The city is dozing and I am deeply almost angrily envious. Here I stand rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, hair wild, my jacket pulled tightly around me. It is damn early, the streets abandoned…light has not even begun to touch the Seattle skyline. It could be two in the morning, the middle of the night…all I know is that it is dark, cool and post-apocalyptic quiet. Pike Place Market at this hour is forget-to-exhale stunning. It looks like a movie set or a postcard, a still life painting of the city. The stalls are empty- there’s no evidence of the heavy traffic, the shouting vendors, the truckloads of fresh cut flowers and fruit they will be jammed with in a matter of hours.

View all photos

Beechers is illuminated- a solitary light bulb in an inky attic. A truck is pulled right up along side the building, its thick hose attachment pumping fresh milk directly into large vats visible through the storefront windows. The pure white creaminess makes me long for cereal, cookies…for a bath. I imagine my limbs disappearing in the depth of it, my eyelashes coated like mascara, the opaque richness laminating my skin. At 5am I approach the front doors and let myself in, the quiet of the desolate street left behind. Inside, two young ladies are working diligently behind a long counter. Together, they prepare for the busy day ahead while chatting over loudish background music. I creep in a little unsure, not wanting to disturb their morning routine.
“Is Brad around?”
“Oh sure…yeah, Ill get him. Just a minute.”
Brad pops out a moment later. A friendly handshake, quick exchange of greetings/introductions and then he leads me to the back. A pair of tall rubber boots and a white jacket are handed my direction and I’m instructed to place the rest of my belongings in a vacant half size locker. I do by best to corral my bed headed blonde hair under a hairnet before grabbing my camera and following him out to the production floor. We sanitize our boots by stepping on a slick black mat then move on to the cheese room. The tour of the equipment is overwhelming- a blur of metal machines. There’s pipes that lead every which way, a big steel pressurizer and a hanging gaggle of large thick hooks/ rakes which resemble glorified garden tools. Then, of course there’s those two huge vats that continue to absolutely mesmerize me. I’m watching the lazy flow of milk circle within one of them while the rennet is added…the level rising ever so slowly. Its not quiet here. Noise emanates from the hoses and the pressurizer, from the stirring as a metal paddle bumps the side, the liquid sloshing over the lip of the tank.

Brad begins explaining the process and delicate measurements, the specifics that go into making a cheese that folks wait in curling lines for. At this point, one of the vats is still empty while the other is full. The mixing is constant, now with a different paddle. Next he grabs a square net, an assistant comes forward from the back and together they pull the net through the liquid. The milk has a viscous consistency, I see gelatinous pieces float to the surface.
I notice its getting a little lighter outside- the sky in slow bloom to blue. The gulls stalk the dumpsters, the street folk emerge from doorways rolling up their bedding as businesses begin to unshutter their windows.

The milk now resembles a wet cottage cheese. I ask Brad what it tastes like, if anything. He pulls up a handful “Try it, its sweet.” I take a pinch and put it in my mouth. It is indeed- very sweet, very soft…it practically dissolves on my tongue. Cottage cheese-ish yes, but softer and more mild. It barely tastes like cheese at all…more like sweet milk in a more solid form. The temperature is turned up in the vat and Brad continues to stir, he pauses to add paddles to the machine propped above so the milk may circulate constantly without his help.

Across the street I watch a group of men standing together casually, hands pushed deep into their pockets. It seems so random to loiter in the empty market at this hour.
“Hell of a place for a morning cigarette really…I prefer cafes myself but hey, to each their own right?” I say jokingly.
I learn that this exact group of fellows appears each morning at the same time in order to help unload the flowers as they arrive. They do the work, get paid and get out- all before the market opens, before the sun has fully graced the sky. The things you learn via Pike Place Market at 6am eh? I doubt Ill ever be able to browse the fresh flowers again without thinking of their heavy huddled frames.
Back at the milk, more stirring, more sifting. The milk has grown vastly thicker, the pieces larger. Mist rises as the remaining liquid evaporates…the air is dense with humidity, I can feel it on my skin.
A hose is turned on and the thickened liquid is transferred from one vat to the other. Brad uses what looks like a push broom without the bristles to move every little bit out. The milk is received into the empty tank and is set to reduce down further still. Now only lumps remain- white amorphous blobs. Brad and his assistant Dillon cut through the pieces, pushing them together, the water leeching out. The white blocks are piled onto each other. Squish and roll, squish and roll and cut and flip and roll. This process repeats every fifteen minutes. These guys may as well be rolling dice…not a bead of sweat on either of them despite what looks like pretty labor intensive activity. The blobs now fully resemble cheese..large bricks of it and they grow more and more dense with every rotation. A couple more blokes come on shift and the quiet of the morning suddenly takes on a different mood. With my head lodged in the process, snapping photos and whatnot I had failed to realize that the storefront had opened. The lines have begun and when I turn toward the windows, I face a crowd three deep watching the workings of the cheese room. Children push their noses up against the glass and some even give a little tap to catch the attention of the workers. All the while, the staff goes merrily on their way, obviously comfortable with the audience.
“Don’t make eye contact!” Brad jokes when he sees I’m absorbed in the spectacle. For some reason this crowd doesn’t seem real to me- I forget that they can see me as clearly as I them. That’s no fun…I hide behind my camera, make sure my hairnet is still in place.
On to the final steps…the cheddar mill is rolled out. The big blocks are fed into a loud machine which in turn spits out finger sized pieces of cheese. Its almost comedic, the cheese pieces fly out at such a fast pace-they look like a combination of confetti and hail. Soon the whole batch of sturdy bricks has been reduced to french fry form and is ready to be placed into “hoops”. The “hoops” (essentially metal boxes/ molds which hold a plastic sleeve inside) are filled to the brim with cheese bits, weighed, then placed into an air press overnight. In the morning, the crew will “break the hoops”- removing the now bagged and compressed blocks of cheese from the molds. Finally, they are placed in boxes and stored anywhere from 12 to 20 months dependent on what type of cheese they are destined to become.

Believe me, this process is long…it is structured and scientific, interesting and at times uneventful. I quickly realize that cheese making is an exercise in patience and precision. Brad and his crew have it down to an art. It appears choreographed, each member materializing at exactly the right place at any given time…impressive really.

Its nearly 3pm when the first shift is done and I feel as though I have been awake for days. The world around me is fully engaged. Pike Place Market is humming along, busy and crowded…just another day here. I feel like a vampire- shielding the sunlight from my aching eyes, exposed, lightheaded…sleepy. Its time for me to pack up my equipment, shed my uniform and black boots and hopefully find time for an afternoon nap. I don’t leave empty handed of course, I am gifted two containers of the cheese fingers- “squeaky cheese”. Over the next few days I manage to include it in almost everything I eat. The cheese is delicious and….dare I say? Well well worth the early hours required to see it come together.

Interview with Brad Sinko, head cheese maker.

What did you do previous to this?
I actually been in the dairy business around 20-25 years went to school at Oregon State University got my degree there. Minored in microbiology believe it or not so its kind of up my alley. My father bought Bandon cheese in Bandon Oregon in 1988 and I ran it for him for many years then he sold it to Tillamook County Creamery and I ran it for Tillamook for 2 years. So total up to date Ive probably had 15-20 years of cheese experience. These guys hired me after that. I was doing some consulting in Guatemala and these guys found me down there. Because it was in Seattle I flew up because I grew up in Bandon Oregon I really wanted to be in the Northwest if at all possible. So this was right up my alley. Beechers found me, actually called my father first, he told them where to find me and they contacted me in Guatemala, put me through an interview- we were on the phone for 45 minutes. Then I flew home to Bandon. Next day flew up to Seattle, brought my wife with me met all the company guys and Kurt. They sat with me all day and we didn’t talk about cheese that much at all. With Kurt its more of a “does he fit?’”, he knew I could make cheese already so he just wanted to see if I would fit. I fit perfectly in this company. So, after that we carried on. I was the first employee so when they hired me I started planning all this. Me and Chris Birkman who is the operations guy for the company- me and him, we put this whole thing together and by October of that year we had it done. We had the retail built, the floor built and then we opened in November of 2003. Took us about a year to put it together. You know, I knew where to get the equipment and who to put it together and all that good stuff. Then I went to Washington State University, they have a pilot plant out there…little vats like the ones you see out front. Made all sorts of cheese, brought it back to these guys and we all just sat around eating it…picked a recipe that was best- we’re still using it.

Did you always want to do cheese? Obviously your family had been in the business- did you have a passion for it from the get go?
I got passion for it more as I was doing it. I cared about the art of it. Ive always done it this way- always by hand…even back in Bandon. This is only a 10,000 pound system…in Bandon we did it by hand with a 40,000 pound system. Our table was 50 feet long- it was crazy. But you know I grew a huge respect for the art. Cheddaring, the way its done now with machines isn’t really cheddaring so the fact that we still do it by hand and are actually cheddaring the cheese is you know not so much of a lost art anymore but it was at one time, it was really in peril of going bye bye because nobody was doing it.

Whats the difference in machine “cheddaring” and what you do here by hand?
Well, with a machine its a big belt so the curds…you saw how the curds went through to our table and the whey left through the screen..curds stayed behind? The same thing happens on their belt, the why goes through and the cheese stays behind but the belt just rolls so the only stretch that it gets is when the belt goes over the side and then when it comes back the other way it does it again. It automatically salts it, it automatically cuts it into ribbons and slices it this way while its coming off…the right amount of salt falls on ever curd not on how we do it out here by stirring it in. Even their blocks are different…they do it in a tower that’s a block shape, it could be 50 feet tall and they just cut it off at the bottom like play-doh you know? It even bags automatically, goes to the tiller automatically, goes on a pallet automatically.

Do you look at that and just think its ridiculous to mass produce since obviously there’s not a lot of art in that?
I was just scared I was going to end up there. Very glad I didn’t…who knows, maybe one day Ill end up there still. I’m glad I’m doing this now.

Can you give me a quick run through of the cheese making process to give folks an idea of what goes on here?
Sure. Our milk starts out in Duvall, Washington at 230 in the morning. It gets here at about 330- 4 o’clock in the morning. We unload it into our raw milk tanks and we start pasteurizing right away. I don’t have enough room to hold all my milk so we actuall have to pasteurize from the truck for a little while. So we fill up our vats with pasteurized milk, we put in the cultures and let them get used to the milk for 45 minutes after that 45 minutes we put in rennet which is the coagulant and that turns the milk into a pudding consistency and then after about 35 minutes then we run wire harps through it one is horizontal one is vertical and we re trying to get a pea size curd and at that point after we run the harps through you get curds and whey. We have pea sized curds and then we get the 35 minute cook…you want to go slow enough for the cultures to get the bugs and get used to their new environment and their new temperatures. When we put them in the milk they were frozen at minus 45 degrees Celsius now we re trying to bring them up to 90 degrees Fahrenheit…that’s a huge difference so you want to do that very slowly. We do a ten degree cook and then again we let them sit for 40 minutes getting used to that temperature then we pump it over to our cheddaring table. Our cheddaring table has screens down the middle that will let the whey go down the drain and keeps the cheese behind on the table. So we get that cheese matted, it will start forming big mats and we ll cut it into slabs. These slabs are about 10 pounds a piece and every 15 minutes we pick them up and flip them or roll them and what that does is stretch them out, taking our fats and our proteins and making them linear instead of round and when we are doing that we re stretching it and pushing out more moisture. We re also waiting for a certain PH so we keep doing this flipping and cheddaring. Because that is what cheddaring is, that’s what the process of cheddaring is is stretching out the fat and protein molecules by flipping the cheese. We ll get to a certain PH then we run it through our cheddar mill which chops those big slabs into finger sized pieces of cheese and that’s just so we can increase the surface area to get salt to it. And we salt the whole vat of cheese and only half of the salt we use really sticks to the cheese because again the salts helping us get rid of more moisture. So then we put them into these hoops, which are just cheese molds with bandages in them and as soon as we get those hoops full we put them into a press and its an air press set at 60 pounds pressure and we press them all night. So they ll stay in that press all night. Then we come back in the morning and our guys, what we call break the hoops, they break the cheese out of the hoops, put it in a bag box it and in terms of our flagship, it goes away for 20 months and then our Flagship reserve which is the bandage wrapped version gets 12 months. That’s the whole process.

In the morning when I got here…there was bags of cheese hanging in the window in what looked like mesh sacks- what was that? Which part of the process?
That was fromage blanc..that’s a different cheese. That’s us making a fresh cheese…we call it Blank Slate and its a spreadable cheese. We have a honeyed version and a tapenade. We also do fresh curds. Fresh curds are the finger sized pieces that we chop up and add salt to but before we press them back together we take them out and sell them in retail just the way they are. They call that “squeaky cheese”.

Folks just eat it straight up like that eh?
They love it. We have a market herb version as well as a chipotle. They’re so good…especially when they’re warm. Ill grab a couple here so you can have a taste.

Do they taste super salty?
Salty yeah but not too much since they do lose a bit of the salt on the surface. They taste a little milder the next day. I, personally, don’t think cheese is cheese until its about a year old. So, I hardly eat that stuff but, man, people love it!

They don’t put it on bread or anything? They just eat it like popcorn?
Well, the stuff we sell out there, the market herb version you can put it on french bread and it acts just like mozzarella and its already seasoned with basil and garlic…its really good. Other people use it, they get it hot up to 160 degrees and make their own mozzarella balls with it…ours is going to have a lot of flavor to it because we use cultures. Most of the time when you’re making mozzarella you’re usually doing direct acidification which is lemon juice or vinegar and you’re just trying to up that PH by adding it instead of letting it grow.

What are your favorite parts of the cheese making process? or least favorite? I was speaking to Dillon out there on the floor and he was telling the ups and downs…he mentioned that the stirring gets pretty boring.

With my job, I manage a lot back here. So, I love those times…when its quiet and nobody’s here. Like first thing in the morning when I’m turning on the pasteurizer and putting the milk into the vat and no one else is around and its still dark outside…its cool..its really cool. That’s the best time, the best part for me. The worst part…well, everyone’s going to say the physical part but to me, I’m 45 now so I like the physical part otherwise Id be a big fat guy behind a desk somewhere.

Favorite cheese to make?
Well we make Flagship…99.9% of what we make here is Flagship so I gotta say that that’s my favorite. And always trying to make it good…we have a really good team here, everyone cares about quality from the farm to when it hits your mouth. I mean, we care about it the whole way and so its nice to see that it happens right and that all your team members are on board..they’re all good guys a lot of these guys have degrees and really like what they’re doing.

Have you ever wanted to pursue other types of cheese besides Flagship?
Well, I have before but I’m a cheddar man. I’m a cheddar cheese maker. Ive made other cheeses- Havarti, Parmesan’s’ but my forte is cheddar no doubt about it.

So, let me get this straight. Flagship-that is cheddar.
That’s a cheddar. We use a little different cultures, our finishing culture has a different flavor. But we are doing the cheddaring process so its a cheddar.

Favorite cheese to eat?
You know what, that Marco Polo Reserve we have out there right now is my favorite. Its always been the Flagship Reserve, the natural rinded cheese that we make, but now we re doing our Marco Polo, our flavored cheese, in a bandaged wrapped version…God its good. Its really good.

Do you know which cheese sells the most?
Flagship no doubt about it. We only make 60,000 pounds of Flagship Reserve a year. I only make about 7 or 8 thousand pounds of the Marco Polo Reserve a year. I make about 850,000 pounds of Flagship so its our bread and butter. And its in nearly all 50 states, its overseas. Every bit of it is made here…its hard to believe. We run 20,000 pounds of cheese a week.

Do you do most of your sales locally?
For years our store sold more cheese than anybody but its changed now. You know, we’ve got Costco bunch of stores in Texas, Atlanta Foods distributes to the East Coast and we have some really big accounts out there that’s why we re thinking of opening another one on the East coast- so we wouldn’t have to ship. We’ve had remarkable success in the five years- we’ve been really lucky…we’ve won awards and high sales. We didn’t plan on it. We figured we would make 125,000 pounds a year every year…here we are nearly making a million pounds of cheese a year.

Whats something you feel folks dont understand about cheese or the cheese making process?
I think they think its pretty easy. Its not- its a difficult process and you heard me say it before…we call it the Brad Sinko diet plan because everybody that starts out here loses weight. I did…first week I lost 15 pounds. Its physical and you’re watching, concentrating on a lot of different things- am I getting enough stretch? Is it out here long enough on the table? Am I at the right gage? Do I have the bandages ready?…there’s just a lot going on.

You’ve obviously been doing this a long time…have you learned anything new being at Beechers?
Tons! Yeah, I think my cheese knowledge has grown exponentially. I came in here, sure I knew other cheese but I was mainly a cheddar guy…I got to play around with a bunch of stuff here, go to different seminars, do different things…things that are different from what I did with my family business. We owned it so I didn’t get to do much outside of make and sell it. So, the education that I get here is good…I’m just trying to pass it on to these guys.

Is this a long term thing for you?
Yeah, I’m not going anywhere. Ill always be making cheese. Ill be involved with cheese in one facet or another for the rest of my life.

What types of foods do you eat at home?
Ill tell you what we get. The first thing when we go to the store I turn whatever we pick up around and if there more than 12 ingredients- I don’t buy it. We try to eat fresh…wish I had more time to grow a garden because I do enjoy that….growing tomatoes especially. Its really seasonal here in Seattle, people eat really well here. It depends on the season really… I mean when its Winter and there’s no tomatoes- you shouldn’t eat ‘em! So our diets change throughout the year- we just try to eat fresh and try to eat healthy.

Favorite meals?
God, this sounds so stupid but I love steak. Steak…lobster…surf and turf.

I know you said you love doing cheese and you probably always will do cheese but if you could not do cheese for some reason or another- what would you do with yourself?
Id be a hunting and fishing guide.

Yeah? You hunt and fish?
Yep, every year. Elk and deer…salmon steelhead fish, some trout here and there. I go for big stuff. And that’s part of our diet. What I don’t catch or kill we get from my Aunt who raises no hormone beef. I don’t buy meat from the store period.

Anything you want to see change here?
I am absolutely the guy that makes the changes. I wait for input from my guys and I give them goals to complete every quarter and I take suggestions from them. Anything to make their job easier and the operation better. Its a team effort…we try to keep it that way because I think it works best that way. I mean, these guys are big time responsible for the amount of success we have. I invented some of these things but these guys keep it going and when Im not here we re still doing it the same way. We ve instilled that.

Anything else you want to share?
Well, I think I just want to say that at Beechers its quality first- from the cow to your mouth. You know, we wanted to make a cheese Flagship that was approachable to everybody…we call it, a lot of times you’ll hear it referred to as “wines best friend” because we haven’t tasted a wine that’s not good with the flagship. You can eat a lot of it because even though its a year nearly two years old it doesn’t have that sharp bite at the end- it has a sweet ending. Again, real approachable- it melts, it doesn’t burn. Its just, I think we did a really good job when we invented this cheese. Its for everyone.