To start with, there is milk, the essential basis of good cheese. But the path that a cheese follows to land on your tray is a long one ! There is the "caillage", the drainage and the ageing.

The "caillage"

The first step in cheese production is the “coagulation" also known as “caillage". This refers to the first time the milk is solidified. For this to happen, we move on to the addition of “rennet,” an enzyme that comes from the caillette (a part of the stomach of young milk-fed calves).

The drainage

During this phase, almost 80% of the water contained in the curd is extracted.

At this drainage, two types of processes take place :

 a biological process : acidification, or “lactic fermentation", which generates porosity in the curd.

 a mechanical process : that occurs in several phases : cutting, mixing, heating, and pressing.

he step is essential because it is the combination of these factors that is going to determine the hardness and richness of the cheese to come.

To fully understand the process, lets observe more closely the two most extreme cases ; the drainage of a fresh cheese and that of a Comté, for example.

To obtain a fresh cheese with a slightly acidic taste, lactic fermentation is preferred. Milk is kept at a temperature of around 59°C for several hours (from 12 to 48 hours). During this time, the ferments develop and produce an acid (the lactose becomes lactic acid). The lactic acid demineralizes the curd by removing a large part of its calcium and thus its suppleness. The result is a “lactic” curd, with a high porosity that drains slowly and spontaneously.

By contrast, to obtain a hard cheese, we’re going to work more quickly and at a higher temperature (86°F to 104°C). The drainage takes place in a mechanical manner. We then cut up the curd in order to accelerate the flow of lactoserum (the clearish liquid that separates from the curd during coagulation) and we then mix and heat it. The curd contracts under the double effect of the stirring and the heat. When it has been sufficiently drained, it is put into a mold. The final stage is the pressing, the strength of which is determined by the desired hardness of the cheese.

It is the combination of these 2 processes that produces the wide range of cheese textures. Rather small fresh cheeses are obtained when the biological process is favored. On the other hand, by favoring the mechanical process, rather hard bases can be produced, which can withstand increasingly larger sizes depending on the different stages of drainage. Thus, the various families of cheese are formed as a result of these different processes : the soft cheeses (Camembert, Munster…) are only cut into pieces, the “pierced bases” (Roquefort, the Blues) are cut and mixed, the pressed cheeses (Tomme de Savoie, Saint-Nectaire) are cut, mixed, and then pressed, and as for the cooked, pressed cheeses (Emmental, Beaufort…), they are heated as well.

We are now at the 2nd or 3rd day of the cheese’s existence. It has just been salted with either fine salt from the farm, or by a soaking in brine at the cheese factory, after which it finishes the draining process. It must now be aged, with the exception of fresh cheese, which is packed as soon as it has been drained.

The ageing

Luring the aging process, the salt “migrates” into the interior and the rind, or skin, starts to form. The caseine (milk protein and principal element in cheese) will undergo the successive fermentations that will produce a flavor and texture that are pleasant to the palate. It is the rennet, having coagulated the milk, that sets off the process. It is then taken over by the natural milk ferments that play a dominant role in the blossoming of each region’s typical flavors. Lastly, the ferments in the rind, otherwise known as bacteria and fungi, terminate this maturation process, called “proteolysis”.

The length of aging varies from one cheese to another (from a few weeks for a Camembert to several months for a cooked cheese) and evolves differently depending on the type of texture : pressed bases only age on the interior, “pierced” bases (blue cheeses) from the interior to the exterior, and soft bases from the exterior to the interior.

›› More at The miracle of ageing cheese