After a microbiology workshop, cheesemakers and mongers have a new way to talk about their tasty, funky products
Cheesemakers and cheese mongers gathered for a workshop in microbiologist Ben Wolfe's laboratory to learn more about the ways in which their cheeses are impacted by microbes. Photo: Jenna Schad
Growing up in his family’s namesake cheese shop, the son of a cheese monger and now one himself, Brian Wasik practically has dairy in his DNA. But up until last year, he understood little of the science behind the products the Wasiks have been selling for 60 years.
Now, Wasik is comfortable talking not only about the taste, texture, age, and other defining characteristics of the products behind his counter, but also why those characteristics develop in the first place.
“I really hoped that the workshop would help me convey to my customers with more authority what is actually happening when we get funky things developing on the outside of cheeses,” Wasik said. “Since the workshop, the neatest thing was taking a buying trip to France with a major importer of mine and having the knowledge and terminology that I learned at Tufts—it made me feel like one of the smartest people in the room.”
Brian Wasik, center, said having an understanding of how and why cheeses develop and age has been incredibly helpful in his business. Photo: Jenna Schad
Wasik was one of 15 cheesemakers and cheese mongers who gathered at Tufts University in June for a two-day workshop with associate professor of biology Ben Wolfe. The workshop was part of a five-year research project funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation to explore how microbes evolve in fermented foods.
While Wolfe prioritizes the work being done in his lab and among the microbiology community, he also values sharing the information outside the university’s walls.
“Our main focus in the lab is basic microbiology,” Wolfe said. “But something that we do a lot is help people who are working with these microbes on a daily basis. It’s a great way to learn and it brings excitement and engagement to the work that we do. It provides an end point and an impact beyond what we teach our students.”
Participants in the workshop were invited to send in cheese samples from their farms and shops, located across New England. Wolfe and his team cultured the cheeses, growing microbes and sequencing DNA on some of the samples, so that participants could measure the microbiome diversity of their cheeses once they arrived on Tufts’ campus.
The workshop included classroom instruction on basic microbes and using DNA to identify specific microbes in cheese, as well as time in the lab, learning how to use microscopes to see cheese microbes, and how to plate out cheese samples to isolate microbes.
What’s on My Cheese?
One of the cheeses submitted by Kai Norton, the cheese manager of Bedford Cheese Shop in Manhattan’s Union Square, was a wild card. Normally, La Cabezuela Tradicional Semi Curado, a World Cheese Award-winning goat’s milk cheese made in Spain, has an earthy profile with a bloomy, bright white rind.
But while reviewing her inventory, Norton noticed that the rind of one Cabazeula had morphed to a grayer hue, and when she sampled it, she quickly realized the paste, or interior, had lost almost all of its flavor. She knew that she couldn’t sell it, but was curious what, if any, microbes had survived on the surface of the cheese, and how they might have impacted its texture and flavor.
Kai Norton, right, and Ben Wolfe share the results of her tested cheese samples. Photo: Jenna Schad
That general curiosity and interest in science is what drew her to attend the workshop.
“I knew the basic science of cheese, how the milk comes together, what pH is, and that there are different microbes that change cheese, depending on temperatures, humidities and other factors,” Norton reflected. “But what is actually going on with particular bacteria or molds? That’s a question I started asking myself as I learned more in my role.”
During the initial examination of the cheese samples, playfully named, “Meet Your Cheese Microbes!”, Wolfe invited participants to look at the petri dish cultures from all the submissions. As he walked to each station, he asked the group what they thought might be present from what had grown.
Norton was unsurprised to find that La Cabezuela’s microbial diversity was almost null, but by examining other samples, she became more familiar with the look of certain molds and yeasts—some of which are totally fine for consumption, while others require discarding the cheese.
“Before that workshop, I would not have known that the majority of the Montgomery cheddar I was examining the other day was still sellable, despite the huge wet spot along the rind,” Norton said. “I could see from Ben’s workshop that it was a particular mold that must have made its way through the cheesecloth, which is totally normal.”
Norton says her confidence as a cheese manager completely shifted after the workshop, and now, she is even considering furthering her formal microbiology education.
“The workshop gave me more language, more specificity, and it reconfirmed what I already knew,” Norton explained. “These cheeses have a life. They have a story.”
Shaping Cheese and Science
Amye Gulezian, the specialty foods operations manager at High Lawn Farm in Lee, Massachusetts, found the workshop so helpful that she has continued to work with Wolfe to better understand the factors that may be affecting the farm’s cheese production. Right now, the High Lawn team is interested in learning more about wild molds on their natural rind cheeses, which can vary significantly based on seasonal and environmental factors. These molds are benign but sometimes cause cosmetic effects.
Amye Gulezian, right, examines a Petri dish during the workshop. Photo: Jenna Schad
“We’ve noticed that it’s present on some of our hard-pressed, natural-rind cheeses, so we asked to meet with Ben and sent him a few samples,” Gulezian said. “We’re hopeful that he can help us determine where those molds thrive and where they don’t, so we can stop the bacteria from producing further. This will help improve the consistency of the cheeses we’re producing.”
Helping Gulezian pinpoint how and why the High Lawn cheeses have been impacted is part of why Wolfe enjoys his research so much.
“All of these cheese mongers, all these cheese makers and enthusiasts, they’re on the ground every day working with and seeing these microbial communities,” Wolfe said. “It’s almost like they’re the bird watchers, if you will, of the cheese microbial world, where they see things, notice changes, and reach out to us to have conversations that often feed into new science that we do in my lab. They are a global network of people that we can tap into and have conversations with to shape our science.”
"I think the much more interesting cheeses in terms of flavor, but also microbial diversity, are the ones where you grow a microbial rind. They're called surface-ripened cheeses because you would purposely grow a bunch of microbes, a community of microbes on the surface, and that's the delicious rot that I refer to often when I talk about this, where you're encouraging these things to decompose that solid mass of cheese that you made. As they grow on the surface, they're slowly breaking down some of the cheese protein that's been concentrated, and as they do that, they release flavor. So, they're releasing both things that we smell in the air, but also flavors into the cheese, and that process is often called affinage or just the aging process, and to get Camembert versus a cloth bound cheddar versus one of the stinky like ais or something like that. There's a bunch of different things cheese makers can do in terms of temperature, in terms of washing the cheese, whether or not you wash it with a brine solution. There are ways you can add microbes, you can buy microbes and add them into the surface. There's a bunch of different things you can do to send it off in lots of different directions."