How Brie de Meaux is made in France

• Ferme des 30 Arpents is one of seven farms making raw-milk Brie de Meaux cheese.

• It is the only one that makes it fermier, which means that the cheese is made by hand solely with milk produced by the 250 cows at the farm.
• Every day, Ferme des 30 Arpents will make about 300 wheels of Brie de Meaux from its herd's milk.

Editor's note: This footage was filmed on February 14, 2020. At present, Ferme des 30 Arpents has implemented preventive measures to ensure everyone's safety and has adopted the health regulations in force for its production of farmhouse cheeses.

Following is a transcript of the video.

Claudia Romeo: We're in Seine-et-Marne, in France, in the birthplace of Brie. And, actually, we're not far from Paris. We're at, like, 12 kilometers from Disneyland Paris, but here it's another type of theme park. We are at the Ferme des 30 Arpents, which is one of the seven farms making Brie de Meaux, and the only one that makes it fermier, which means from the farm, which means that the cows are milked here and the cheese is just made 100 meters from here. What is the breed of the cow?

Didier Buet: It's the Prim'Holstein breed, which is the ultimate dairy breed. They also talk a lot; they express themselves.

Claudia: The farm has 250 cows in total. After milk is collected, it is stored in these vats for 18 hours and some part of its cream is taken out while some natural ferments are added. These include penicillium and Geotrichum, which make up Brie de Meaux's signature texture and flavor. But more on that later. One day after being collected, milk is moved to another room, where it will be split into curds. This is done thanks to the addition of rennet, which takes about one hour to solidify the milk.

Didier: The milk is hard. Look, there. It gained body.

Claudia: In this other room, it was so hot that our camera steamed up and we had to wait a bit to resume filming. Is there too much smoke?

Didier: We need to wait a bit. And there, yes, it's complicated. It takes a bit of time.

Claudia: What is the temperature here?

Didier: 30 degrees. So, you're going to see. Molding is something physical. It takes two hours. There are four or five people who do the molding. You do this for two hours, you're going to see —

Claudia: It's not that easy.

Didier: It's tiring.

Claudia: Can you explain to me what you're about to do?

Martial Médard: So, here, I take the curd, and I place it slowly in the mold. I'm going to twist gradually. I twist in the basin, and I twist in the mold. I lay my scoops of mold very slowly. I twist, and here I twist.

Claudia: What tool are you using?

Martial: This is a stainless steel shovel, a Brie de Meaux shovel.

Claudia: So this is specific to Brie?

Martial: It's specific, yes. It's the traditional method.

Claudia: Is it important for you to mold by hand?

Martial: Yes, because we have to lay — actually, these shovels are pretty regular. Not too big, not too thin, and perfect to lay the curd slowly. You don't have to throw the curd. Because otherwise the cubes of curd would collapse, and this is not good for the cheese. It won't make a good product.

Claudia: How much curd do you put in the basin here?

Martial: We're going to put… We have 70 liters of milk. We're going to share them in three molds.

Claudia: So one basin makes three Brie de Meaux.

Didier: Every day we work three days of milk. We prepare the milk for tomorrow, we mold today's milk, and we unmold yesterday's milk.

Claudia: Why is it important to keep the milk raw?

Didier: Heating up the milk can destroy some particularities of milk: some elements of taste, texture. And so people usually consider that all raw-milk cheeses are more tasty, more fermier. So all the Brie de Meaux are made with raw milk.

Claudia: The mold is made of three layers, which are removed gradually as the cheese loses its liquid. From 25 liters of liquid, it's going to get smaller and smaller up until 5 liters. This is going to take three hours. And at the end of the whole making process, the weight of the cheese is going to be 3 kilos.

Martial: These cheeses have been molded this morning around a quarter to 7. We started this morning. So, now it's a quarter to 11, so it's been three hours, three hours and a half, to get to one mold.

Claudia: The first one. And it keeps losing liquid, actually.

Martial: Yes, until tomorrow.

Claudia: On their first day, cheeses in molds are turned three times with the help of a steel plate to make sure they hold their shape. They are then piled up on top of each other.

Claudia: So, here you find the same pattern as the wood?

Martial: This is rush, not wood. We use rush; it's a very ancient method. The rush is cleaned, disinfected, sterilized every day, we change it every day. This allows us to keep the mold and the curd steady, with the plate at the bottom, so it doesn't slip too much. It doesn't move a lot; it stays stable. Otherwise, with plastic, it would be slippery.

Claudia: And this also allows you to let some liquid through?

Martial: Yes, this absorbs. It goes inside. Here it absorbed well. Look, it flows.

Claudia: Oh, wow. The cheeses stay in the molds for 24 hours to make sure they drain all their liquid. In total, the farm will make about 300 wheels of Brie de Meaux, ladled from 100 basins. The day after, the cheeses are removed from molds and salted.

Didier: This is yesterday's Brie de Meaux. So the other one tomorrow at this time will be like this.

Claudia: Oh, wow.

Didier: Here we have put some salt on top. If you touch at the top, you can feel the salt. Come on, put your finger there. You can feel there's a little bit of some salt on top.

Claudia: Oh, yes, it's true. I have some salt crystals. No, it doesn't smell like anything.

Didier: They're going to spend one day here. And now it's about 18 degrees. We are in the downward phase of the temperature.

Claudia: Yes, I can feel it. In the other room it was about 30 degrees. Here it's 18, so it is much more pleasant.

Didier: Salting helps end the draining [of the cheese], actually. We place them inclined so the serum runs along the grates and falls on the side, so that the first one doesn't drain on the following one. Otherwise, the one at the bottom would be completely soaked.

Didier: If we were to eat it, it would not taste good.

Claudia: We have to wait.

Didier: We have to start the maturation process. So, it spends a day here. You're going to see, in the next room, smell is important.

Didier: Here.

Claudia: Wow, yeah, it smells very differently. It's strong. It's tangy.

Didier: Yeah. We can smell nuts and apples.

Claudia: It's true, it smells like apples. Cheese wheels are then moved to another room, where they stay for five to seven days, within which they're going to be turned three times to avoid collapsing. Here, they start to get whiter, and it's where we start to see the first effects of the ferments added to the milk at the beginning.

Claudia: This cheese — how many weeks old is it?Didier: This cheese is four weeks old today. For Brie de Meaux, the minimum maturation time is four weeks to claim it to be a Brie de Meaux. We take our time here. So here we have an average maturation time of seven or eight weeks. Here, we can see on this cheese. The penicillium is this white felting that we can see here. And here Geotrichum is growing, which is another ferment. We can see they're working because the cheese is maturing and it gets creamier.

Claudia: So they have to be added together? The two ferments? Geotrichum and penicillium?

Didier: Each is going to work their part. The penicillium more at the beginning, and then the Geotrichum. And it's them that make sure the cheese is mature. Here, 8 degrees.

Claudia: Cold. [laughs] It is cold. This is the last room of the maturation process. And it is another cold one! It's 8 degrees here?

Didier: Here, it's 6.

Claudia: Oh, I'm dead. It's 6 degrees in this room. So cold. There are different seasons.

Didier: It's true.

Claudia: Here, it's winter.

Didier: It is important for a cheese to start high in temperature and go down slowly. Normally we never go lower [than 6 degrees], because then it's a fridge and the cheese doesn't evolve anymore. So, here we have a cheese that is ready to be sold, that is well refined.

Claudia: Can I touch?

Didier: Of course.

Claudia: You can feel the hard crust outside, the rind, and then inside you can feel that it's very, very, very soft. This is seven weeks?

Didier: Seven weeks of maturation.

Claudia: How much does it weigh?

Didier: A cheese like this, in specifications, is 3 kilos. Between 2.8 kilos and 3.2 kilos.

Claudia: And this is also a characteristic of Brie de Meaux?

Didier: That's it. 45% fat content as well. This is why, at the start — do you remember that at the start we take out part of the cream? This is so that at the end it has 45% fat content. When we make a cheese platter, or when people eat a Brie de Meaux, we say that one Brie de Meaux is made for 50 people.

Claudia: 50 people? I thought less.

Didier: You're a big consumer.

Claudia: Yes, I love cheese.

Didier: A cow like this will give between 25 and 30 liters of milk a day to make one Brie de Meaux. Because one Brie de Meaux is 25 liters, give or take.

Claudia: Oh, OK wow.

Didier: So, one cow, one cheese a day. It's pretty much the truth. We try to master the chain, from fork to fork. As we say. So, voilà. The idea is to do the most possible things ourselves. So, this is the feed that is made at the farm. We can find bits of corn, bits of hay, bits of grass. All of this is a mix. We also have lucerne. And we also have beet. Here, these are bits of beet. [cows mooing] We should mic them up, maybe? There's a tradition with Brie de Meaux [PDO]. It always has to be cut from the top towards the outside. We never cut the tip of Brie de Meaux. Some say it brings bad luck. Cheers!

Claudia: So creamy. So creamy and buttery.

I love this taste of hazelnuts. We taste a bit of hazelnuts. Or butter.

Claudia: But actually, it's very sweet. I would say probably sweeter than how it would have been if it had been only four weeks old.