A mite-y cheese!

When Huw was 13 he went on a school trip to the French Alps. Along with the predictable souvenirs he purchased a slab of the local Beaufort cheese  made from the unpasteurized milk of mountain cows. During the maturation process its rind is enhanced with  a wash made of brine, whey* and the scrapings from previous cheeses, a rich mix which results in a powerful odour. When we collected Huw on his return from the  trip it was clear that the accompanying teachers hadn't much appreciated the presence of the ripening cheese during the long journey in a bus load of travel-stained teenagers.

This Christmas we are enjoying another piece of delicious Beaufort whose crumbly and redolent surface, as well as containing, it is said, at least 480 species of bacteria, harbours a million cheese mites. Here is an older Huw taking a picture of their presence as revealed by a digital microscope trained, not on the cheese, but just on some of its dust on the table. In the extra picture the bluey-white blobs are the mites and the yellowy fragments are particles of cheese rind, the whole image in constant motion as the mites try to manage their environment. 

Enjoy your festive cheese board and don't waste the rind!

(*What's more, none of the whey is not wasted but now used to produce  a biogas that powers the cheese factory so the energy expenditure involved in making Beaufort is nil.)