LGC 040 – Interview with Colin Giddy from New Zealand

Colin Giddy is a home cheese maker from Morrinsville, New Zealand. He describes his inspiration for making cheese, how he has made many different types of cheese, and some of the challenges that he has encountered along the way.

Here is a little bit about him in his own words;

“A Little History of Us

Linda and myself started making cheese after watching a program called Country Calendar on TV. A Lady called Biddy Fraser-Davies was showing us how she makes cheese everyday from just a couple of jersey cows.

I thought WE CAN DO THAT. We have the milk. In fact we tip out more milk each day on the farm than we can use. I work on my 1 of my sons share-milked farms. We have 2 farms side by side where we milked about 400 cows. I was milking in one cowshed and he in another.

So I looked for someone to teach me how and found a lady called Jean Mansfield who held cheese making classes from time to time in a small town called Katikati. So off I went and did a 1 day introduction to cheese. That was about 6 years ago. I started to collect the last milk of the day after the vat tap was turned off. Sometimes there was a bit of water in it and I quickly realised that watery milk does not make good cheese. I became very careful how I collected the milk after that. We started with Farmhouse Cheddar Cream cheese Mozzarella and things like that.

We had our failures and our successes and we grew in confidence as we learned new things
of what to do and what NOT to do. We are still learning. We now make all sorts of cheeses. And while some say that cheeses like Camembert are for more expert makers we find it to be one of the easiest cheeses to make.  And only 3 hrs from start to finish in the molds.

Colin’s Camembert fresh out of the brine

We made a stirred curd cheddar and when finished soaked it in Red wine for a few days then dried it and when it matured it was just delightful. (must do another)

We purchased Rikki Carroll’s Home Cheese Making and have used it as a Guide. Our conditions are a little different as are the cultures that we use and the conversion from Fahrenheit to Celsius. But it is a brilliant book for the beginner.

There is so much information available today on the internet (like this blog) that there is no reason that you can’t do or make anything that you want to. It is entirely up to your own will to want to.”