Deer Creek Cheese | 3 Sheeps Brewing – Transcript

– Luke: This week on Wisconsin Foodie:

[upbeat jazz music]

– Chris: Hey, Kerry.

– Kerry: Good Morning, Chris.

– How you doin’, good morning to you. I heard if I got here early, I got free tequila.

– Kerry: Yes.

– I never really thought about blending tequila with some habaneros.

– Chris: It gets pretty sharp in there. You know, you see Kerry with a gas mask on. That’s tough. This is a Cheddar Firecracker. And on the end, there’s almost like a secondary sweet that’s there.

– Yeah.

– And that’s where if you get a really nice imperial IPA with honey. Killer.

– James: That’s what I love about these pairings, is that the food and the beer just change.

– Is there any way we can…

– We will be sampling a barrel.

– Really?

– You bet!

– Yeah, when people come on our tours, they all end with sampling from the barrel, because it’s a different experience than having a finished tap.

– Announcer: Wisconsin Foodie would like to thank the following underwriters.

– Introducing Organic Valley Ultra. Milk with more protein, half the sugar, and no toxic pesticides. Let’s be honest, none of that healthy stuff really matters unless our kids will drink it.

[dramatic music, mom whispers “C’mon”]

[girl gulping]

[cow moos]

– Yeah, I would drink that.

[mom gasps]

– You hear that? She would drink that!

[cheering, triumphant music]

– Parents are weird.

– More protein, half the sugar. Organic Valley Ultra.

– The dairy farmers of Wisconsin are proud to underwrite Wisconsin Foodie, and remind you that, in Wisconsin, we dream in cheese.

[crowd cheering]

Just look for our badge. It’s on everything we make.

Employee-owned New Glarus Brewing Company has been brewing and bottling beer for their friends, only in Wisconsin, since 1993. Just a short drive from Madison, come visit Swissconsin and see where your beer’s made.

– Wisconsin’s great outdoors has something for everyone. Come for the adventure, stay for the memories. Go wild in Wisconsin. To build your adventure, visit dnr.wi.gov.

– From production to processing, right down to our plates, there are over 15,000 employers in Wisconsin with career opportunities to fulfill your dreams and feed the world. Hungry for more? Shape your career with these companies and others at fabwisconsin.com.

– Specialty crop craft beverages use fruit grown on Wisconsin orchards and vineyards to create award-winning ciders and wines. Wisconsin’s cold climate creates characteristics and complexities that make this craft beverage unique to our state.

– Society Insurance.

Freshwater Family Farms.

Also, with the support of the Friends of PBS Wisconsin.

[upbeat music]

– We are a collection of the finest farmers, food producers, and chefs on the planet. We are a merging of cultures and ideas, shaped by this land.

[sizzling]

We are a gathering of the waters, and together, we shape a new identity to carry us into the future.

[glasses clink]

We are storytellers. We are Wisconsin Foodie.

[paper tearing]

[upbeat acoustic guitar music]

– Well, if people came to Henning’s Cheese, the first thing that you’re gonna do is come into our retail store. We have a variety of cheeses we make and cheeses from other cheese companies from around Wisconsin. And then as you come through the store, we have this museum and you can see cheese-making items that were used maybe just 40, 50 years ago.

– My grandpa started making cheese back in 1912, working for a gentleman right down the road from here. A couple years later, he became the sole cheese maker, and now we have four generations in the cheese business.

We sell a lot of our cheese in Wisconsin. We’re in almost all the grocery stores in Eastern Wisconsin. We also sell around the country, but only to say, like, the upscale stores, we would call ’em. We really enjoy working with customers that appreciate good cheese. And if somehow we can enhance the experience for our customers, we’re always open to try something new.

– Hey, Kerry.

– Good morning, Chris.

– How you doin’, good morning to you, I heard if I got here early, I got free tequila.

– Yes.

[chuckles]

– Kerry: We’re ready to make the Rattlesnake.

– Chris: Super.

– Kerry: Let’s go pour some tequila.

– Chris: Sounds good.

– So, I’m Chris Gentine. I own a company called The Artisan Cheese Exchange, and we do a brand that’s called Deer Creek, and Deer Creek is really something that my wife and I created, and we work a lot with Kerry, who’s a fantastic cheese maker. We hatch a plan, make some cheese, and so, that’s part of the Rattlesnake. Today was kind of an evolution of some cheese we’re doing with much more aggressive peppers.

– So, Chris, we have to pour the tequila into this plastic bucket because we’re not allowed to take glass out into the plant.

– Chris: Okay.

– When I first heard of the Rattlesnake concept, I was like, “Wow, this is gonna be kinda, “this is different.” I never really thought about blending tequila with some habaneros. You know, and traditionally, the first flavored cheeses I remember making were, like, caraway cheese. We make cheddar caraway and Colby caraway. Those are kinda the extent of things for the first 85 years here at Henning’s Cheese. And so it’s just been a progression with the flavors over the last ten years.

– You mind if I pour the second one?

– Kerry: Help yourself.

– All right.

So, I always like to tell people that I’m not a licensed cheese maker. You have to remember that Wisconsin’s the only state that does licensed cheese makers. I didn’t start on that side of it. I started more on the cutting and wrapping side of the business.

Did you get a ladle?

[both chuckle]

I’m ready.

– Well, let’s take a look at the window to see how far along we are, Chris. As you can see, we’ll be cheddaring the cheese a few more times, yet. So that’ll take another 20 minutes, a half an hour before we’re ready to mill the curd. And once we mill the curds into cheese curds, we’ll be adding salt. And then at that point, we’re gonna be adding the tequila.

– Chris: Throw the peppers in.

– Kerry: Absolutely. Cannot forget about those peppers.

– Sounds good.

It gets pretty sharp in there, you know, you see Kerry with a gas mask on. That’s tough. Your lungs kinda tighten up a little bit. And you’re getting that pepper essences coming through, and then in the back of your throat, you can feel that burn starting just a little bit. And then when they start splashing the tequila on, and you get that aroma. And a lotta times, you’ll notice in this cheese, it gets a little mangoey note to it. And that subtle sweetness that comes outta there from the butteriness in the curds and what they’re doin’. It’s pretty cool.

When the cheese is really young, you’re still gonna get more compartmentalized flavors. What we’ve crafted this cheese to do, at about 60 days, I think you really get that where the cheese’s kinda become what it wants to be. In the flavor experience, you get that sweet of the tequila, you get a round cheddar cheese note, then the heat. We try to craft everything with Kerry so they can be something that you can just cut and enjoy. But we also want things that are gonna be great as an ingredient. When we do a real simple corn dip with it, Santa Fe Snakebite Chili, we’ve done a beer cheddar soup with it that’s really puts a twist on it, but in February, it’s what you want.

When we started to do the wheels, I wanted them to really be different. And then, my daughter does all of our art, so when she drew the label, I was thinking she’s just gonna draw a snake, and then she drew the skull with the snake hanging over the top of it. And she said, “It’s simple, you make me eat the cheese “before I draw the label so I get some inspiration. “That’s what that cheese does to your face.”

So now that we’ve got the blocks in the presses, they’ll sit there for a bit of time, and then they’ll go from here to one of our, one of our aging facilities, just so the cheese can become what it wants.

[gentle acoustic guitar music]

– This building behind me is Glacier Transit and Storage, located just outside of Plymouth, Wisconsin. We’ve all driven by on the Wisconsin county roads and seen buildings like this. And you don’t really know what’s inside. We’re gonna meet with founder and owner of Deer Creek Cheese, Chris Gentine. We’re gonna grade some cheddar and learn a little bit about the Wisconsin cheese culture that makes us so unique and different.

– Chris: How you doin’, Luke?

– Luke: Good, how are you, Chris?

– Good, man, good to see ya.

– Thanks, man.

– I appreciate you coming out. What we’ve go going on here is basically it’s long-hold cheese facility. And we are actually looking at bringing some of the Deer Creek cheeses over here. They’re doing some things that line up really well with our 1% for the Planet initiatives and what we’re looking at doing for sustainability. But that whole story isn’t here. It’s on the roof.

– Luke: Okay.

– And I got Kyle, who’s the president, waitin’ up there to tell you that story. I’m going in there, we’ll get some cheese set up. We’ll do a little grading.

– This is all cheese. It’s kinda like being in a canyon of Wisconsin’s arguably finest export. Look at this! It just goes on and on.

– Chris: We chose to become a 1% for the Planet company. We’re giving 1% of our total sales on Deer Creek to philanthropic organizations around the state of Wisconsin that support water, land, or air efforts. And we just have to all do our little piece so, 1% doesn’t seem like too much to ask.

– Hey, you must be Kyle.

– Hey, yeah, glad you found me, I was just suntanning. Beautiful Wisconsin day.

[Luke laughs]

– It is, it’s gorgeous. And that was quite the hike through there, man. That’s impressive.

– Absolutely.

– How many pounds of cheese did I walk past?

– Oh, I’m sure you probably, over about 60 million pounds.

– [Luke laughs] That’s crazy.

– Kyle: Yeah.

– Luke: I’m actually even more impressed by the fact that you guys have a solar field up here.

– Kyle: Yeah, we actually have 2,800 panels on the roof. We just found it a really cool thing that not a lot of people are doing and, as you can imagine, with the rise in summer temperatures, the demand for cooling increases.

– Luke: How much energy does this actually produce?

– 1/3 of the total electric need at this facility is powered by the solar, and in the last two-and-a-half years alone, we’ve powered enough electricity to drive 79 million miles in an electric car, and power almost 180 households of four people. We actually tie into our local municipality as well, so when we’re overproducing, we’re back-feeding into the grid and helping power our city.

– There was a comment made somewhere that Plymouth actually has more pounds of cheese pass through the center of town than any other place on the planet.

– Kyle: Yup, absolutely. Plymouth has been named the cheese capital of the world.

– Luke: This is definitely, like a glimpse into Plymouth’s future, maybe.

– Absolutely, yeah.

– Sustainable, all-encapsulated, and you guys are doing the right thing for the right reasons.

– Kyle: Yup, this is the future.

– Man, that was impressive.

– Isn’t it cool?

– Yeah.

– They’re doing good stuff, doing good stuff.

– Luke: What have we got?

– Chris: We’re gonna grade a one-year, a five-year, and a seven-year; traditional, true cheddars. So when we’re grading, you know, we’ve worked with plants to help them work through manufacturing issues they may be having. We help you hone a cheese and improve the quality of the cheese. As cheese has changed and how we make cheese has changed, and you wanna make sure that it’s still the way that it should be, and that’s really what grading is. Which is why, as a state, Wisconsin has won more awards than any other country, and I think all the other states combined. And there are about 100 of us out there. 100, maybe 120 of us. You know, that’s a great story.

– Luke: We police ourselves, basically.

– We kinda do, yeah, we kinda do. ‘Cause it’s not a marketing program, it’s not.

– It’s a standard.

– It’s a standard. But, you know, the taste is really where the grading comes in. So what we’re looking for here is cheddar flavor. That’s the target, right? And then, in the beginning, we’ve got the, we go around this beefy, brothy umami, and then we get a nice finish. And there’s characteristics that I think are important on either side of the cheddar flavor. We always have acid over here.

– Okay.

– The other side, we always have some factor of bitter. And, I don’t want the bitter on this side, don’t want the acid on that side. I don’t want it to move around. And there’s a line here that I like to call the bitter basements, right?

– Nice place to visit,

– Sure.

– Both: Don’t wanna live there.

– Okay?

– That’s awesome.

– So, we’re gonna unplug this one. Use a trier, this is what we use. I’m gonna bust a little bit off. I’m gonna give you a little bit. But we’ll try it and we’ll see what we think. Acid comes in, really no bitter.

– There’s progression in it, for sure.

– But the core ball of cheese.

– Right. The cheddar flavor is right in the center, and then it washes away.

– Mm-hmm. Now, we’re gonna go for the five-year. So when we do the five-year, I want it to hit in the bitter basements and stand on that bitter note. Five-year, the acid’s gonna run up a lot quicker. I’m gonna get that, bitter’s gonna be a longer stroke down into the bitter.

– As I breathe…

– Yeah.

– …as I bring air in, into my palate, that’s where that bitterness starts to kinda creep in there too. And it is, it’s clean.

– It’s kinda crazy how it goes.

– Oh, it’s delicious.

– All right, so now we’re gonna do seven-year. This is a cheddar firecracker. That’s gonna go.

– Right.

– On the bitter side, we’re gonna go into the bitter basements, but it’s a little bit different because what we get, the deeper we get into this, is we’re gonna start gettin’ some citrus notes. Great IPA cheese.

– Right.

– I mean, if you like that hoppiness, and the cool part about it is, is when you’re doin’ that, is when you get that bitter on the cheese and that bitter hoppiness, that grapefruit note on the IPA, those two things cancel each other out. Bitter comes on quicker, and deeper,

– Yep. but that’s where you get that hoppiness, right? Coming in.

– That’s so crazy.

– Yup. And on the end, there’s almost like a secondary sweet that’s there, and that’s where if you get a really nice imperial IPA with honey. Killer.

– Yeah.

– Killer with this cheese.

– I’m telling you, this, is incredible. This is literally the best day of work I’ve had in a long time.

– Chris: I’m glad.

[both laughing]

– Luke: After tasting all of this incredible cheese, I’m parched. Let’s make our way across town to meet up with Grant and James, owners of 3 Sheeps Brewing Company.

[jazzy bass music]

– Grant: Hey, Luke.

– What’s up, Grant?

– Both: How ya doin’?

– Doin’ well, thanks for coming in and checking out the place today.

– I’m excited to see what you got going on here.

– Yeah, today’s a great one, so we got a little bit of everything. We’re bottling, we’re brewing, we’re centrifuging. So you’ll get to see just about everything we do.

– Luke: Is there any point in the tour where we’re gonna be drinking beer?

– Grant: Of course, it’s a brewery, right? Okay, let’s go check out the brewhouse.

– All right.

– So our brewery is kinda separated into two sections. This half is all brewing and fermentation. All of this equipment is made in Wisconsin from Springfield Corporation. So it’s nice to be able to get this stuff locally. Next to us is our brew house. We run a three vessel system. Everything that we make comes through these three tanks. The first one is our mash lauter tun. This guy is where we mix the grain with hot water. And, you know, grains come in all different forms and they range from light to dark, caramelly to chocolate, and everything in between. Thankfully, Briess Malting, in Chilton, Wisconsin is one of the best specialty malt producers in the world. And they’re about 45 minutes away from our brewery. So, again, we’re really fortunate to be in this state that has so much great history of beer making. People wanna drink local. It’s really nice that we can do the exact same thing and buy local ourselves. So it just keeps it in Wisconsin.

– That’s a great story. I love that, I love that. So all the different varieties of beer start in this tank.

– They do, everything starts in this tank, then we send it to the kettle. So, hops being a very important part of beer, they go into the kettle, but anything you can make a tea out of, you can use in your kettle. So we’ll add coffee, we’ll add honey, molasses. Pretty much, if you can get flavor out of it, you can add it to the kettle for a really safe way to add stuff. And our third vessel is just our whirlpool. It just, it recirculates in there and just takes the good liquid and then it goes over to the fermentor. So one of the things we love doing at 3 Sheeps is dry hopping. Dry hopping is where, after fermentation is done, you add hops. There’s a big six-inch opening at the top. Just dump the hops in, naturally, and close it up. In a few days, we’ll have a really juicy beer. So after the beer’s done fermenting, all of it goes through our centrifuge. It whips the liquid around very quickly. Anything that’s in there, yeast, hops, things like that, they come out, and we’re able to control the turbidity, which is the clarity of the beer, down to the hundredth.

– Where do we go next after the centrifuge?

– Let’s go check out packaging.

– Cool.

[jazzy bass music]

– Our bottling line starts with putting a label on. We have a big ionized air rinser, so it clears out the inside. We used to use water, but the new tech is air. It’s more, more environmental. And then it goes to our filler. And we still hand put every bottle into a case. We’re still a very manual company overall. Most of us really don’t have gym memberships still.

– Bend and stoop [laughing].

– Exactly. It’s nice because our crew gets to do a little of everything. The bottling guys do canning, the canning guys work kegging. Everyone rotates in the brewhouse. I think we all just really appreciate what we do nowadays. We really don’t wanna go back to our old day jobs, so we’re motivated to get it done. When we started the brewery seven years ago, we tried to figure out, do we wanna can or do we wanna bottle? At that point, we couldn’t do both. Now we can do both. When we were only bottles, it kinda limited where people could drink 3 Sheeps. So that’s when we started investigating a canning line. You can see the footprint difference between our canning line and our bottling line. Part of that is because cans are already printed. So we don’t need the labeler. There’s so many good reasons that cans should be a primary format for beer. You know, lighter weight, so transportation’s cheaper, aluminum is 100% recyclable.

– It seems like it’s the right direction and it’s a smart direction.

– Yeah, we enjoy it. All right, we got a little treat for ya. Let’s head over to our barrel area.

– Fantastic.

– Well, welcome to our barrel aging area.

– Whoa, this is awesome.

– We do two main barrel-aged beers right now. We have Veneration and we also have the Wolf. The Wolf is our big, kinda pinnacle, imperial stout. No adjuncts, just, it’s all about malt and Belgian candy sugars and in a big bourbon barrel. Then we just have a lot of, kind of, fun onesie twosies. I love white wine, we use a lot of chardonnay barrels, especially from California area where you can get a good buttery chardonnay. It comes through really nicely in any Belgian style of beer. Red wine, we’ve gone through tequila, scotch. We have some beer that we’re just trying to see, you know, how long can you age beer and still have it be nice? So, part of our process is sampling.

– Is there any way we can–

– We will be sampling a barrel.

– Really?

– You bet, yeah, when people come on our tours, they all end with sampling from the barrel because it’s a different experience than having a finished tap. All right, so here’s our barrel of Veneration. Veneration is a Belgian quad, aged with figs and molasses. And this one has now been aging in a rye whiskey barrel for about eight months.

– Luke: Wait, hold on, you’re gonna pull a nail out.

– Right, anytime we pull from the top, we’re breaking that layer of CO2 that’s in there. So we’re just infusing more oxygen, and it’s gonna have the beer go bad sooner. So this is a nice way for us to be able to pull from the barrel frequently and still keep the quality high.

– Luke: [laughing] Yeah, I love it. This is modern ingenuity, right here.

– Grant: There you are.

– Cheers to you.

– Cheers.

– There, there’s complexity to it, there’s sweetness. You know, with that molasses, I get that kinda dark fruit a little bit. Like a little bit of dark fruit. This Belgian quad is delicious.

– Ah, thanks. This is a 12% beer. People these days are drinking these beers, you know, like wine. So we moved most of our product to 12-ounce bottles. So you can do so as just more of a regular part of what you’re drinking and not have to save it for a special occasion.

– Well, it’s a good option. It’s a smart option. Everything that I’ve walked through here and seen today, and even tasted, it’s so intelligent.

– Grant: Well, thank you.

– Luke: Yeah, cheers to that.

– All right, so we just finished seeing how the beer is made. How about you and James try some of the beers?

– Hey, Luke, how’s it going, man?

– Good, James, nice to meet you.

– Nice to meet you too. Thanks for coming through.

– All right, so we got three beers here for you to try, starting with Fresh Coast, which is one of our year-round beers. It’s a juicy pale ale. A lot of late addition hops in this beer, so there’s really not much bitterness to it. Really citrusy. We add lots of hops late in the process, so that gives off a really, really nice, really powerful aroma.

– I smell tons of grapefruit.

– Yeah, and then just, you know, just go for it.

– That’s good.

– Mmm.

– So, like, I get a, I get that grapefruit sensation. I don’t get a ton of bitterness. This is something that you could literally sip on for, for all day.

– Yeah, so next up, we have Paid Time Off.

This is an imperial stout. And then we added to this beer coconut, walnuts, and cocoa nibs.

– The fact that like you hit it and you get that kinda coffee note first, it goes into that, the nibs, the cocoa nibs, and that coconut. I caught the walnut almost at the end. Like as the beer lingered a little bit longer on my palate. It’s delicious.

– Last, but not least. This one is Cashmere Hammer. It’s a nitro stout. We’re one of the few breweries in the country that actually packages nitro beer in bottles. Nice coffee, roasty, chocolatey notes. There’s a lot of rye malt in this beer too, so you probably pick up a little rye spiciness. It’s a very robust beer, full of flavor, but that nitro bubble just kinda mellows it out a little bit, so it’s super drinkable.

– Luke: Oh, that’s silky.

– James: Trying beer like this is great. This is a nice way to kinda come in here. We have 20 beers on draft, so you can’t really have full pints or full pours of all those, and hopefully you’ll find one or multiple that you’ll want to actually have a full pour of. And take some home and do the same there, so.

– So, tell me a little bit about this board back here.

– It’s our Buy a Beer for a Bud board. Essentially, you can buy a beer for your friend that’s not here, and then when that friend comes in, they can redeem the beer off the board and get a free beer.

– Luke: We’re on this board, right?

– James: You are. I think number 41, right there, your friends at Deer Creek bought you a beer. Yeah, let’s go redeem your beer. We’ll drink some beer and eat some cheese.

– That sounds great. So what we have here. This is a specialty cheddar. And he was saying that this pairs perfectly with, what are we drinking here?

– First Kiss. This is our, another year-round beer. It’s a double IPA brewed with some local wildflower honey.

– Luke: If it’s okay with you, I’m gonna try the cheese first, and then go into the beer. Is that all right?

– James: That’ll play. So good.

– Acidity, cheddar, bitter. You taste it?

– That’s amazing.

– Right?

– Yeah.

– Let’s try the beer now.

– Yeah, that bitterness just kinda plays off each other. And kinda cancels each other out.

– I know, and that was kind of his theory when we were talking about it. Those bitternesses kinda cancel each other out. And you get a lot more nuance out of both.

– That’s what I love about these pairings is that the food and the beer just change dramatically when you try them together. That’s why I love doing beer dinners. I love doing any pairings of any sorts with our beer.

– Luke: Yeah.

– James: It’s so cool, and a local company. That’s all the better.

– Yeah, I love that too, when you’re working with this much love and care and craftsmanship as goes into these products. So, cheers.

– Cheers.

[glasses clinking]

[bluesy guitar music]

– So what we got here is actually the whey with pepper juice and tequila in it. So we got a little bit of salt, we got a little pepper, we got a little tequila. So maybe we’ll just call it rattlesnake venom, and now we’re taking waste product that we’d be dumping down the drain, but people would like this ’cause there’s a lot of tequila in it. This might be like an emergency thing you could put into the trunk of your car for Wisconsin winters. Stuck in the Snow Drift, we could call it. Ooh hoo, who knows?

– Announcer: Wisconsin Foodie would like to thank the following underwriters.

– Introducing Organic Valley Ultra. Milk with more protein, half the sugar, and no toxic pesticides.

– Let’s be honest, none of that healthy stuff really matters unless our kids will drink it.

[dramatic music, mom whispers “C’mon”]

[girl gulping]

[cow moos]

– Yeah, I would drink that.

[mom gasps]

– You hear that? She would drink that!

[triumphant music, crowd cheering]

– Parents are weird.

– More protein, half the sugar. Organic Valley Ultra.

– The dairy farmers of Wisconsin are proud to underwrite Wisconsin Foodie, and remind you that in Wisconsin, we dream in cheese.

[crowd cheering]

Just look for our badge. It’s on everything we make.

Employee-owned New Glarus Brewing Company has been brewing and bottling beer for their friends, only in Wisconsin, since 1993. Just a short drive from Madison, come visit Swissconsin, and see where your beer’s made.

– Wisconsin’s great outdoors has something for everyone. Come for the adventure, stay for the memories. Go wild in Wisconsin. To build your adventure, visit dnr.wi.gov.

– From production to processing, right down to our plates, there are over 15,000 employers in Wisconsin with career opportunities to fulfill your dreams and feed the world. Hungry for more? Shape your career with these companies and others at fabwisconsin.com.

– Specialty crop craft beverages use fruit grown on Wisconsin orchards and vineyards to create award-winning ciders and wines. Wisconsin’s cold climate creates characteristics and complexities that make this craft beverage unique to our state.

– Society Insurance.

Freshwater Family Farms.

1. Henry & Sons Bourbon.

Something Special from Wisconsin.

Marcus Hotels and Resorts.

Central Wisconsin Craft Collective.

91.7 WMSE.

Edible Milwaukee magazine.

Also, with the support of the Friends of PBS Wisconsin.

For more information about upcoming Wisconsin Foodie special events and dinners, please go to wisconsinfoodie.com.

Still hungry for more? Get connected on Facebook and Instagram, and also make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel, where you’ll find past episodes and special segments.

[gentle acoustic music]