Little Milk Company's Big Cheese: Brewer's Gold

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Little Milk Company's Big Cheese: Brewer's Gold

The Little Milk Company now has a range of award winning cheeses available in Ireland and abroad.

John and Joan Stephenson, organic dairy farmers since the 1980s, supply the milk for one of the most distinctive of these: Brewer’s Gold from the Little Milk Company. Their milk also goes into the company’s Organic Irish Brie.

Both of these are made by Helen Finnegan of Knockdrinna cheese fame, whose skills in cheese making are renowned.

John Stephenson tells me that “Conor Mulvihill helped us develop the products. We have both hard and soft cheeses, partly because the turnover is faster with the soft cheeses. So he worked with Helen Finnegan on the brief for the beer washed cheese”

Mulvihill has driven on The Little Milk Company to great heights. The company are made up of 10 organic farmers from Munster and Leinster, selling cheese for just over a year.

The Stephenson’s supply about 1300 litres to Helen Finnegan in Kilkenny each week, spreading this out over two deliveries per week. This amount drops a little during the winter, while other members of the Little Milk Company can make up any shortfall.

“The turnover is within six to eight weeks for the softer cheeses – they have a shorter shelf life. The hard cheeses take months”

Brewer’s Gold is an especially distinctive cheese. It’s a very strong, beer washed semi soft cheese. This won Silver at the International Cheese Awards held in Nantwitch in the UK, and a rare two stars at the Great Taste Awards.

Of the over 10,000 entrants to the Great Taste Awards, there were just 697 two-star awards given out, while less than 90 Irish producers received either two or three gold star awards.

In what is surely a sign of shifting palates, the extremely strong, pungent Brewer’s Gold Cheese was the Little Milk Company’s biggest seller over the Christmas period last year. These days, cheeses are sold to match beers, ales and stouts.

One of the many interesting things happening at the artisan end of Irish agri-food is how small companies have started to work together. So not only is the rind hand washed, three different regional craft breweries supply the beer for the wash depending on where the milk is coming from for the cheese.

Typically, it’s Waterford’s Dungarvan Brewing Company. However, Conor Mulvihill tells me. “when John Stephenson’s cows dry off, Little Milk Company suppliers from other parts of Leinster and Munster step in. Bill George – son-in-law of Jim Mulhall – supplies milk to Helen while his local craft brewery – O’ Haras – supplies the wash.”

This continues when the production moves to Limerick, and north Cork’s Eight Degrees supplies the wash.

“We always use the ale from each company; it’s the really yeasty stuff at the end of the barrels we use, which adds a lot to flavour too. It’s a method the Trappist monks used for preserving. We’ve taken this old tradition and brought it up to date.”

He adds “Brewer’s Gold is turning over about 1.5 tonnes per month, while sales in general are up 350% this year, so we’re very happy with how things are going”

Indeed stepping across to Tipperary, the Little Milk Company has a new partnership with O Donnell’s crisps. O Donnell’s are unusual in growing some of their own potatoes in Tipperary for their artisan crisps.

Little Milk Company cheeses are available in France, Holland the UK and Germany, while they have also recently started supplying a range to Australia.

In Ireland, they are available in speciality stores and restaurants, as well as in Tesco and Supervalu.

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