what kefir is, it’s basically this very ancient grain. They’re really cool. They’re these little grains that are this huge ecology. They have all sorts of different bacterias and yeasts and fungus in them, and they are just very ancient. I think there’s the Pharaohs in Egypt, they’ve found evidence of kefir in their necklaces and stuff like that. So really cool grain. But anyways, so you can keep clabber culture and use it as a starter for cheese making. I haven’t had great luck with it. So all the cheeses that I make, and this could just be me, but all the cheeses that I make with kefir as a starter culture kind of tastes like kefir.

And if you’ve ever tasted kefir, it’s this sort of yeasty product. And so if you are going to be making cheeses using kefir as a starter culture, you want to be sure that you are feeding that kefir really well, just like you’re following that clabber or cycle of feeding it every single day, discarding most of it and just keeping a little bit back to feed to New Milk. So that’s going to help you to make better cheeses with it, but it is a bit of a trickier culture to use, I’ve found. But yeah, I know that quite a few people do use it though. So it is an option if it’s just not an option for you.

Anna Sakawsky:

Right. Okay. Yeah. And you’re mentioning this, there was another question actually came in about is it fed the same way as kefir is? So it is kind of that same daily or twice daily kind of feeding schedule that you would do with kefir.

Robyn Jackson:

Yeah. So you’re going to feed it the same schedule, but you’re actually taking the grains from the clabber. They will grow, the grains will grow, and then you’re going to feed it to New Milk every day. Every time you get coagulation you’re going to do that.

Anna Sakawsky:

Right. And with the clabber, because I’ve done some kefir, I also keep a sourdough starter, which I actually pulled mine out of the fridge yesterday. I think it’s been like 10 months. I’m not even joking, but it’s amazingly resilient with sourdough. Anyway, I was able to bring it back to life. It’s probably another day or so and I’ll be ready to bake with it again. It was bubbling almost right away. Is clabber similar? If you don’t want to use it for a while, can you put it in the fridge and come back to it? How long can you leave it before you feed it again?

Robyn Jackson:

I would say that it’s resilient to a point, but it’s not as resilient as sourdough starter. So I would leave it in the fridge for maybe a week or two and pull it out, feed it, let it coagulate, maybe feed it one more time before I use it for cheese making and then go ahead. I wouldn’t leave it in there probably for months without feeding it. You can freeze it so you can do that. Okay. The thing with clabber though is, I mean you do want to be as careful when you’re using it as possible just because with bread, if you failed 24 hours later when you bake your loaf of bread and it didn’t rise very good, but clabber, we’re not finding out if we did good in our cheese making until months later when we go to eat our cheeses. So we’re going to have better success and better learning if we’re able to use really good fresh flea fed clabber for our cheese making.

Anna Sakawsky:

Perfect. Okay. I’m going to pop one more question up about Clabber and then we’ll move on. So Laurie asks, how do I keep my clabber from getting yeasty? Do I need to ferment it in a different room from my sourdough? And what temperature should you keep it at?

Robyn Jackson:

Yeah, so it will definitely cross contaminate with sourdough, especially if you are kind of delaying between feeding it or if you’re feeding, you’ve got a really active bubbly sourdough and you’re just freshly feeding your new, that yeast can infect into your milk. So that’s one way to prevent it. Also over fermentation. So I got to get a little bit sciency to explain this, but basically what happens when you’re keeping a clabber culture is the lactic bacterias. These are a main head category of bacterias that are in raw milk. The lactic bacteria is they feed on the lactose in the milk, and as they feed on it, they ferment that lactose into lactic acid. And when the milk becomes acidic enough, it actually causes the milk to coagulate. So this is basically similar to when you’re making sourdough starter and you have that rise of the sourdough.

So this is the point that you want to use it for cheese making. This is the point when the lactic bacterias, which are our starter cultures, are the strongest and the most prolific. But after this, what actually happens is that because it’s so acidic in there, the lactic bacteria are sort of like their own worst enemy. They start to die off. They can’t survive in this acidic environment. There’s not as much food they’ve eaten all of the lactose. And so what’s going to happen is they start to die off, and then other fungi like yeast can kind of start to come in and start to ferment the milk now that those sugars have been broken down into smaller pieces. So that’s when you’re going to have yeast contamination, which is actually just over fermentation of your clabber. So making sure you’re sticking to that feeding schedule of once a day.

And if you’re a sourdough baker, sometimes if it’s really hot, you’re feeding your sourdough starter twice a day. So upping compared to what your temperature in your house and stuff is and what the weather is doing is going to help with that a lot. And I just keep it at room temperature in my house as far as temperature goes, which is about 72 degrees. Usually if it’s a little bit colder, I’m expecting that it’s going to take a little bit longer for it to ferment. If it’s a little bit warmer, again, I’m just feeding it a little bit more frequently, I expect it to be a bit quicker.

Anna Sakawsky:

Right. Okay. So we’ve talked about clabber now and a little bit about the science behind how it works and how cheese making works. Let’s dive into that a little bit more because the science is really interesting. I love that part of our conversation when we were talking in our interview for the magazine, but walk us through how does milk get turned into cheese?

Robyn Jackson:

Yeah, this is such a cool topic and alright, we’re just

Anna Sakawsky:

Geeking out on it both.

Robyn Jackson:

Where should we start? Let’s start with actually what milk is meant to do. So milk is actually meant to be made into cheese. So in nature, young ruminants, whether it’s calves or goat kids or lambs, what they do is they drink the milk from their mother’s udder and that milk is warm and it goes into their little stomachs where it’s also warm, it’s acidic, and there’s an enzyme in there called rennet, which we know in cheese making. And all of these things combine to cause that milk to actually coagulate into cheese. And if the little calf or the little kid could not turn its mother’s milk into cheese, it wouldn’t be able to properly digest all of the nutrients that milk actually has to offer. It needs to have that cheese, that cheese reaction to slow the milk down so that they can glean all of the nutrients.

So cheese making in real life, when we as cheese makers come to make cheese, actually kind of follows that natural process. So we are putting our milk in the pot and we’re warming it up to a similar temperature that it comes out of the udder. And so this is something that you’re usually like when we have cold milk, we’re having to warm our milk up, but if you have your own dairy animals, sometimes you don’t even have to warm it up if you’re using fresh milk and that’s going to help you to make better cheese, you’re bringing it up from the barn and straining it and putting it right in the cheese pot, you’re ready to go for cheese making. The next thing that we’re doing is we’re adding in a lactic bacteria or a starter culture, whether that’s clabber or whether that’s one of those mesophilic or thermophilic starter cultures from the cheese supply website. And that’s starting process of fermentation, that’s going to create that acidic environment. Then we’re adding rennet, that same enzyme that is in that little calf stomach and then we’re having it coagulate. And then we’re going to do all sorts of different things to retain moisture or release moisture in our curds depending on the types of cheeses that we want to make. But basically all cheeses are kind of starting with those first steps to get yourself a curd mask and then you’re going on to do different things to make different types of cheeses

Anna Sakawsky:

And sore it. I know you, that’s something that typically you are going to have to purchase because it actually does come from the calf stomach unless you’re processing all of that yourself, which most cheese makers probably are not home cheese makers. So there are different types of rennet available on the market, there’s vegetable rennet, there’s liquid rennet, there’s capsule in tablet form. What do you use? What do you recommend people use?

Robyn Jackson:

Yeah, so mostly like Anna said, you are going to have to buy rennet. I mean there is people that do harvest their own rennet, but it’s a bit tricky. You have to harvest the calf or kid when they’re only two weeks old, any older than two weeks, and that rennet’s not going to be as active. It’s probably something that I’ll, I can never foresee us doing because calves are just pretty valuable on our ranch. We’re going to grow ’em up for beef or whatever. So yeah, when you’re going onto the cheese supply website, there’s endless options as everything in cheese making it seems. I like to use calf rennet because that’s just as close to the natural process and I’m just trying to keep as close as possible. So that’s going to be listed as calf rennet. There’s all sorts of different rennet. So there’s the vegetable rennet, microbial rennet, those two types, the vegetable and the microbial, they work good for cheese making, but if you’re making cheeses that are aged over four months, you can sometimes get bitterness in the cheeses.

So I would avoid those. If you’re planning on making any aged cheeses, there’s a new type of rennet out there called FPC, ret, FPC, ret, or sometimes it’s just listed as chizen. And so what that is, it’s actually called fermentation produced chizen. And so it’s created in a lab, they get a bacteria or a fungus and they genetically modify it to produce chizen enzymes, those same enzymes that are in the lining of that little calf stomach and then they kill off that organism and they’re left with this pure cism. So it’s not technically, it’s not technically a genetically modified organism because it’s an enzyme. It can’t be an organism, but it is from a genetically modified process. And apparently if you looked under a microscope at FPC remnant and pure calf ret, they would be identical. You can’t tell the difference between them. So that’s just something interesting that, so I mean that would be a good choice if you’re using H cheeses, but I like to just use that pure calf in it and I like to use liquid. I mean it’s a little bit easier kind of solution to use, but you can use tablet too. If you use tablet, run it, you just want to make sure you crush it before you dilute it in the water just because it’s going to take forever to dilute if you don’t.

Anna Sakawsky:

Right. And typically with the cheeses that I’ve made anyway, if I’m making a mozzarella or something, for example, it calls for, I think it’s calcium chloride, is that right? Yeah. So why do you need to add that in?

Robyn Jackson:

So if you’re making pasteurized milk cheeses, you’re going to have to add this separate ingredient in which is calcium chloride, and you’re going to add that in just before you add in the rennet. So calcium plays an important role in when rennet causes a reaction for the case in proteins in the milk to bind together, it kind of glues itself together with calcium and during the pasteurization process, the available calcium in the milk is damaged, so you need to add a little bit of calcium back in there. So you get a nice firm curd goat’s milk cheese makers might find that they benefit, even if they’re using raw goats milk, they might benefit from using a little bit of calcium chloride just because goat’s milk tends to have a little bit more of a fragile curd. Also, if you have a milk cow, your cow’s milk isn’t the same throughout her entire lactation. It’s going to change a little bit throughout that lactation. And especially as she kind of approaches her next calving date when she’s pushing a lot of calcium into that growing calf that she has sometimes during this late lactation, you’re going to benefit from adding a little bit of that calcium chloride. So even though I make cheese exclusively with raw milk, I still keep a little bit of that calcium in my fridge. It’s pretty cheap. You can get at the cheese supply store.

Anna Sakawsky:

Right, okay. Yeah. And then another thing I was thinking is because I’ve only done fresh cheeses because I don’t have a dairy animal yet, and I haven’t purchased a lot of the cultures, I don’t have clabber culture or anything like that. The cheeses that I’ve made actually call for either the addition of lemon juice or vinegar. So what kind of cheeses can you do that with? If somebody wanted to just kind of go to their kitchen and start making some cheese today with some ingredients they probably have on hand or that they are not too hard to source so they don’t have to wait for, what can you just make with lemon juice or vinegar? What’s the difference? Why are you able to make certain cheeses with that and other ones you need these specific cultures for?

Robyn Jackson:

Yeah, that’s a really good question. So as I described with the science of it, when those lactic bacterias are fermenting that lactose into lactic acid, they’re creating their own acidic environment so that fermentation is set up properly for that cheese to go on in age. Whereas when you add acid like an actual direct acid, there’s no fermentation that happens. So the stage isn’t being set properly for those cheeses to age, so you for sure can make them fresh and they’re delicious, but they haven’t gone through any fermentation. So examples of cheeses like that would be ricotta just like a simple sweet ricotta where you’re just going to heat your milk up and add a little bit of vinegar or lemon juice and it’s going to turn to curds. And it’s amazing when you haven’t made cheese before. And even now that I’ve made cheese, I still sometimes make a sweet ricotta just because it’s just so easy.

You just heat your milk up and you’ve got cheese like 10 minutes later. That’s a really cool spot to start if you have nothing in your kitchen, but milk and lemon juice or vinegar, other ones that you can do, there’s this cheese whiz I call it, but a healthy homemade version. You can find the recipe for that on my blog, but it also just uses the chick acid and you heat your milk up, you add that in, and you’re going to get this nice, you add a few other common kitchen ingredients like butter aged cheese, so things, and you’re going to get a nice spreadable cheese mozzarella is a good one to make. I like to use the mozzarella that has a little bit of rennet added in like you were talking about, but there is vinegar mozzarella’s out there. They’re going to have a bit of a different texture and stuff.

And mozzarella, it’s a bit of a tricky beginner cheese sometimes because it’s very dependent on your milk because you’re really trying to get that milk into a very specific pH window of between five and 5.4. And if your milk is a little bit older or a little bit more alkaline, you’re not going to be able to hit that window by just throwing a bunch of acid in the pot. So it’s sort of like this shot in the dark, so it could be a bit tricky for people or it can just go perfectly. So just depends on your milk.

Anna Sakawsky:

I’ve been on all ends of that with mozzarella for sure. Yeah, it’s funny, the ricotta too, just like you mentioned, I get all excited about this because again, this is where I’m at with cheese making, but it is if somebody is just brand new starting even the other night, and this is one thing I’ll speak to as far as if you don’t have a dairy animal and you’re like, is it even worth it? And I’ll ask you this actually in just a second, get your take on this, but is it even worth it to make cheese if you don’t? I have found, we did a lasagna the other night and we needed some ricotta and it was still cheaper for me to go buy. And in Canada where our milk is pretty expensive to go buy a gallon of milk and use half of that gallon, and I had enough ricotta to do my whole lasagna and then some more than I would’ve got purchasing at the store for a double price, and I still had half a gallon of milk left. So even if you’re just starting and dipping your feet in it, it’s worth it, I think, to do the cost comparison. But I think in some cases, depending on what you’re trying to make, it is still worth it to try making your own. What’s your take on that? What cheeses would you say, yeah, hey, it’s worth it with and what cheeses would you be like, I wouldn’t bother if you don’t have access to a dairy animal of your own.

Robyn Jackson:

Yeah, for sure. So which it often comes down to is cost-wise, fresh cheeses are probably going to maybe still save you money to make them at home, whereas aged cheeses are going to cost you money to make them at home. So cheeses starting to make your own yogurt, making your own ricotta, making your own cream cheese. Those are excellent places to start and they’re excellent budget savers. I will also say sometimes it’s not about the cost, it’s about starting where you’re at and looking to your future. Maybe later on you want to get a dairy animal, so you’re going to start to buy some milk and start to make some cheese because that’s going to help you get to where you’re going. Basically, it’s going to help you prepare for when you do have that dairy animal. Typically for aged cheeses, you’re going to expect to get very, it is very variable.

Sometimes it’s way less, sometimes it’s a little bit more, but you’re going to expect to get about one pound of cheese per gallon of milk use. So for example, if you’re going to plan on making a cheddar, you need four gallons of milk to make about three pounds of cheese. So that’s not really going to save you money at eight gallons or $8 a gallon here, but it might save you money if the trade off is that in the future, you’re going to know how to make that cheese and it’s going to be easier kind of segueing into getting a dairy animal for you.

Anna Sakawsky:

Right. Okay. Alright. I have more questions, but I do want to just jump to some of the questions that are coming in. There’s some kind of quick ones that I think we can go through. So back to the clabber, somebody, Sylvia had just asked if you can source raw milk, but it comes cold, how would you get your clabber started? So I’m assuming she means should you heat it up on the stove, should you let it come to room temperature? What would you do in that case?

Robyn Jackson:

I would probably heat it up on the stove, just give it a little bit of a jumpstart, heat it up to 90 degrees Fahrenheit and then just let it sit on the counter. You can even wrap it in a warm towel. Sometimes people, so I have a whole blog post on my website on how to start a clabber culture and it goes through the troubleshooting and stuff because sometimes it is a little bit tricky to get it going, especially when you’re starting with cold milk, but you definitely can feed it with cold milk. I know lots of people that do it and have good results.

Anna Sakawsky:

Okay, good to know. Alright, Gina asked, does nettle rennet work the same? Is that just another type of vegetable rennet or

Robyn Jackson:

Yeah, so vegetable rennet, it can be derived. It’s different enzymes derived from all sorts of different plant sources. So nettle is one of them. Figs, cartoons, sorel, those are all some examples of where vegetable rennet can come once tried to source my own harvest, my own nettle, but I misidentified what nettle actually was, didn’t coagulate my milk and didn’t actually make us sick, but it could have anyways. So that’s a plant identification mishap. Anyways, nettle works, when it will work. If you’re buying it from the cheese supply store, there’s not a lot of information out there on how to harvest it properly, how to get the enzyme out for cheese making. And in all honesty, I think that nettle rennet, when you’re harvesting your own nettle and using it for cheese making, you’re almost better off to just go with that slow acidification where you’re adding in your lactic bacteria and it’s taking a little bit, it’s taking about 24 hours to get a coagulation because nettle rennet really does take a long time, but if you’re buying it from the cheese supply store, it’s a higher dose, and so you’re going to be able to coagulate your milk with that, not going to want to use it for aged cheeses because it is one of those vegetable rennets.

So it will cause bitterness in cheeses aged over four months.

Anna Sakawsky:

Okay. Okay. All good to know. One more thing before we move on, that would be good to know. I am interested too, at least in your take on this, Susie said, how is making cottage cheese and ricotta cheese different? I did so much research on this and I was trying to make the difference. I’m like, they’re the same, but they’re not the same, but they’re the same. What is the difference? Cottage cheese, farmers cheese, ricotta, cottage cheese, are they all the same?

Robyn Jackson:

That’s the cool thing about when you start to dive into dairy and really kind of learn, you’re like, man, there’s not a lot of difference between any of this. And it actually makes fitting cheese making into your life way simpler because you really do realize, do I really need to make cottage cheese and ricotta? Why can’t I just use the same thing? So in terms of what is the difference between cottage cheese and ricotta? Usually cottage cheese is heated to a lower heat. It’s stirred a little bit longer. You adding in, once you drain your curd, you’re adding in some cream, whereas ricotta is heated to quite a high heat and you’re adding in that usually cottage cheese is a fermented dairy product, whereas usually ricotta, sweet ricotta anyways is just where you’re adding that acid in. So that would be kind of the main differences between the recipes, but really not a lot in terms of what’s the difference between the textures or anything.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, it’s so interesting how there are, I don’t know what hundreds, thousands of different types of cheese out there, and yet it’s very slight variations in how you get to that final product

Robyn Jackson:

At the end of the day. A lot of it comes down to the name and the area of where the cheese is, and I feel like that’s something maybe we just don’t really understand so much in North America, but camembert and brie what really is the difference between them. One’s a little bit bigger than the other one, one’s made in Normandy, one’s made somewhere else in France. So it’s just kind of the area that they’re made in that is really making them a little bit different. So yeah, it really gives you some play with your cheese making and you be able to make things that work better for your lifestyle. Actually, how a lot of cheeses were invented, they were invented by the circumstances around the homesteads and around the farms played into kind of like with wine, they talk about the terroir, the land, the earth, the way it is, and that certain things like you can get a bubbly wine or whatever that is a sparkling wine, I guess, but it can only be called champagne if it’s from Champagne France. Whereas the cheese too, it’s like it can only be Parmesan if it’s from Parmesan. Exactly. There’s like a Grana that’s similar. Yeah, interesting. Cool. Okay, so let’s talk about equipment. So we talked about ingredients, clabber, ret, calcium chloride, different types of starter cultures. What sort of equipment do you need to get started? What kind of investment are people looking at?

Robyn Jackson:

Yeah, I would say not a lot. When you’re just first beginning, I feel like that’s maybe a bit of cheese making misconception is that you need to go out and you need to buy a bunch of equipment to be able to do this skill. And that’s certainly something that I did. I went in, I bought a cheese making kit and then I ended up not using half the things in that kit. I didn’t actually really need ’em. So just starting with the bare minimum, the stuff that you have in your kitchen, I would say the things that you really need to get started would be a thermometer, a pot that holds your milk. When I first started to learn how to make cheese, and this is not what you’re supposed to do, but I used my enamel canning pot to hold my vast amount of milk.

So I had six gallons of milk and it would fit in my enamel canning pot. So I’d use that and the walls were too thin and it didn’t work that great, but it worked. So starting with what you have, kind of remembering that there’s a lot of common sense that comes into it. Cheese has been pressed under rocks, it’s been made in huts, it’s been made using the resources that are around you. So just looking at each piece of a recipe when you’re looking for equipment with that common sense in mind, you don’t actually need a cheese press. You can press it using two buckets stacked on top of each other, just use the bare minimum to get started and then kind of expand later on. But yeah, thermometer, pot, cheesecloth, which I just use a flour sack towel, I get mine from Walmart. They come a pack of five.

They’re pretty cheap. And yeah, that’s basically what you need to just really first get started. Once you start making aged cheeses and pressed cheeses, you’ll probably want to invest in the cheese form. I’ve made lots of homemade cheese forms before and that’s my one regret looking back, I wish a designated cheese form that has a follower that goes into it because I spent so much time trying to find something in my kitchen that would be the right shape and have something that would fit inside it. But yeah, in my book I talk about how to DIY press with buckets. Bucket presses are so amazing. I have designated cheese presses, but I still sometimes use my bucket press.

Anna Sakawsky:

It’s something that I think we often forget, and I find that it comes up sometimes just within the modern homestead movement where people go like, oh, I’d love to homestead or I’d love to start making cheese, or whatever it is. But it’s too expensive. It’s cost prohibitive. It’s too expensive to get started. And I think it can be, especially in our modern world, because there’s always a way to make it expensive. There’s always going to be a market for things where somebody goes, Hey, I see there’s a market for cheese making. I’m going to make a cheese press. I’m going to make this and that, and it can make our lives easier. But if we think about it for hundreds and thousands of years, we’ve been doing all of this without those, the fancy equipment and that sort of thing. So if we can get back to basics, you don’t need a ton to get started. And then I like your idea of as you go, then investing piece by piece, but it’s good to know what you do need and what you don’t. Because some things, like you say, if it’s taking you more time and you’re having more failures or things are going wrong, just because you’re not investing in a simple piece, then that might be something that you should look into.

Robyn Jackson:

Yeah, exactly. Pulling your hair out about it.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, for sure. I saw somebody recently, or last summer I think, and we were at the store, I was getting canning supplies and they were humming and hawing over the jar lifters. They were like $5. And they’re like, ah. And she’s like, oh no, you don’t need those. And I’m like, I feel like for five bucks you don’t want to burn your hand reaching into the pot. But at the same time, you don’t need all the gear right away.

Robyn Jackson:

Exactly. And cheese form is like 12 bucks. Why didn’t I pay the 12 bucks? I was making cheese every couple days.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, totally.

Robyn Jackson:

Lesson learned.

Anna Sakawsky:

Well, speaking of investments, let’s talk a little bit about dairy animals. So we’ll start with the dairy cow because that’s the one, right? That’s the ultimate dairy animal that anybody who’s serious about cheese making is probably thinking seriously about adding to their homestead if they haven’t yet. So what tips do you have for somebody who is looking to add a dairy cow? What types of breeds are good for dairy cows? Where should they look and what sort of things should they be aware of?

Robyn Jackson:

Okay, so I always say with people, when you’re learning how to make cheese, I say, you don’t get stuck in the research phase. You have to dive in and start doing it, and you’re going to learn how to make cheese really well by doing that. But I don’t say that with dairy cows. With dairy cows, I say you want to do a lot of research, you want to get stuck in the research phase for a little bit because it really is this huge commitment. I would say having a dairy cow is probably the biggest commitment that you can bring onto your homestead. And I don’t say that lightly because we have a lot of commitments on our homestead, but dairy cows are their own thing.

A big misconception is that they’re just kind of like having a beef cow, but they’re nothing like a beef cow. They’re their own species. So get stuck in the research phase for a little bit and really decide if a dairy cow is a good option for you in terms of they’re a big livestock breed. Do you have good access to feed for them? They’re going to be a lot to feed. Maybe you want to look at bringing smaller dairy animals onto your homestead like goats or sheep. So that would be something that I would definitely be looking to once you’ve decided if dairy cow is actually your go-to animal, I would say looking around your community, seeing what other people have. Sometimes there’s not a lot of access to dairy animals, your area, but looking around seeing what breeds your neighbors have, why do they have those breeds?

Maybe those breeds do better in that area. So that’s one good spot to start. I like to kind of look at the protein structure in the cow’s milk. So there’s a type of protein called cap cains, and all cows have capa case and proteins, but these are the cheese making proteins. And so cows can have different varieties of them. So for example, CAPA case and BB is the best protein for cheese making. It’s going to give you the quickest yield and the most yield in your milk. So if you’re the place that you’re looking to buy the dairy cow has that kind of data. Looking at that kind of stuff is going to be beneficial in terms of looking for butter fat and stuff. If you want to be making a lot of butter, that’s something that’s important, but doing lots and lots of research is going to be important.

Anna Sakawsky:

And where should, okay, say I want to go get a dairy cow. I’m sure I’m ready. Where do I go? Where do you go to purchase a dairy cow or where’s the best place?

Robyn Jackson:

So that can be tricky. It depends on where you live. If you live in dairy country, you’re not, I would probably start on local farm Facebook pages, the Bowls and border board at the feed store, most feed stores. Our feed store still has a bulletin board. It’s going to be really good for you if you can get a dairy cow off of a small farm if you’re looking for one for your homestead. Dairy cows off of dairy farms are good too, but you want to be sure that you’re not buying somebody else’s problem. So a lot of times the only reason that a dairy farm is willing to sell a cow is because it’s not working for them, and maybe that not working is something that’s going to work for you. Maybe they just have a little behavior problem, or they’re a three quarter cow and they need a four quarter cow.

Maybe it’s something like that. But maybe it’s that they’ve got bad feet and they’ve got a history of heavy mastitis and they have a type of mastitis called staph aureus that’s subclinical that you can’t actually tell by looking at them. So that’s a lot of the research that you need to do is making sure that you’re buying a healthy milk cow, that you’re not going to be buying somebody else’s problems. Also, if you are new to it, trying not to buy a heifer. So that’s a first time caver. So maybe she’s had her calf for a little while and she’s got some training up, but if she’s going to be freshening or having her calf for the first time for you, and you’re going to be new, you’re going to be new. It’s going to be a tricky road for you. So buying a little bit more of an experienced milk cow would be beneficial as well

Anna Sakawsky:

From an auction. Sorry, what was that?

Robyn Jackson:

Never buy a cow from an auction. You just can’t ask the right questions. You want to be annoying with your questions and hate to say that, but you want to be thorough with your questions because this is an investment for your homestead that you’re going to be hanging out with that cow every single day. It’s going to be your new life project. So you really want to be making sure that you’re getting a milk cow that is right for your homestead in your life.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And it is obviously a very big investment when you’re in milk. I imagine you’re milking once, maybe even twice a day. How have you found it? I know you have traveled a little bit for conferences and different things that you’ve had to go away for. How is traveling with a milk cow? Is it, can you do it for anybody? This is where I think, oh, I’d love to do it one day, but I’m like, do you kind of lose that freedom completely? Or how do you strike a balance there?

Robyn Jackson:

Yeah, for sure. That was something that I was worried about when we first got our milk cow, but it definitely adds an extra layer of planning onto everything. You’re only going away when they’re dry or preparing for their next calf, or you’re having to train up somebody to milk for you while you’re gone. It’s way harder to find a farm sitter that’s willing to milk as well as do other farm chores than it is to just find a farm sitter that’s just going to take care of your chickens and feed your cows, kind of thing. So it definitely adds a layer onto being able to go away. We calf share with ours, so that means that the calves get half the milk and then we take half of the milk. And calf sharing is a really good way to be able to manage that a little bit better.

But every cow case is different. I never go into a new calving thinking, okay, I’m going to be able to share throughout her entire lactation, I’m going to use this calf as a relief milker all the time. Every situation is different. So you just kind of have to go with an open mind and work from there. But it definitely does add an extra layer of planning. I would say the routine of it though, at first, it’s a lot when you first get a milk cow and you’re like, I have to milk it twice a day, every day, and you’re just learning how to milk and it’s hard. It feels like a lot, but eventually it’s going to become something that you love. Maybe I’m just saying that I love it, but I love going down in the morning. It gives me an excuse to go outside. It gives me an excuse to just sit there and just kind of be mindful and be in the moment, and yeah, I really love it. So I think you will learn to love the routine, but it is a huge adjustment for your family at first.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, for sure. So many questions, but we’ll stay on the topic of cheese making. If anybody does have questions specific to dairy animals, feel free to pop them in the chat. We’ve got around 10 minutes left. We might go a little bit over. But again, keep those questions coming in and we’ll make sure to get to some of those before we wrap up. But so quickly, you did mention that there are other types of dairy animals. If somebody’s got a bit of a smaller space, there’s dairy goats, there’s dairy sheep. I was laughing so hard, Robyn, in our interview when you mentioned dairy yaks and that you’ve heard that people can milk a yak and that you’ve never milked a yak, but maybe you will and you’ll write a book about it one day. Oh my goodness. I wanted to keep that in the written portion. I didn’t, but I was having a good laugh out loud moment. But for now anyway, before yaks become the next big thing, dairy sheep and dairy goats would be kind of the main secondary choices for a dairy animal.

Robyn Jackson:

Yeah, actually sometimes I feel like they might be the first choices. I think we all get hung up on the dairy cow and I mean, we have a really unique situation here where we have lots of land. We’re set up for dairy cows, we have chutess and all sorts of things. So on our ranch we are really set up for cows. But I think sometimes people see on Instagram, they say like, oh cow, that’s the road I want to go. But if you’re a small homestead, there is nothing wrong with getting some goats, getting some sheep because it’s going to be easier to set up your homestead. They’re going to be less to feed–cows eat a lot. So goats and sheep are really great dairy animal choices, and they’re used throughout the world a lot more, maybe even more than dairy cows, especially in Europe and stuff.

And over on the other continents, they’re used a lot more. So not to throw the dairy cow under the bus, but yeah, they are a good option. And dairy sheep, I think are becoming a little bit more popular, which is very cool because they are an amazing animal. You’re going to get three crops off of ’em, basically. You’re going to get milk, you’re going to get wool, and you’re going to get lambs off of them, and they have really rich cheese making milk. So I’ve seen milk or sheep milk made into cheese once actually at David Asher’s live course there, and it had a really high yield. It made really creamy cheese. So it’s a very amazing product. The cool thing about goats and sheep’s milk too that isn’t the same as cow’s milks is you can actually freeze and save up your milk until you have enough for a batch and you can make all of the same cheeses that I’m making with my cow’s milk, with your sheep’s and your goat’s milk, and it’s not going to taste the exact same as my cow’s milk versions. You can’t take the sheep out of the sheep cheese, and you can’t take the goat as a goat cheese, but it’s going to be really good options for you.

Anna Sakawsky:

That’s interesting. Yeah, I heard that you couldn’t make all of the same. That was one of the limitations with goats and sheep is that you couldn’t do all the same types of cheeses as with cows. But you’re saying that’s not true. You can, there’s different flavor.

Robyn Jackson:

They’re going to be different. They’re going to be a little bit different. But yeah, I have lots of students that make cheese, especially goat’s milk because goats are a little bit more popular, but I have a couple that make it with sheep’s milk and it works well for them. It’s going to be hybrid if you have a couple of different types of dairy animals, so you’re not

Just limited to cow’s milk and with cow’s milk or actually with all milk, freshness is key, and we didn’t really talk about that at the beginning, but freshness is going to help you to make the best possible cheeses. So I try not to milk that’s any older than two or three days for my cheese making, for my aged cheese, making fresh cheeses all go a little bit different there, but that ability to be able to freeze the milk and save it up is going to be really useful when you’re wanting to make those aged cheeses.

Anna Sakawsky:

Right. Okay. So for anybody who is actually currently subscribed to Homestead Living Magazine, in the February issue, there is actually an article in there all about dairy sheep and how to get started there. So check that out. So I’m going to go to some of the questions in here and then we’ll bring it back and start to wrap things up. So let’s see. So, okay, Imani asked any recommendations for best cheese shops to buy equipment and supplies from?

Robyn Jackson:

Yeah, so if you’re in Canada, we have two. We have Glen–and I know the tariffs are all coming on, so this is going to be, keeping in your state, in your country is probably going to be what you want to do. So in Canada we have Glengarry cheese making and cheese needs. Both of those are good. I order from Glengarry Cheese making a lot. I can buy in bulk there. And then as far as in the states, cheesemaking.com, which is actually New England Cheese Making Company, they have really good options as well.

Anna Sakawsky:

Cool. I’m writing this down with the Canadian brands. I hadn’t heard about those. I’ve never heard of New England cheese, but okay, so let’s see what else. Okay, this is a good one, and this is actually where I was going to go anyway. What can you do with a liquid drain from cheese pressing and just cheese making in general?

Robyn Jackson:

Yeah, so whey is the liquid, the byproduct that you get after cheese making and you get a lot of whey. So if you’re getting one pound of cheese from a gallon of milk, a gallon of milk weighs eight pounds. So you’re getting a lot of byproduct off of that. And so the way can be a really valuable product if you have your own dairy animals. Sometimes it can almost be a little bit too overwhelming. So I just feed it to the pigs, soak your chicken feed in it, that kind of thing. But if you are just starting out and you’re not having a lot of milk, you want to make sure that you’re using, using all of that milk, even the byproducts. So the whey is really good to use as a base for soup stalks, replace it for water in your baking, cook your rice in it.

It’s got its own types of proteins in it. So when we make cheese, we’re extracting a type of protein called casein proteins, but there’s actually proteins that are left behind in the whey, and these are the whey proteins. The bodybuilders know them. So that whey is really high protein. It’s high in minerals, and it is a good product. So there’s lots of different things that you can use it for in your kitchen. You can dump it on your garden. Don’t dump it directly on your plants–too acidic. It’ll kill your plants, but it’s good for the soil, so you can kind of rotate where you dump it.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, yeah, totally. And there’s another thing that you can replace then if you do whey protein powder, if you’re getting whey from your cheese, then you can add that to your smoothies–very cool. Okay. Oh, this is just too funny. I’m just going to have to put this one up just because Emily says we have yaks and they’re such a pain to milk, such a tiny amount for the same amount of time. Once we got our jersey, we never milked our yaks again. So there you go. Now we know we have a little bit more insight into That’s awesome. 

 

Robyn Jackson:

Emily, I’ve never met anyone that milks yaks, so that’s good intel.

Anna Sakawsky:

Okay, this is an interesting one. So Char asks, what is the best way to incorporate herbs into cheese like feta? So let’s talk about that for a minute. Flavored cheeses, things that you’re adding extra things into, what’s the process for that and does that cause more of a risk of things going off or going bad, or how do you deal with that?

Robyn Jackson:

Yeah, for sure. So I like adding flavors into cheeses. It kind of feels like you’re making more than one cheese. That’s one recommendation that I make for people when they’re just starting. Don’t get overwhelmed by making a ton of different types of cheeses. You just want to learn how to make one or two that your family likes and you’re going to make those often and you’re going to get good at making ’em. So one way to just make it a little bit like you’re making different kinds of cheeses is to add in different spices and herbs. So usually I’ll just add them in before I go on to the pressing stage or the draining stage. So for example, feta, if you wanted to add in herbs actually into the cheese part of it, you just add in some herbs, some dried herbs, just when you’re going to drain your cheeses, or you could rub them on after you could put them into the brine.

Those would be ways to do that. There is an extra risk of contamination. So sometimes people recommend putting your herbs on an oven sheet and baking it. I think it’s for 15 minutes at 250 Fahrenheit, just to sterilize any bacterias in there. I don’t do that. I just use ’em straight from the package from the grocery store. But that is something, if you’re worried about contamination, not using fresh herbs in cheeses unless they’re fresh cheeses is a good idea. I’ve tried using a lot of fresh herbs and stuff. You have to boil them to kind of sterilize them for cheese making, and then it just adds a lot of moisture into your cheese, which doesn’t bode well for the aging of it. So I don’t recommend fresh herbs if you can avoid it dry ’em first,

Anna Sakawsky:

Right? Yeah. Similar to if you’re doing, I think of herbal, like infusing herbs into oil or something like that. Typically you want to use dried because that moisture content, that freshness can kind of cross-contaminate it.

Robyn Jackson:

Yeah, for sure.

Anna Sakawsky:

Okay, so before we start to wrap up, before you tell me a little bit more about your book, one of the things that you are really good at, and I think what resonates with a lot of people is just that your approach to cheese making is really natural. It’s really just about fitting it into daily life. It’s not about getting overly scientific or technical about anything or having to stand over your cheese pot for hours and hours, checking temperatures nonstop. There is a little bit of that right? There is the science of making cheese of course, but I think you make it really approachable and really accessible for a lot of people, and we’re all busy and cheese making cans seem intimidating and daunting to try to take on when we’re already juggling a million different things, especially as home setters and all of the things that come along with that. So what are some of your best tips for incorporating cheese making into your daily life so that you’re not, you hopefully don’t get to a point where you’re so overwhelmed with it that you want to throw in the towel?

Robyn Jackson:

Yeah, for sure. That’s a really important thing, not getting overwhelmed with it because it is overwhelming learning a new skill. So I would definitely say that I’ve come to where I’m at in my cheese making after experimenting with the really strict ways of cheese making when my daughter was a baby, she’s 11 now, but I was really strict with what I was doing in my cheese making, and it almost came to a point that it was just unattainable. I’m like, how am I supposed to do all of the things on her homestead and still do this skill? So it was just a lot of trial and error that brought me to where I am now. But one big thing that obviously helped with that was trying just one or two cheeses and making those my staple cheeses. We eat actually, well, we probably have about five cheeses that I make on rotation a lot just because I know how to make them really well.

It’s kind of like if you have a weeknight dinner that you just know how to make. We eat tacos every week and I don’t have to think about making tacos for my kids. I just throw the meat in the pan and it’s just, but I’m not making something that I’ve never made before on a weeknight. So that’s something that really helps as just getting really familiar with one or two recipes and adding them in, making cheese seasonally. So if you have a dairy animal, this kind of naturally happens, but right when you’re animal freshens or right when they have their calf or kid or lamb, they’re going to be producing the most amount of milk. And so this is kind of cheese making season for me. I go at cheese making really hard and I treat it kind of like how you might treat canning season on your harvesting season on your homestead, where that’s your focus, basically. You’re doing that, but you know that there’s going to be slower times, so you’re okay with doing it every day or every second day because there is going to be slower times in the future. And just preserving a lot of cheeses during that time that are going to be longer aging ones so that you can have that slow down later on is going to be helpful.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, that’s a really good tip, and I think that’s something that a lot of us can lean into as homesteaders is the seasonality of things. I don’t think many of us could keep up with home setting at the same pace with everything that we’re doing year round. Right, for sure. I’ve never loved Januarys and Februarys, I’ve never loved winter so much as I do now because it is the time to rest. But then by this time, I’m excited again to get the seeds and to get things going. But by the end of the season, I think that a lot of people can relate to the sentiment of being like, okay, I am over it now. And I’m sure you can get that way with cheese too. So it’s good to know that you can Exactly. Totally kind of take a break a bit too.

Robyn Jackson:

Yeah, exactly.

Anna Sakawsky:

Alright. Okay. So tell me all about your new book. I can see there’s a bunch of comments actually coming in about it, asking about it. Do you have a book? So you do have a book coming out very soon called Cheese From Scratch, Natural Cheese Making from Home that’s going to be available through Homestead Living. I can see Amanda on our team here has been popping into the comments. The link for you guys, if you are interested, you can pre-order it right now at homestead living.com/product/cheese from scratch it looks like. Anyway, the link is in there, but Robyn, tell me about the book, what’s in the book, what can people expect to find, what kind of recipes you got? Walk me through it. Yeah.

Robyn Jackson:

All right, sounds good. So this is the book that I wish I had when I started making cheese. I look at it now, I just had it again last week and I’m like, I wish this was around when I started making cheese, because it just makes things a little bit more approachable. It looks at things as a homesteader basically. Anyone can make cheese, but if you’re in that kind of homestead mindset where this is just one of the things that you want to do for your homestead, it looks at how to fit cheese making into your lifestyle a lot better. It teaches you what you need, the things that are important and the things that aren’t so important. It talks about equipment, it talks about techniques. It’s got my tried and true recipes in there. So I don’t know how many recipes there is, but there’s recipes from anything from yogurt to butter making all the way up to those fancier aged cheeses like making Fetas and Cheddars and Colby, Gouda, provolone, mozzarella, those types of cheeses. So lots of different recipes in there, lots of troubleshooting. So I would say that’s something that really sets this book apart is all of the troubleshooting that is in this book that is going to not just give you a recipe and then be peace out. It really helps you be like, oh, okay, this is why this went wrong, or this is why I should do this differently next time so that you can really expand your learning and hopefully succeed quicker than maybe I didn’t in the beginning.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, that’s awesome. So if you guys liked this call today and you got value out of it, then you’re definitely going to get some value out of Robyn’s new book. And it’s always nice to just have that kind of hard copy. They can keep on the shelves, I find with anything like that, cookbooks, whatever. It’s nice to be able to, we can go online, we can get the answers, but it’s really nice to just have it right there whenever you need it and you can dog ear your favorite recipes and your kind of pages that you go back to over and over again. So I think this is going to be a really valuable resource for a lot of people. Alright, well we are just over an hour now, so we will wrap things up. So thank you so much, Robyn for joining us here today.

If you missed any part of this, I know that there was a couple of people in the chat earlier saying they had some sound issues and if you joined us late, there will be a replay available we’ll be sending out pretty quickly after this is over. So check your email for that. And of course, if you are not yet subscribed to Homestead Living Magazine, please hit that button below and go do that now. It is not too late to sign up and get on the mailing list for our March issue. And you’ll see Robyn’s lovely face on the cover. So very much looking forward to that. So thanks again, Robyn, for joining us on episode two of The Coop.

Robyn Jackson:

Oh, thank you so much for having me. This is

Anna Sakawsky:

Fun. Always lovely to chat with you. I look forward to hopefully seeing you at the Modern Homestead Conference later this year. Are you going to be there again?

Robyn Jackson:

I’ll be there again during year now.

Anna Sakawsky:

Awesome. Sounds great. Alright, and for anybody who is interested in joining us again next month, this is going to be a monthly occurrence here at Homestead Living. So The Coop next month we’ll be hosting Dr. Patrick Jones, AKA, the homegrown herbalist, and he’s going to be talking all about how to get started incorporating and using medicinal herbs on your homestead. So I hope to see you back here next month. Thanks again, Robyn. We’ll talk soon. Bye everyone. Bye everybody.