What's this? A blog about beer and the first post is about making cheese? Well... yes, yes it is. And why not? Beer and cheese share many things in common. First, they are both delicious. Both beer and cheese can be creamy or dry, dense or light, clean or funky, simple or complex. Both have traditions stretching back thousands of years. Egyptians used beer to preserve the nutritious value of their grain crops. They used cheese to preserve the nutritious value of their milk. The array of flavors created by subtle differences in procedure are incredible. With beer, for example, changing the temperature at which you mash grains by a mere 4 degrees makes a completely different beer. Cheese is the same. Small differences in time, pressure, or temperature cause dramatic changes in the character of the final cheese. Lastly, both are creations of microorganisms that humans have reined in to do our bidding. The basic outline of the two processes are very similar.
