Lincolnshire Poacher Cheese

Lincolnshire Poacher Cheese. PDPhotos/ Pixabay.com / 2010 / CC0 1.0

Lincolnshire Poacher is a long-aged cheddar cheese whose taste combines sweetness with a touch of bitterness. It is pale yellow inside, with a brownish rind.

Website: https://lincolnshirepoachercheese.com/

Production

The cheese is made using raw milk from Holstein Cows.

The milking is done at 5 am each morning. The milk is piped straight from the milking room into the vat in the cheese factory, where it joins milk from the previous evening’ s milking.

The cheesemaking starts at 6 am. The milk is heated to 41 C (105 F). A starter culture containing lactococcus is added, along with rennet to curdle the milk. The curd is cut very small, then stirred for an hour until it’s even smaller, the size of a grain of rice. Then the vat is drained of whey, leaving the curd behind. The curd is cut again, then salt is mixed in by hand. The curd is milled again to cut the curd up finely. The curd is then packed into wheel moulds, with weights on them for 48 hours.

The cheese is then turned out of the moulds, and aged on wooden shelves for 12 to 24 months.

Each batch of Lincolnshire Poacher Cheese made requires 9,700 Imperial pints (5,512 litres) of milk, and yields ½ ton of cheese or 20 wheels. Each wheel ends up weighing around 20 ½ kg (45 pounds).

Nutrition

45% fat content.

History Notes

Lincolnshire Poacher is made by brothers Simon and Tim Jones at Ulceby Grange farm, near Alford, which has been in his family since 1917. The farm is about 16 km (10 miles) from the sea, in Lincolnshire.

Dairy production on the farm began in the 1970s with Simon’s father, Richard; cheesemaking started in 1992. ^[1]Lincolnshire Poacher cheese history. Accessed April 2022 at https://lincolnshirepoachercheese.com/about-us/history/

Lincolnshire Poacher was created on 17th February 1992 by Simon and his wife Jeanette, with advice from a Welsh cheesemaker, Dougal Campbell.

The cheese won the top award in the 1996 British Cheese Awards. ^[2]”A cheese called Lincolnshire Poacher made by county firm F. W. Read & Sons, yesterday snatched the supreme champion title from 450 other competitors in the British Cheese Awards.” — Top Cheese. Dundee, Scotland: The Dundee Courier. Saturday, 28th September 1996. Page 10, col. 7.

Lincolnshire Poacher was awarded the Best British Cheese award at the 2001 World Cheese Awards.

His brother Tim took over sales and marketing in 2000.

As of 2020, the cheese company employed 24 people:

“Tim Jones, a dairy farmer of 28 years, makes Lincolnshire Poacher, a hard mature cheese with milk from his 230 cows. He employs 16 full-time and eight part-time staff. “We grow the crops which feed the cows,” he explains over the phone. “This morning’s milk is turned into cheese.”” ^[3]Russell, Polly. Covid-19 and the battle to save Britain’s farmhouse cheeses. London, England: Financial Times Magazine. 1 August 2020. Accessed April 2022 at https://www.ft.com/content/32f8475e-da43-4f50-ad36-0078c3bb463c

The company also regularly sells at farmer markets in the local area.

Sources

Cohu, Will. Take 9,700 pints of milk, add bacteria and wait. London: Daily Telegraph. 5 October 2003.

Harrison-Barker, Sarah. Simon & Tim Jones: Like chalk and cheese. Lincoln, England: CityX Magazine. 8 May 2015. Accessed April 2022 at https://cityx.co.uk/2015/05/simon-tim-jones-like-chalk-cheese/

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