Affineur of the Year 2022- Lincolnshire Poacher
Where are you maturing the cheese?
We run a family dairy farm on the eastern edge of the Lincolnshire wolds. We make Lincolnshire Poacher which is a hard cows milk cheese. It is a cross between traditional cheddar and alpine style cheese. It is typically aged for 18 months to 2 years.
Why did you enter the competition?
It is an exciting opportunity to learn how cheeses behave under different storage conditions and to share information with other industry professionals.
What is your relationship with affinage to date?
We mature our own cheese!
How are you approaching the maturation and why have you chosen this approach?
We have got two cheeses. The first is a control that we have left in the same condition that it arrived. The second we have stripped of its cloth and coated it in plasticoat - which is the material we use to mature our Lincolnshire Poacher.
What are your expectations for the matured cheese, flavour profile after 9 months?
No idea but I am hoping all the cheeses will mature very differently!
UPDATE ON THE MATURATION OF THE CHEESES, JULY 2021
Last week, our UK Account Manager Patrick Spinazza visited Lincolnshire Poacher to see how the cheeses were maturing. Here is Patrick's update:
Tim’s processes for producing and maturing cheddar differ in many ways from that of Quicke’s from temperature of the make, stacking of the curd, different salt, and the use of plasicote a food grade PVA glue that inhibits moulding, so for Tim this makes for a great experiment to see the affects this will have on our cheese with his maturation and Micro flora in his store.
Taking two cheeses has given him a great point of difference to see how the micro flora from his maturation rooms will have an effect on the original clothbound cheese and how that transfers into rind development and then flavour. Stripping the cloth off the 2nd cheese and using his plasticote method he is seeing how that will effect the moisture content, currently the moisture retention is higher on the clothbound with the plasticote losing 2 time more but Tim feels this will level out over time.
The picture below you can clearly see the one on the top left is the original Quicke’s clothbound and is showing some lovely different types of moulds we wouldn’t usually see in the Quicke’s Cathedral and the one on the right is in the plasicote with more yellow and white moulds.
The aroma’s are completely different to that of Quicke’s in Tim’s store along with the addition of the mechanised cheese turning and less cheese mite he will have great control over potential blueing, he is looking to keep the cheese intact and not iron it till the day of the competition.
