Milklab is David Asher's educational endeavor. Milklab teaches its students about the nature of milk; and how it naturally transforms into its cheese. It is not a brick-and-mortar institution, but a traveling cheese school that offers cheese outreach around the world.
But, milklab is not just a place of learning; it is a cutting edge but also an ancestral approach to making cheese. Contemporary cheesemaking as is most often practiced is decidedly unnatural; David’s teachings provide a much needed alternative.
This new/old approach to cheesemaking is inspired by traditional practices, and based on the extraordinary biology and ecology of milk. David’s methods include cultivating natural starter cultures, growing the fungi that ripen cheeses, and working with animal rennet. This approach is liberating and empowering - it helps cheesemakers wean themselves off packaged powdered cultures, synthetic rennets and unnecessary chemicals, and help cheeses develop their best possible flavor. David Asher helps cheesemakers take back their cheese.
David Asher’s Cheesemaking Philosophies
David promotes the agricultural origins of cheesemaking; we therefore use animal-warm milk, from seasonally pastured, well-raised and healthy animals. We understand that some students will not have access to fresh milk, nevertheless, we encourage you to seek it out directly from the source. Fortunately, our methods work almost as well with pasteurized milk.
David practices natural fermentation in cheesemaking: we therefore keep all of the cultures that we need to make our cheese. We will not use packaged starter cultures from Danisco (a subsidiary of DuPont) because we do not believe that such corporate interference with our culture is well founded or even necessary. Milklab proves that the culture of cheese is in our hands.
David Asher promotes a biological cheesemaking; We therefore use calf rennet in the making of our cheeses. Alternatives to calf rennet are misleadingly labeled as vegetarian, when, in reality, there is no such thing as a vegetarian cheese. If you have concerns with the use of calf rennet, we will do our best to address those concerns in class, but will not make changes to our cheeses. David Asher is against the use of products of genetic modification technology, and will not use GM rennet in class.
David Asher speak of the importance of our culture in cheesemaking. We therefore look for inspiration from our ancestral foodways, using natural materials, like wood, clay, copper and reed, and recognize the influence of our beliefs and practices on our cheese. We believe what makes a cheese taste a certain way is the way that is made, and not where it is made. For every act of the cheesemaker changes a cheese. And the flavor of a cheese is more an expression of the hand than the land. Cheesemaking is a part of our universal cultural heritage, and no entity should be able to claim ownership over any cheesemaking style.