The Master Cheesemakers of Wisconsin

David Lindgren

drive deep enough into amish country near Granton and Neillsville, on Highway 10, and you’ll stumble across Lynn Dairy. Or, more accurately, you’ll Wrst stumble across a depot where men are lugging heavy metal cans of milk out of trucks and then pulling them back out again through a side entrance high enough to make truck loading a little easier. Lynn Dairy is one of the few dairies in the state that deals with Amish milk. “We’re bringing in over sixty thousand pounds of Amish milk a day,” says plant manager and master cheesemaker David Lindgren. “Loyal, Granton, and Greenwood are huge Amish communities, so that’s where we do most of our volume. You gotta be careful early in the morning and in the evening, because there are a lot of horses and buggies on the road.” Moving and cooling canned milk present unique challenges. “We bring the cans in, it’s immediately dumped into a hanging stainless steel scale and dumped onto a cooling plate and storage tank and taken here,” Lindgren says. “The Amish, of course, can only cool it to well-water temperature. If you get Wfty-degree milk, you’re doing pretty well. A lot of times it’s sixty degrees or over, so you’ve got to get it in and get it cooled right away.” Although the milk requires extra care, it’s of exceptional quality. “It’s actually a hand-milked cow, which doesn’t go through as much stress as an automated system where they’re wheelin’ ’em into a parlor, throwin’ ’em on and takin’ ’em o¤,” says Lindgren. “There’s a little more tender loving care.” Lindgren says the butterfat and protein levels—two of the key components to determining the usefulness of milk—are particularly high in Amish milk. “The only time you have a hard time is July and August when it’s eighty and you have a hard time cooling it,” he says. “We end up dumping a lot because we have quality systems up there, too. And then you have to go through the whole thing of picking it up. It gets dumped and they don’t get paid for it.” 175 David Lindgren Lynn Dairy, Granton, Wisconsin http://www.lynndairy.com/ QW Master of mozzarella, provolone, cheddar, and monterey jack I knew that I wanted to get into the management level. I wasn’t going to be happy just as a Xoor cheesemaker. Lindgren turns the Amish (and conventional) milk into a variety of cheeses, mostly American in style. But he’s an experienced Italian cheesemaker, as well. “I am a master cheesemaker in Italian cheeses—which I did, through Arpin Dairy—then I got here and went back into American cheeses. So I’ve got the [master’s certiWcations in] cheddar, monterey jack, the provolone, and the mozz. Most of my awards have been through the provolone and mozzarella string cheese through Arpin. Obviously I’ve only been here for Wve years, so I don’t have that many awards racked up. Not yet.” 176 Masters of Northwestern Wisconsin David Lindgren. His biggest award and proudest moment was winning a best in class for his provolone cheese at the United States Championship Cheese Contest in 1997. “I know the year because it was the year the Packers won the Super Bowl,” he says. “So my cheese was actually displayed with Brett Favre on that poster.” The poster he mentions is one that you’ll see in a lot of oªces and break rooms in Wisconsin cheese plants. It features the Green Bay quarterback standing amid a sea of cheese. The text reads: “Champions: Green Bay Packers and Wisconsin Cheese, 1997 United States Champion Cheeses from Wisconsin.” Despite the dairy’s tight connection with small farmers, it’s grown massively since Lindgren’s arrival. When Lindgren arrived in 2003, the plant was running Wve hundred thousand pounds of milk a day, for four days a week. “Now we’re running a million two a day, six days a week,” he says. “It’s grown a lot just in the last four and a half years.” Business is too good, to the point of being a little wild. “If anything, I’ve got an issue with shipping cheese out too fresh,” he says. “Which is a good problem. You always want to wait until you’ve got your lab...