Making cheese during a Get Culture class.
Looking for a new Zoom? Madison cheesemaking supply shop Get Culture is launching its first virtual cheesemaking class. Not its first cheesemaking class — owner Dave Potter figures he's held about three cheesemaking workshops a year since Get Culture launched in 2013. But this is its first online version.
“We’re practicing tonight!” says Potter, in a phone interview with Isthmus. “We’re doing a trial run.”
The nature of the live class — in which a step in the cheesemaking process is demonstrated and then the class members basically do the same thing five minutes later, as Potter describes it — is replicable on Zoom. But Potter wants to make sure he and his staff know how to get everyone in their separate squares hooked up smoothly and able to ask questions and interact.
Get Culture, 2314 Vondron Road on the east side, sells cheesemaking supplies to at-home makers and hobbyists, and shares space with Potter’s other business, which provides cultures and enzymes to commercial cheesemakers. Currently the shop is closed due to COVID-19, but anyone signing up for the class can make an appointment to pick up the raw materials for the session ($40) there, or, the bundle can be shipped for additional cost. Students can sign up until the last minute, if they can make it to the shop in time to pick up the supply pack.
Potter usually teaches novices to make fresh cheese, mozzarella or cheddar; this class is for a fresh cheese, which he likens to queso fresco. “You go from milk to eating it in about an hour and a half,” he says. “The goal is not to make perfect cheese,” Potter notes, but to help those who want to learn. It’s a hands-on introduction to cheesemaking, and along the way students will learn how what they are making is different from an artisan cheese and why different cheeses cost what they do, due to ingredients, methods and aging.
Potter’s background is in food science and he’s been involved with the cheesemaking industry since 1982, but he is not a licensed cheesemaker; his main focus has been with selling enzymes, rennets and cultures — “We help make the cheese taste better,” he says.
The class, Thursday, Oct. 1, from 4-6 p.m., is open to adults and children 8 and up with adult supervision, and Potter thinks that it would be a great add-on or extracurricular activity for people at home with their kids right now. He’s been thinking of how to develop classes especially for home-schooling (which this class is not). “We want to do it the right way,” he says, “for when people are not scrambling” to also virtually teach all the basic subjects to their kids. He has done an in-person class for kids at a Montessori school, for 3- to 6-year-olds, which worked out well: “It’s a good learning activity.”
While theoretically Potter could teach more people in a virtual class than he could in a kitchen, he is limiting attendance for this first one, as he and his staff get accustomed to Zoom. For more info, see getculture.com or call the shop at 608-268-0462.
A tale of two Oktoberfests: Giant Jones has created a DIY Oktoberfest to take home, with local products including a six-pack of Giant Jones German-style beers (the famed pale weizenbock, dark weizenbock and doppelsticke altbier), Enos Farms bratwurst, Origin buns, Fizzeology sauerkraut, and Ringhand's Beer Mustard. It’s a party for six, and is available for pickup at the brewery, 931 E. Main St., on either Sept. 26 or Oct. 3 from 3-6 p.m. (both Saturdays; orders must be received by 5 p.m. on the Wednesday before).
On the other side of the celebration spectrum…on Sept. 26 and Oct. 3, the Essen Haus will be holding an in-person but socially distant Oktoberfest. Staff will be tasked with enforcing social distancing and mask rules. Tables will be 6 to 8 feet apart. There will be sanitizing stations. Reservations are encouraged.
Eat Local, Give Local: If you eat out at any of the more than 25 participating restaurants (great ones, too!) on Sept. 24, 10 percent goes back to supporting local businesses through Dane Buy Local. Takeout safely or eat inside or outside, these eateries will be happy you did.
