Artisan cheese factory opens at Pike Place Market

By Judith Blake
Seattle Times staff reporter

	THOMAS JAMES HURST / THE SEATTLE TIMES Kurt Dammeier, owner of Beecher's Handmade Cheese, stands next to two fresh 37-pound blocks of cheese. Visitors to his Pike Place Market store, which opened last week, can watch workers make artisan cheeses in the shop's small, glass-walled factory.
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"I'm a cheese lover and a cheese eater," he explains. "And I grew up in a family manufacturing business — printing. I love manufacturing. I love the machines and I love the process" of turning raw materials into a finished product.

Now, Dammeier has created a place where anyone can watch that process, as workers and gleaming, stainless steel machines transform milk into cheese. You can also taste the results.

Last week, Dammeier opened Beecher's Handmade Cheese — named after his cheese-loving great-grandfather, Beecher McKenzie — in the Pike Place Market.

Beecher's is several things: a small, mostly glass-walled factory making artisan cheeses in full view of visitors; a shop selling those cheeses and others from small, Northwest makers; and a cafe whose offerings include dishes made with cheese.

To be his chief cheesemaker, Dammeier recruited Brad Sinko, who co-managed the Sinko family's Oregon business, Bandon Cheese, until it was sold to that state's big-name cheese company, Tillamook.

THOMAS JAMES HURST / THE SEATTLE TIMES Beecher's chief cheesemaker, Brad Sinko, fills a vat with milk to begin the cheesemaking process.

"You need to be an expert" to make excellent cheese, Dammeier says of hiring Sinko. "We're trying to make great, premium cheese."

A number of other small, artisan cheesemakers are scattered around Washington and Oregon, some making delectable products. But little is being done in Seattle, says Dammeier

"We hope that our being so visual will attract local cheesemakers and provide an avenue for them to sell their cheese," he says.

He was thrilled when husband-and-wife Aberdeen cheesemakers heard about his new venture and arrived two days before it opened, bearing a wheel of their handcrafted, intensely flavored blue cheese. Now, Wynoochee River cheese from the couple's tiny, seven-cow farm is among about 35 artisan brands represented in Dammeier's store.

Behind Dammeier as he speaks, milk can be seen through the factory's window-wall pouring from a pipe into a long, steel vat, where a worker sprinkles it with cultures that will start its change to cheese.

A semi-hard variety, this will become Beecher's Flagship Cheese, after a full year of aging. The store sets aside some of this cheese's curds to sell as a tasty snack or appetizer cheese.

In a smaller vat, a different batch has reached a pudding-like consistency and is about to go into cheesecloth bags for draining. This soft variety will become Beecher's Blank Slate Cheese, so named because customers are encouraged to mix in their own flavorings to create an individualized spread or topping. Some flavorings Dammeier suggests: honey and nuts or granola; chutney; and pesto or sun-dried tomatoes.

Over a year's time, about nine different cheese varieties will be made here — five of them regularly and others seasonally, Dammeier says. A Gorgonzola may come out around Christmastime, for example, and a mozzarella when tomatoes are at their summer peak.

A glimpse at the factory's shiny machinery at first makes you wonder what's "handmade" about the cheese produced here. But Sinko, who has a degree in microbiology, says that in a small operation such as this, staffers constantly monitor the developing cheese for acidity, moisture, butterfat and salt content, and make adjustments for desired qualities.

The result is that "artisan" cheeses tend to have more distinctive and intense flavors — heightened by aging — and they often vary a bit from batch to batch.

In contrast, Sinko says, "in a big factory, you never see or touch the cheese." Instead, machines are set to turn out the product in huge batches that are alike and usually less distinctive in taste.

Beecher's will also have more control over the milk it uses, by buying from a single farm, Cherry Valley Dairy, in Duvall. This allows for more experimentation with different types of feed and breed of cow to achieve different cheese qualities, Dammeier says. A Jersey cow's milk, for instance, contains far more butterfat than that of the more common, black-and-white, Holstein breed.

It's also important to him that the cows are not given bovine growth hormone, just as the prepared products his shop sells to go with cheese — specialty pickles, chutney, baked figs, sodas and more — are free of nitrates, hydrogenated vegetable oils and other frowned-upon ingredients.

Unlike some artisan cheeses, Beecher's is made with pasteurized milk. Though fans of raw-milk cheeses contend they have more flavor, Dammeier is unconvinced.

"I've probably tasted 150 different cheeses this year," Dammeier says, "and I'm convinced that raw milk doesn't create more flavor."

He believes raw milk cheese's reputation for better taste is linked to French farmsteads that made excellent, high-flavor cheese, yet couldn't afford to pasteurize.

Health authorities generally prefer pasteurized cheese, especially for people with compromised immune systems, because pasteurizing kills potentially harmful bacteria.

However, Dammeier says his factory uses pasteurized milk mainly because this helps give it a more consistent taste. His store sells unpasteurized cheese from other makers, and he is "absolutely for the freedom to make cheese from raw milk."

Dammeier's staff also has developed a special cracker, one whose flavor is pleasant but not so strong that it overpowers the cheese, and that is firm enough to resist crumbling when used for dipping.

Beecher's is not Dammeier's first foray into the local food world. His family's investment firm, which he runs, is majority owner of Pasta & Co. and microbrewer Pyramid Breweries.

Copyright © 2003 The Seattle Times Company