Utah's Beehive Cheese Co. has made a name for itself with rubbed and flavored cheeses such as Barely Buzzed (coated with dried lavender and roasted coffee beans) and SeaHive (rubbed with honey and sea salt). But the base cheese, the starting point for all these embellished creations, is a cheddar-style called Promontory.
Beehive buys Jersey milk from a dairy in Ogden, just east of the Great Salt Lake. In keeping with the practices of artisan cheesemakers, Beehive does not standardize this milk, which can vary a lot from summer to winter.
In larger, more industrial dairies, cheesemakers want the milk to be the same year-round so they won't have to alter their recipe to make a consistent product. They might add powdered nonfat milk to boost the protein to some pre-determined percentage, or skim some of the cream if the milk is too high in fat.
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