Frog City Cheese

Frog City Cheese is a family owned and operated cheese manufacturing business located at the Plymouth Cheese Factory on the President Calvin Coolidge Historic Site in Plymouth Notch, Vermont. Tom Gilbert and Jackie McCuin leased this wonderful treasure on October 1, 2004 and are once again producing granular curd cheese which was made by the Coolidge family for generations. With the help of Jean Hoskison, who made cheese for John Coolidge, the President's son, Plymouth Cheese is now available for sale to you.

Tom has been a cheese maker for 20 years and previously made Brie and Camembert at his previous business, Blythedale Farm in Corinth, Vermont. Though new to cheese making, Jackie has brought her organizational skills and attention to detail from her career in education to this new business venture. Tom and Jackie both are native Vermonters with strong agricultural heritages. Frog City Cheese allows them to continue in the footsteps of their ancestors in working with raw milk, farmers and creating a fine quality product from this beautiful place. They hope to honor Vermont's agricultural heritage, the history of the Coolidge family and the town of Plymouth by recreating the old recipe.

Granular curd cheese or stirred curd as it is also known is made from raw cows' milk. This bandaged and waxed cheese was typically hand-made in New England farmhouses during the colonial period and is rarely made today. This cheese has been described as tangy, rich, open bodied, old fashioned and uncomplicated. Steven Jenkins of The Cheese Primer observes it is a "moist cheese with a network of apertures and levels of tanginess that are more pronounced" with age. Plymouth Cheese is being produced in small wheels (approx. 3lbs) and 40 pound wheels.

The present day process still includes many of the precise hand processing techniques, which make the cheese what it is. After cultures and rennet are added the recipe is precisely heated before the curds are cut and then stirred mechanically in the cheese vat. After the mixture "cooks" , the whey is drained and the curds are moved to a draining table with buckets. The curds are stirred by hand and salt is hand mixed into the recipe. Finally, the curds are hand packed into dressed molds and place into a mechanical press where the rest of the whey will be squeezed out.

The next day the cheeses are removed from the molds and placed on racks in the drying room. They remain there for 5-7 days, after which they will be waxed and placed in coolers for aging. At 2 months the cheese will be quite mild and ready to eat. It will become sharper as it ages and we expect at its best at 12 months. Plymouth Cheese will also be available in several of flavors later in the season.

Tom will be developing other cheese varieties that will expand and diversify the business.

The factory and retail store are open every day from 9:30-5:00 until the end of October. Visitors can watch the cheese making process through several viewing windows. Please call ahead for days and times.

Customers will also enjoy visiting our retail shop which carries a variety of Vermont-made cheeses and other specialty foods. We focus on specialty products from Vermont and New England. Betty Ann Hayward has run the store for years prior to our arrival. Previously employed by John Coolidge, Betty Ann loves to share her stories with customers and enjoys seeing returning customers year after year.