Cascadia Creamery

Cascadia Creamery is a family run operation located in the foothills of Mt. Adams in the town of Trout Lake, Washington. We craft cave aged, raw, certified organic artisan cheeses. Cascadia Creamery was born through a desire to develop a deep, healthy relationship with the land and revive a long history of artisan cheesemaking in the Trout Lake Valley. Here in the shadow of Mt. Adams, we utilize the area’s mineral-rich glacial streams and ancient volcanic caves to give our cheeses true “Cascadia terroir.”

Website

| The Fabulous Four

Located at the base of Mt. Adams in Trout Lake, WA, Cascadia Creamery is famous for their Certified Organic, raw-milk cheeses: Sleeping Beauty, Cloud Cap, Sawtooth, and Glacier Blue. They occasionally make other seasonal cheeses, but their four flagship cheeses are classics.

| On the Road to Mastery

Cascadia Creamery is owned by John and Marci Shuman. They got into cheesemaking about 13 years ago when John was apprenticing with a local cow dairy. Since he was passionate about raw-milk cheeses, he decided to make his own.

After reading lots of cheesemaking books, taking classes at Washington State University and Oregon State University, and learning from some master cheesemakers, he began experimenting with his own cheeses. John continues to experiment, but their standard lineup of 4 cheeses is solidly well-done and delicious.

| Aged in an Actual Cave

You’ve probably heard of cave-aged cheeses. That often means the cheeses are aged in a facility that simulates a cave environment with temperature and humidity. But at Cascadia Creamery, the cheeses are aged in an actual cave–a lava tube cave, to be exact! Their creamery is located near Mt. Adams, which was an active volcano. The volcano’s network of lava tubes runs beneath Trout Lake, and John Schuman happened upon one while he was watching over pregnant cows on pasture one day. After inspecting, he found that the cave had the perfect humidity and temperature to age cheese, and he set about creating a USDA-approved cheese aging facility in the cave. Today they age Sleeping Beauty, Cloud Cap, and Glacier Blue in those caves, which means they have a totally unique volcanic Washington terroir. How cool is that?

| Brine-Bathing Beauty

While most of Cascadia Creamery‘s cheeses (Sleeping Beauty, Cloud Cap, and Glacier Blue) are aged in their volcanic lava tube caves, there is one type of cheese that has different accommodations.

Washed-rind cheeses, such as as Sawtooth, need a slightly warmer and more humid environment to achieve their full potential. They are called washed-rind cheeses, because the rind is washed with a brine solution. That solution, paired with the ideal aging environment, attracts a type of yeast to the outside of the rind call brevibacterium linens, aka b. linens.

B. linens creates the characteristic orange, sticky rind and funky smell we associate with washed-rind cheeses. Those who know, know the funk is all on the nose, and that a beautiful, buttery cheese is the prize within!

| A Cheese Like No Others

What kind of cheese is Cloud Cap? Cascadia Creamery classifies it as an “aged, bloomy-rind cheese”–think brie, but aged for way longer than normal. The snow-white rind is a product of the same kinds of molds that produce your run-of-the-mill bloomy-rind cheeses, as well as the native flora floating through the lava tube cave system in Trout Lake that nurtures the cheeses to ripeness.

Cloud Cap has also been described as similar to Caerphilly (pronounced “kay-filly” by Welsh-speaking folks), a style of cheese from the British Isles with a crumbly, semi-firm texture and a slightly acidic tang. However you classify it, this cheese deserves a try if you come across it. It’s unlike anything else you’ve tried before!