How to make Adyghe cheese

Not all residents of the country know where Adygea is located. But Adyghe cheese is known and loved even by geographers. And, of course, when I arrived in the republic, I just couldn't help but visit the cheese factory.

It all started on the market in Maykop. Having bought a couple of “pigtails” of cheese, I began to question the saleswomen where cheese is made in the republic.

- Many where, but most of all in the village of Dondukovskaya.

I went there, remembering that on the packaging of cheese I chekil, which I bought back in Moscow, and in fact there was a settlement with this name.

The village itself is no different from hundreds of others, and if you just pass by it, you will never guess that this village is the capital of the Adyghe cheese making. In a small market I decided to find out from local grandmothers where exactly the cheese factory is.

“They do it everywhere, my dear.” But who will tell you? The secret is this. You can search yourself for whose gates on the houses are richer.

Realizing that you can’t cook cheese with a grandmother, I turned to a man who drove up to the square on a GAZelle with cans.

- Well, yes, where they do a lot. But almost everyone is doing it illegally or just afraid of checks, the cheese business is here
"nightmare" sour. The only ones who stay afloat are large plants, there are only a few in the republic, and there is only one in this area, in the neighboring village of Giaginskaya.

But this plant cannot be reached, because everything is very strict and secret there. Production is divided into zones, and the worker of one zone does not even have the right to smoke to go to the neighboring one. These areas are almost fenced with barbed wire - that’s what a random comer named Alexey told me.

- Well, I see you have Moscow numbers, probably you're not from the police. Listen here, my brother is engaged in cheese, I can call and ask him. But remember, this is a long process, it takes a whole day. Are you ready to wait?

For the sake of cheese, I was ready for anything, so I exchanged phones with Alex and just in case decided to try
"break through" to the secret Adyghe cheese factory.

Twenty minutes later I was already in the village of Giaginskaya, and after an hour I was already filming the production of cheese. The agreement was simpler than simple: he came, told me who I was and why I needed to photograph their cheese, and the marketing staff was happy to give me a tour of the "secret" production.

In fact, all the secrets are hidden behind the door of this vat. Boiled pasteurized milk is curdled / sprinkled with some acid. There is no secret to this. And then placed in a colander to separate the curd mass from the whey.

Workshop employees are recruiting this substance in a colander.

It is still half liquid, but not enough to "leak" through the holes of the bucket.

Then the excess water is drained.

The cheese mass is sprinkled with salt.

And clean "dry" on special racks.

After a quarter of an hour, the cheese must be turned over and left on the shelves for another 15 minutes.

I was very pleased with these multi-colored buckets!

After the cheese has hardened and cooled, it goes to the packaging workshop, and the buckets go to the sink.

Here cheese heads are cut into four parts.

Manually laid out in packages.

A special machine removes air from the bags and seals them.

Labels are glued to bags with Adyghe cheese.

And then weighed and laid out in boxes. Everything, Adyghe cheese is ready to be sent to the store :)

I myself do not really like such cheese, it seems to me fresh. So I went to another workshop located next door.

It is called the Suluguni workshop, although they make here not only it, but all sorts of other smoked cheeses: chechil, pigtail. Many people also call these cheeses Adyghe, but in fact they are not so: the “real” Adyghe is what we saw in the previous room: round, unleavened, almost curd cheese.

But smoked cheese is just a dream! Let's see silently how it is made? :) The technology is similar to the production of the Adyghe, and the pictures are quite visual.