From Pasture to Plate : How the Kirkhams make great Lancashire

The exciting thing about the Kirkhams is that they farm with only their cheese in mind. They have no milk contract to fulfil, no minimum litres to achieve and everything about the way they farm is tailored to making amazing cheese.  Amazing cheese needs amazing milk but, specifically, it needs cheese-orientated milk. This means that it needs to have zero pathogens, of course, but does have viable lactic acid bacteria and good solids (fats and proteins). Graham’s cows are largely Friesian which would normally produce milk with about 3% fat. His cows manage 5% fat. For comparison this is what you’d expect from Jersey milk.

They achieve this by gearing the feed and breeding so that it suits the rhythms of the cheese. They stagger the calving all year round so that the milk is consistent in quality. End of lactation milk has different fats and proteins and tends also to have a higher bacterial load. There is a tendency with early lactation milk for the fats to separate out more easily.  It also has a higher bacterial load which could be considered a good thing but can inhibit the starter cultures. The more you can balance out these inconsistencies, the easier it is to make good cheese. To that end, the cows are fed silage all year round in addition to the pasture that they graze. In fact, some years, although they have free access to the outdoor pastures, the cows are sometimes happier indoors where they have an airy barn with a back scratching brush roller. When they are eating silage, the milk can be more consistent.

The grass, being open to the air, is subject to variation.  Variety comes from a couple of factors.  Moisture content will vary with the weather.  Wetter feed and milk with a higher water content follows rainy weather, for instance.  Grass composition varies too, with higher sugars at the beginning of the season and more fibre towards the end of the season.  When cutting grass for silage, the Kirkhams wait longer than the average dairy farm.  If you’re farming for liquid milk production (for bottling), you want fresh, young grass which is high in sugars and has plenty of moisture.  It’s rocket fuel for volume production.  If, however, you’re looking at the solid content of the milk rather than the number of litres you’re producing, you’ll cut your silage grass later in the season when it’s more fibrous.  This helps the fat percentage in the milk and is one of the reasons that the Kirkhams are able to make a Friesian herd give Jersey quality milk.

The reason they go to all this trouble with the milk is evident when you look at the way they make cheese. In the interests of achieving the correct buttery crumbling texture and slow acid development, they use tiny amounts of starter. For a vat of 2,500 litres milk they use millilitres of starter where a quicker recipe would call for 25 litres of starter or 1% of the milk volume. As a result of their starter use, they have a slow acid development, which helps the curd develop a richer, more nuanced, complex and subtle flavour that will develop over time. They mix the curd from 2 days production together when it comes to moulding cheeses, so this slow acid development is what allows them to do this without compromising the flavour of the final cheeses. It is the traditional way of making Lancashire, dating back to when cheese would have been made without starter or at least using the whey from the previous day’s make as starter if necessary. Those were days in which cows, being milked by largely by hand, had more lactic acid bacteria in their milk so the need for starter cultures was reduced.  In fact it was very similar to the way Salers is still made.

The cheeses are made over 2 days. On the first day, the milk is pumped into the vat and starter is added. They use a liquid starter, which looks like a runny yoghurt and tastes more gentle and milky than yoghurt, in fact quite delicious. The rennet is added about 20 minutes later, giving the starter time to acclimatise to its new medium but not develop appreciable acidity. The set generally takes about an hour and, the curd is cut to the size of a hazelnut. It is stirred briefly before it’s allowed to settle. Greater stirring would increase the acid production and create a bright and dry crumbly curd, which isn’t the buttery, feathery texture Graham Kirkham is going for. After about an hour, the free whey is pitched off and the settled curd is ladled into the centre of the vat, where the pressure of each new ladle of curd helps the curd-mass squeeze out more whey.

When there are empty channels at every edge of the vat, the curd is allowed to bow under its own pressure and then, using a knife, blocks of curd are cut and stacked on top of the curd mass again, continuing to expel the whey.  Finally, a channel of curd blocks is cut into the centre of the vat and from then, they begin to handle the blocks of squashed curd onto a cloth lined draining table.  During this process the curd has changed from a soft and jelly-like texture to something more akin to cooked chicken breast.  Once on the draining table, the curd is broken by hand into pieces that roughly equal a handful and left to drain for an hour with the cloth wrapped around them and light weights placed on top to ensure the whey doesn’t stop draining.

The curd is broken again another 2 times during the afternoon with an hour’s wait in between each break.  The time between curd breaks will then be used to combine a couple of days’ curd, mill it, salt it and pack it into moulds, forming the final cheese. A mixture of blocks of curd from yesterday and the day before are put through the curd mill to bring them down in size. Salt is then added and mixed by hand before the curd with salt is milled a further 2 times and then when it’s a fine texture, is packed into moulds and put into the presses overnight.  The smell as this job is carried out is delicious, like lactic butter.

The presses are tightened slowly with Graham doing the final turn at about 9pm.  Tempting as it must be to tighten quicker and work a shorter day, this doesn’t benefit the cheese.  Press the curd too soon and it can make the surface too firm while the interior retains its moisture. This would lead to funky, fermented flavours as trapped moisture and naturally occurring yeasts go crazy together at a cosy temperature of about 20C. It’s especially likely to occur if you try and mix curd from 2 days as one lot of curd has sat for an extra day at ambient temperatures and without any salt to slow down yeast and bacterial activity.  This makes the yeasts sound undesirable and if they are controlled and in balance they certainly are not.  They are part of the natural flora of the milk.  The key is balance and control and that is why so much attention is given to draining the whey and pressing the final cheeses.

Why bother with 2-day curd if it’s so much more difficult? The 2-day curd is important because it creates a mellow, buttery, savoury and complex flavour and this is something that sets the Kirkhams apart from other Lancashire makers who have opted for the faster and moister way of making cheese.  On the face of it, it makes sense commercially to have a shorter working day and a fast-maturing cheese but then by following the slower and more traditional route, the Kirkhams have a unique and delicious cheese that is highly sought after.

If Graham made a ‘more efficient’ cheese, the curd would be too wet to keep for an extra day.  If he tried to then it would taste eggy, sulphurous and so the quicker and moister recipe tends to lend itself to a simple 1-day curd cheese. This is fine but these cheeses by comparison are one dimensional and lactic, whereas the addictive quality of Kirkhams Lancashire is that it offers so much more.