By Beckie Wilson
A Canadian cheese maker went on a journey to discover the secrets of traditional cheese making after abandoning commercial methods of using packet cultures and unnatural additives.
When David Asher opened-up a standard cheese making guide book 10 years ago, he instantly felt it was wrong to add a freeze-dried packet culture to help milk evolve into cheese.
The organic farmer had used other modes of food preservation to brew his own wines and beers, and made all his bread on his farm in British Colombia.
Then when he started cheese making he was inspired to use the same philosophies.
“But no cheese maker or guide book could tell me how to do that,” he said.
“So, I set off on my own cheese making experience.”
He explored traditional cheese making methods which are the foundations of the modern cheese making today. On his journey, he discovered to some extent the industrial mind-set has essentially obliterated cheese making practices.
Mr Asher is currently on a world tour, promoting his book The Art of Natural Cheesemaking while giving workshops to keen cheese makers.
His last New Zealand stop before heading to Australia was in Carterton last weekend at a sold out two-day workshop.
Now, Mr Asher, dubbed a ‘guerrilla cheese maker’, instead keeps his own starters, grows his own fungi, and works with raw milk to help cheese evolve, developing unique flavours.
“Cheese made with raw milk evolves better, and has better microbiology, they taste better and they may be microbiologically safer, so long as they are made with traditional methods.”
This new, yet old, approach he has adopted is entirely different, and radical, to other cheese makers, he said.
“I am very rare, and I’m encouraging the public to apply more raw milk cheese making practices, either through recognising how they can make it themselves or showing them why it is important.”
“I want people to know that it’s super easy to make cheese at home.”
