Virginia nuns are making the dairy world holy by creating Gouda cheese in their monastery barn.
The nuns have been doing this for quite some time, according to a report by NBC 12 in Richmond, Virginia.
According to the monastery website, the nuns have been making cheese since the 1990's as a means to self-support themselves.
Each batch is made from scratch, and the milks come from grass fed cows. They use an old world technique, originating from the Netherlands, to create the homemade Gouda cheese. Their cheese culture originates in Wisconsin. Then the milk is pasteurized and with all of this the culture is added, then it is cut by hand, packed in forms which are called hoops and then pressed. The finished cheese is then put in salt brine and into a refrigeration room. Then the cheese is put into a special room with a special label that lets the cheese breathe while it is aging. This process takes up to 4 days to complete.
Through the whole process, the nuns are a part of it all: the cheese making, packaging and shipment.
Their monastery country cheese is described as a semi-soft, mild, mellow, Dutch style Gouda. It comes with a red wax and black and gold foil label.