August 8…. Who cut the cheese?

I was out here with my son’s Boy Scout troop back in 2013 for summer camp. At that time, we visited a small cheese factory in Tillamook Oregon. It was on my list to go visit again, so today was the day.

Oh My Goodness! It is no longer a small factory. The actual cheese factory looks much the same, but the overall factory complex has expanded ten fold.

There’s a huge milk processing facility now next door, and ice cream plant, and a big company headquarters building. The “little” visitor center has grown ENORMOUS, with a huge gift shop, cheese tasting area, and ice cream shop, with tables for people to relax after eating so much ice cream and cheese. (I don’t think ice cream was produced here, back the last time I came)

There’s a self-guided “tour” of the cheese factory, really just windows looking down on the factory floor and the workers, but with signs explaining what’s happening below as you look down.

On one side, they process thousands of gallons of milk in giant vats, turning it into curds and whey, then draining off the whey (to be dried and sold as whey powder) and running the curds through The CheddarMaster, where they get salted and colored, mixed and partially dried.

After passing the CheddarMaster, the curds get compressed into 40lb blocks and bagged up to be sent to the cooler, where they are aged for some secret amount of time.

On the other side, the large blocks come back and get de-bagged, cut up into uniform 2lb blocks, sealed and packaged in for shipping. Multiple quality control people are staged all along the line, weighing, checking packaging, watching the cutting operations, and just looking busy.

“Mostly” an automated process, there’s a ton of cheese flying all around the room, zipping along the conveyor belts from station to station.

Interesting fact, White Cheddar is the same as regular cheddar, but without the natural plant dyes added. Huh. The things you can learn in a cheese factory.