Cheesemaking

Cheesemaking was a flourishing industry on Coll in the later nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries. Some sixty tons were exported annually, with a few select portions being sent as far as the House of Commons, to be savoured, probably, by many who had never set foot north of the Border, much less ventured to the wild Hebrides. The Breacachadh cheese factory, run by General Stewart the then Laird, was closed in the 1930s, but cheese was still produced for home consumption on the island's dairy farms. In the late 1880s, a Mr Donald MacLean of Arileod Farm often won prizes at the Annual Show for his cheesemaking and it is therefore specially appropriate that the following description of how to make Coll cheese comes from 'Flora Arileod': -

The evening's milk, which must be pure and sweet, is strained into the vat and, if the weather is hot, it is cooled down to 64°F. In the morning the cream is skimmed off and heated to 90° by placing the cream can in hot water, then the cream and morning's milk are strained into the vat together. To test the milk for ripeness, take four ounces at renneting temperature and add a drachm of Hansen's extract of rennet. If milk coagulates sufficiently to catch on the finger in 20-24 seconds, it's ready for adding the rennet. 2½ ounces of rennet is used for a hundred gallons which should be left for 45 to 60 minutes, then stirred for ten minutes to prevent the cream from rising, and covered.

When the curd breaks clean on the finger and a little green whey gathers in the break the curd is ready to cut. First cut with the vertical knife, then with the horizontal, both lengthwise and crosswise, and very gently to prevent loss of fat. Curd then settles for ten minutes. The curd is then scalded in a double-jacketed vat by raising heat to 90°, stirring fifteen minutes, then to 95°, repeating stirring, then to 100° till the curd becomes shotty, and sinks quickly. If the curd, when tested with an iron heated to black heat, stretches a quarter inch from the iron the whey is then drawn off (and can be fed to the pigs).

The curd is cut in squares on the bottom of the vat and then piled in a square block, covered with a cloth and left for ten minutes. It is then cut into bricks and put in curd cooler, covered, weighted down, left for twenty minutes. Then follows a continuing process of turning, covering, weighting until the curd presents a rich, dry, solid appearance, is distinctly acid to taste and smell and stretches 1½ inches from a hot iron. It's then put through a curd mill, weighed and salted - a pound of finest dairy salt to fifty pounds of curd. Keeping the temperature below 80°, stir in the cooler till ready to fill chissets and put in cheese press.

Be careful not to put too much pressure on at first - up to 1O cwt. in first two hours-as too much causes loss of fat. Leave overnight 14 and next morning immerse the cheese in water of 120° for one minute when turning, put on fresh cloth and give 1O cwt pressure for first two hours, then 15 cwt till the following day. On the third day, grease and cap the cheese at one end and apply one ton pressure, and on the fourth day the cheese should be neatly bandaged and put in curing-room where the temperature should be 65°-70°. The cheese should then be turned daily for six weeks and every other day for another twelve weeks...

At the end of which time they had a large block of some of the best cheese in the Hebrides, 'with a real bite to it'. And so it should have had, and how they deserved it - after all that!