Fresh Cheese Season is here!

It's fresh cheese season! If you want to taste what the animals are eating in those gorgeous fields, now, say hello to one of my favorite style of freshies . Say hello to the the ash-ripened goat cheese.

What’s your top ashy cheese?

See that thin layer of black-grey under a light powdery, white mold on the bottom cheese? That’s ash. It’s super common in Loire Valley-inspired goat cheesess & their American inspirations.

Here are 3 things to know about ash:

1. What is it? Cheese ash comes from burnt vegetables, pretty much. It’s the same thing as the activated charcoal that wellness folks rave about (actually, in the UK it’s even called charcoal, not ash). A lot these days ash is from burnt husk!

2. Why use it? Ash changes a cheese’s pH and gives the ripening process a little nudge. It helps cheese be ready to eat quicker. In the older days like in the case of Morbier, it was often used to differentiate between curds that were made from morning milk and curds that were made from the nighttime milking, then layered on top of the morning curds and left to age.

3. Where did it come from and why did they start using it? I learned while taking a class from Ivan Larcher at @sterlingcollegevt that ash first started dusting cheeses when families used to age them in the huge fireplaces of their old farmhouses in the Loire Valley! It just naturally settled on the cheeses and they decided to keep it around. I love this story.

Some of my favorite cheeses with ash on them are, well, any from the Loire Valley, those from: @boxcarrhandmadecheese @cyrpessgroves, River’s Edge Chevre, @vermontcreamery and @ruggleshill , to start. You?