Prom Country Cheese develops Victoria’s first raw milk cheese in eight decades
Prom Country Cheese owner-operators Burke and Bronwyn Brandon last year started producing a semi-hard sheep’s milk cheese that’s got the gourmet world talking.
EIGHT decades have passed since Victoria outlawed raw milk cheese.
But an enterprising Gippsland cheese-making couple has brought the ancient fromage practice into the modern era.
Prom Country Cheese owner-operators Burke and Bronwyn Brandon last year started producing a semi-hard sheep’s milk cheese made with milk that has not been pasteurised.
The Moyarra Reserve has already made an impression among epicureans and amateur foodies alike, with the cheese now sold on a wider scale.
“It’s been a long road. A couple of years research and trialling was involved,” Mr Brandon said. “There are plenty of regulations when it comes to cheesemaking but even more so when you’re dealing with raw milk.
“Pasteurisation kills all the bacteria in milk, both the good bacteria and the bad bacteria. What (raw milk cheese) has that the pasteurised cheese doesn’t is that good bacteria, which gives the cheese an extra edge, a sort of subtle freshness that you don’t taste in other (cheese varieties).”
The cheese must be kept at over 12 degrees Celsius for five months to deactivate pathogens, salted to develop a protective rind and kill bad bacteria, allowed to breathe without drying out too much, all the while maintaining its lactic acid content.
It’s a tricky balancing act that can only be conducted by cheesemakers who produce milk on their own property like the Brandons.
“The batches have to be small, just by the nature of working with raw milk,” Mr Brandon said.
“When started off the trial, we had to wait five months before being able to try it. It’s been an educational process but it was great to have that first taste, given raw milk cheese is a pretty rare thing here in Australia.”
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