How a Fourth-Era-Owned Circle of relatives Cheese Industry Constructed Its Legacy, Brick through Brick

We’ve teamed up with Wisconsin Cheese for an interview mini-series referred to as Meet the Makers, that includes a sampling of the state’s best cheesemakers and their award-winning creations.

While you develop up in a circle of relatives that owns a industry, there are most often two results in the case of your long run: you both run so far as you’ll be able to within the different path and not glance again, otherwise you fall consistent with the generations that got here earlier than you and in the end take the reins. In fact, each paths have benefit, particularly when there’s scrumptious meals concerned.

Joey Widmer is one such circle of relatives businessman. He adopted in his father Joe Widmer’s footsteps, and that’s a very just right factor—that’s as a result of his circle of relatives industry, Widmer’s Cheese Cellars, comes to making Wisconsin’s best Brick and Colby cheeses. As a fourth-generation cheesemaker, Joey is not any stranger to early mornings and handbook exertions, but it surely wasn’t all the time transparent that cheese can be his trail. I sat down with him to be informed extra about his circle of relatives’s dairy-filled historical past and the way he landed in the similar place his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather occupied earlier than him.

This interview has been edited and condensed for readability.

MADISON TRAPKIN: Are you able to inform me who you’re and what you do?

JOEY WIDMER: I’m Joey Widmer and I am a fourth-generation cheesemaker. I have been making cheese since I used to be about 12 years previous right here at Widmer’s, born and raised above the cheese manufacturing facility.

That’s a large number of generations of cheesemaking! What does Wisconsin’s cheesemaking neighborhood imply to you?

The Wisconsin cheese making neighborhood way so much to me—the individuals are so pleasant and accommodating. It isn’t like we are in point of fact aggressive in opposition to every different. All of us have other merchandise that we provide and produce to {the marketplace}, and you’ll be able to keep in touch so much with the opposite cheesemakers and jump concepts off of them.

Widmer’s provides a large number of cheeses at the present time, however it began with Brick. How did that cheese come to be?

Brick cheese was once invented in 1877 through a Swiss immigrant named John Jossi and the rationale they name it brick cheese is as a result of they in fact use a brick to press the curds right into a block.

I guess a large number of other folks suppose it’s named for the form of the cheese somewhat than the cheesemaking procedure.

It’s a good way to make cheese. When my great-grandfather—he is additionally a Swiss immigrant immigrant—came around, he purchased our manufacturing facility in 1922. He began making large cheese in our plant and [brick] was once the primary cheese that he made. He used the similar strategies that John Jossi used with the bricks, and he began with washed-rind brick cheese…[that’s] a Eu-style cheese [with] a more potent taste and aroma. For that cheese, we put it in a room and we wash it on a daily basis with the tradition micro organism that provides it the outside rind. He learned that no longer everyone likes a powerful, pungent genre of cheese, so then he got here up with a light brick, [which is] the similar cheese but it surely has annatto coloring and we do not upload the tradition micro organism and wash it so it does not get that sturdy, pungent taste or aroma.

So how precisely do the bricks come into play?

You in fact use a brick to press the curd in combination and [into] roughly a five-pound block.

Very cool. What number of bricks does Widmer’s have?

We’ve about 450 bricks right here on premises, and the ones are the unique bricks that my grandfather used. Some were taken out of circulate because of put on and tear, however maximum of them are the unique form of baker’s bricks derived from a plant out of Ohio. There may be a large number of cleansing that has to enter keeping up the bricks, so it is very exertions in depth to make it that manner. We are the one ones that I do know of which might be in fact the usage of a brick for urgent.

Do you stay the usage of them to persist with custom or is there one more reason?

Sure, we are looking to persist with our conventional strategies of cheesemaking up to conceivable. Everyone else is more or less going computerized and breaking clear of that custom, however we really feel that our area of interest is to persist with conventional strategies up to conceivable and maintain the historical past.

You’re a fourth-generation cheesemaker—did you all the time know your trail would result in cheese?

I did not all the time know that I sought after to make cheese. I noticed one of the vital struggles that my dad went thru and in a way [that] more or less scared me, however on the identical time, he took a large number of delight in what he did and I noticed that anything else profitable in existence goes to be difficult.

In some ways you’ve stayed true to custom through retaining the circle of relatives industry alive and sticking to sure manufacturing strategies, however you’ve additionally innovated alongside the best way—are you able to inform me about this evolution at Widmer’s?

My grandpa did get started with the washed-rind cheese, however a technique that he adopted the palate of alternative shoppers is he got here up with the delicate brick cheese that was once simply the delicate, creamy model of the unique form of brick cheese. Now we additionally be offering other taste types [of Brick] like Jalapeno Pepper and Caraway Seed. My great-grandfather additionally began making cheddar as a result of cheddar was once so universally recognized all through Wisconsin. As we noticed increasingly cheeses being advanced with other cultures and taste components, we made up our minds so as to add to our Wisconsin Originals. Within the overdue 2000, I imagine 2019, my dad and I got here up with Matterhorn Alpine Cheddar, which is our unique cheddar recipe, however then we added alpine cultures to that. It ended up being a in point of fact just right cheese and it in fact gained a primary position highest of sophistication in the US cheese contest ultimate yr within the cheddar class, elderly six months to a yr.

Simply this previous yr, we began creating a Butterkäse, [which] more or less performs upon my circle of relatives’s heritage of being from Switzerland. It is a cheese that was once invented at the German-Swiss border within the 1870s, and it has a an identical procedure to our brick procedure, however simply other cultures. So the ones are one of the vital ways in which we’ve got innovated simply, , sticking to custom, but in addition bobbing up with different cheeses just like the Butterkäse and Matterhorn.

What does the long run appear to be for Widmer’s?

I have no idea what the long run seems like precisely for Widmer’s, however I know that we wish to keep true to what we are doing lately—generating conventional cheeses in a conventional means and the usage of conventional recipes that had been handed down for 100 years [across] 4 generations. I think like after I stand up, I am enthusiastic about going to paintings and beginning my day and attending to create a really perfect cheese product and figuring out that during Wisconsin there is a neighborhood of dairy farmers and cheesemakers which might be additionally beginning their day at 3 or 4 a.m. Realizing you might be no longer the one one getting up that early and being part of that arduous operating neighborhood of people, I feel that is vital and it makes you need to stand up on a daily basis and do your process to the most efficient of your skill with enjoyment.

Our buddies at Wisconsin Cheese are dedicated to showcasing all of the superb cheeses the state has to provide—and there may be a large number of them. Wisconsin has extra flavors, types, and kinds of cheese than any place else on the planet. From Italian classics like Parmesan and ricotta to Wisconsin Originals like Colby and Brick, this cheese-obsessed state has a bit one thing for everybody. In finding out extra about Wisconsin Cheese through visiting their web page.