HeavyTable.com reports on a new cheese from...

HeavyTable.com reports on a new cheese from Minnesota’s Alemar Cheese Company, makers of the monger favorite Bent River (reviewed here). The new cheese is named Blue Earth, and comes out just as Alemar founder Keith Adams gets ready to move to Northern California to pursue new ventures. Via Heavy Table:

Blue Earth from Alemar Cheese Company
Fans of Alemar Cheese Company’s Bent River and Good Thunder have a new reason to stalk the cheese case. Founder and cheesemaker Keith Adams (below) isn’t leaving Minnesota without introducing Blue Earth, a Brie-style cheese that’s just starting to appear in Minnesota cheese shops, co-ops, and grocery stores. Named for Blue Earth County, where Alemar Cheese is located, this new cheese offers a new format and flavors to fans of Adams’ Camembert-style Bent River.
“We always made some larger-format pieces of Bent River when we had extra curd. The thing that was cool about it was that it tasted different because it was bigger and took longer to ripen. As time went on, I thought I would tinker with the cultures and do a larger piece and call it a Brie, or an ‘American brie,’” Adams says. “Sometimes I’m at the market or I’m demo-ing, and people are hell-bent on a piece of Brie. I try to steer them to Bent River and they’re like, “No, I want a Brie.” Part of making [Blue Earth] was to solve that problem, but it was also going to be its own cheese.”
“There are five cultures or starters that go into both of the cheeses, but we’ve pulled back on one and bumped up the other. A lot of people get vegetal notes in Bent River, but we wanted to dial that back on the Brie to make it a little more accessible to the average palate as a starting point,” Adams says.
Despite his new venture into a Brie-like cheese, Adams still is moving ahead with his plans to relocate to northern California after spending several weeks in England next month. Leaving Alemar Cheese in the capable hands of Craig Hageman, the new head cheesemaker, Adams will travel to several well-known British dairies, such as Westcombe Dairy and Montgomery’s Cheddar, and attend an artisan cheesemaking seminar by affineur and distributor Neal’s Yard Dairy. He’s even leaving a few days free at the end of his trip to hop across the English Channel to the Camembert region of France “to pay [his] respects.”

Read the full post.