The Carr Valley Cheese Factory in Wisconsin

Travel with Bennett-Watt and discover the Carr Valley Cheese Factory in Wisconsin.

The Carr Valley Cheese Factory in Wisconsin Bennett Watt: Wisconsin is the largest cheese producer in the United States nearly 2 ½ million pounds last year. There are hundreds of smaller cheese producers or boutique cheeseries if you will, producing a unique variety of specialty chesses along with their cheddars and goodies. These are the cheeses that define Wisconsin’s cheese making. Sid Cook: The last year Wisconsin won I think 36 awards in American Cheese Society. California won like 32 and Carr Valley 120 and so we have some very, very good cheeses so we’re on the extremely innovative company and we always have a lot of fun with cheese. Today we’re making cheddar, we’re making bandage rep cheddar it’s a mill cured cheese and it is originated in Great Britain, we make it in a very traditional way just like it was made here in the scale of 90 years ago, we make it in the small batches, put bandage wrap what that means is there’s cheese broth on the outside of the cheese the Parmesan all round, we dry the outside of the cheese and then either wax them or allow native molds to grow on the outside. What we’re going to do about five or six thousand pounds of cheese after it got all packed up this morning and she puts the dry wheels on the rack and then gets him down into the wax again the wax coats the cheese but it allows it to breath as it ages out and so what this kind of cheese, what we’re trying to do is heat the mold off of it. So let the some kind and what we going to we do is draw the mold on it and so this is what we’re doing with the wax. Cheese curds are a Wisconsin thing and many people that you know have grown up here, I grew up within three to five miles on the cheese factory because at one time we had about 3,000 cheese plants in the state. There a lot of them that got of the countryside so people grew up with cheese factories in their backyard and many of them making cheddar cheese and so as the kids they would go to the cheese factory and look for their parents and the milk was an average and they would piece the fresh cheese curd since they were being made. And so we have this tradition of cheese curds here and it’s just going on and on and on and so generally every morning six days a week we package that somewhere between 800 in 2,000 pounds, the cheese curds and a one pound bags are in the ¾ pound bags and people come in and buy them and eat them that day. So they’re very warm, they’re squeaky, they’re delicious and that they’re addictive.