Say cheese :-)

Say cheese :-) During my summer vacation in Switzerland my friend and I visited a show cheese dairy producing Emmentaler cheese, so naturally this dairy is located in the valley of Emmental !! In this show dairy you can see most of the entire production involved in the making of Emmetal cheese.

It is really a great place to visit, where you get an introduction to the many interesting details involved in cheese production both oral and visual.  ( http://www.emmentaler-schaukaeserei.ch/de/home.html). As example each Emmental cheese weighs 73 kg and requires 1000 l milk to make, so it a gigant cheese volumen. Most cheese weighs between 6-10 kg.

In the picture above you can see the big cheese vat, where the liquid milk is turned into cheese grains. Below you can see the cheese press, where the small cheese grains is pressed together to one big Emmental cheese of 73 kg.

After pressing the Emmental cheese undergoes salting, where the entire cheese in place in a salt brine.

Equipment for marking the cheese with name and it's production details used for tracking the production later during the storage of the cheese.

The storage of Emmental cheese, where the cheese is maturing. Maturing time is between 6-18 month. The longer storage time, the more taste in the cheese.

Eating at this show dairy reminds me too much of eating in cateria, so another time I would eat my lunch at another place.

Therefore we decided to try the typical dessert in Switzerland in form of meringue and whipped cream at another place. The meringue part was OK, but I am NOT a big fan of whipped :-(

All in all it was a very interesting to visit. And we have located another four show cheese dairies in Switzerland, where you can experience the production of other AOC cheeses from Switzerland such as Appenzeller and Gruyère.