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Discussion thread: Fromology (CHEESE!) Part 2 is published! (Patreon)

Published:
2025-07-09 20:42:59
Edited:
2025-07-16 20:36:54
Imported:
2026-06

Content

This episode is up, published, and ready to hear wherever you get podcasts.

**Update: Part 2 is now live! It's wall-to-wall Patreon questions and we cover: cows on boats, plant-based cheese options, how to properly store cheese, how cheese changes your brain chemistry, the Cooper's Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake, the great grilled cheese debate, DIY cheeses, squeaky curds, Missouri’s cheese caves, the moon’s composition, and the ultimate charcuterie board. Also: holes, and crystals and maggots, oh my! Let's discuss below!

The long-awaited, deeply craved CHEESE episode is here and it's a double whammy two-parter. Kyra James is a CCP (certified cheese professional) and she takes me through the history, process, aging, culture, sociology, and etiquette of cheese.

Have you heard it yet? Let's discuss below. Also feel free to tell me about the best cheese you have ever had.

Cheesing for Kyra,

Dad of the Podward

Ps: there is a content warning up top that we do talk about the dairy industry, and have a plant-based eating episode in the works. Kyra's expertise is not in dairy farming or practices per se, but we do touch on the more ethical types of cheese and vegetarian cheeses, and next week we'll chat more about vegan options.

Files

Fromology (CHEESE) with Kyra James - alie ward

Part 1: Soft. Hard. Fresh. Aged. Stinky. Illegal. Let's talk cheese with Certified Cheese Professional (CCP) and Fromologist, Kyra James. We chat about proprietary bacterial slurries, basement caves, cheese knife etiquette, rind eating, vegetarian versus vegan cheeses, cheese history, different war

Comments

Britt Kline

IDK what the best is, but just ONE SINGLE HOUR AGO, I was blessed to attend an event at my workplace, dreamed up by a genius resident (retirement community) called The Big Cheese, where there are cheeses we all try and vote on. This is a 4-part series of events with 2 cheeses per and it is SUBLIME, obvs. The hardest part is choosing my fave each time. Today, I voted for a soft white salty cheese. We learn what they are at the very last event, Part 4 of The Bug Cheese! Joy and community. Cheese is a unifying force in my life today. So excited to hear this ep! 💛🧀🧀🫕🪤

Britt Kline

IDK what the best is, but just ONE SINGLE HOUR AGO, I was blessed to attend an event at my workplace, dreamed up by a genius resident (retirement community) called The Big Cheese, where there are cheeses we all try and vote on. This is a 4-part series of events with 2 cheeses per and it is SUBLIME, obvs. The hardest part is choosing my fave each time. Today, I voted for a soft white salty cheese. We learn what they are at the very last event, Part 4 of The Bug Cheese! Joy and community. Cheese is a unifying force in my life today. So excited to hear this ep! 💛🧀🧀🫕🪤

Jordan

So excited about this episode! For ceramics: check out potted history (Graham Taylor and Sarah Lord)! Does Bronze Age pottery count as something bronze?

Andy Pepper

Well, I for one am deeply disappointed pigeon milk doesn't make the list of cheese milks. 😂 Also, when questions I asked were important enough that they show up in "the big interview," I still feel sort of special. 💖

Cycling Tiger

Just a comment that, in the episode that a group of cheesesc was described as "Alpine". In my experience here in Europe they are more commonly referred to as mountain cheese as there is more than one mountain range on the continent and all of them do cheese pretty well. Also the massifs.

Ranger France

When I worked at a local winery as the training sommelier, I would always ask the kitchen manager to find the weirdest cheese she could buy online to add to the charcuterie boards that would still be acceptable, and then I would try my hardest to find a good wine pairing for it. My favorite one after 2 years of working there is a truffle cheese. I actually just found it online and it is the "Pecorino Di Montalcino Truffle Sheep & Goat Cheese, sogno Toscano" But to be fair I love absolutely anything flavored with truffles. Unfortunately, the guests did not enjoy it as much as the previous usual cheeses, so it never got restocked once the first wheel was gone. I probably ate half of it myself.

CARLOS L DE LA ROSA

Oh, I can’t wait to listen to this episode. So many adventures with cheese around the world. Cheese is my favorite vegetable!…😝

Shannon Bartels

Fun cheese fact- did you know cheese (and other dairy) has iodine in it? I didn’t, until I had to go on a low iodine diet before radioactive iodine therapy!

T Noz

Just drove by the Tillamook Creamery yesterday. They draw quite a crowd during the summer. Do have more than cheese for sale nowadays. Their ice cream flavors revel Ben & Jerrys.

The Other Maya

"The animal 'Your Mom' " - bless you PodFather

Emily Krieger

fishnets under shorts is indeed genius. Kudos to you. Do you have a fishnet tan?

Emily Krieger

I listened and learned while making/eating a grilled cheese made with manchego and sharp cheddar and garden basil ✨

Rich Orner

I was fortunate to have worked in France for years, and have a cheese monger daughter. Fav domestic: Cabot Clothbound. International: Papillon.

Urban Nature Walk

When Kyra said 4-6 cheese knives is sufficient I bust out laughing (seems a lot)

Urban Nature Walk

I'm predicting a run on Prairie Breeze--I'm definitely on the hunt for a local supplier!

Shawn Hebrank

I love that you had a trigger warning for us vegans before the episode. 😂 (it was still interesting, scientifically speaking) But for ceramics, there’s no one more inspiring than Beth Cavener. 🖤

rebekah

Loved it. I can’t be the only one that finished the episode and went straight to the fridge…? Can confirm ologies is a perfect pairing for 6 different types of cheese from my fridge, including a wildcard cheese my dad had gave me after getting back from Pisa, Italy earlier this week. Toma piemontese is yummy, as it turns out. Excited for part 2! Earlier in the year I read an incredible cheese history book: A Cheesmonger’s History of the British Isles by cheesemonger and writer Ned Palmer. Highly recommend to anyone who enjoyed this episode.

Elizabeth Warren

What is the best storage method for cheese, and how many times can I trim off a bit of mold before it is time to say "goodbye"?

Adam Foote

Many years ago, before the Internet was truly a cesspool, I wanted the official title of a company's "social media manager" or whatever to be called a "Twittermonger". Alas, that ship has sailed, but the point is we need more "mongers" in the world. Why is such an S-tier suffix only used for cheesemongers anymore? Maybe I should start by rebranding myself as a "codemonger" since I write software for a living.

Heather Leonard

I listened to the first episode, went to the grocery store, bought a wheel of Brie, went home, and ate the whole thing with some club crackers. It was bliss.

Megan R

Regarding ceramics, just want to shout out professor Julia Galloway at the University of Montana ceramics program! She would be a great resource to reach out to. Best professor I've ever had, and very knowledgeable!!

JKH

I don't consider myself squeamish but I was eating my lunch when the maggot cheese question came up and I had to reconsider my squeamishness. 🤮

Dave Brewer

I used to follow a guy on Facebook who called himself the Craft Beer Monger. But he was more of an advocate for beer than a seller.

Rachael Lemont

I was literally driving home from our vacation in Wisconsin with a belly full of goat cheese curds listening to the first episode!! Yummmm!!

Alie Ward

Oh wow!! I'm so glad we covered this!

Alie Ward

Ooooh thank you for this suggestion!

Alie Ward

"A whole wheel of cheese? I'm not even mad. That's amazing."

Alie Ward

I LOVE a monger. We need more of them. And then we'll do a spinoff show called Mongers.

Alie Ward

This episode is already published but we do answer that storage question!

Rachael Lemont

Yes! Squeaky & delicious! So much more so than the cheddar ones!

Alie Ward

I wasn't sure how that would come off but honestly I figured better safe than sorry because animal welfare is such a huge eco and ethical topic!

Alie Ward

Aaaah! Let me know if you try it or the FRONCH one Ossau-Iraty that Rw (Roo) told me about in Part 2.

Alie Ward

Today I looked at the gift set of 4 cheese knives we had and I felt they were friends, instead of intimidating strangers.

Alie Ward

You gotta get some of the Ossau-Iraty that Rw ("roo") told us about in Part 2!

Alie Ward

I have def gotten a fishnet burn and I should post about that

Alie Ward

Thank you for hearing my words, child

Alie Ward

I hear the ice cream is goooood tbh

Noel Dietz

Norwegian gjetost (yet' ost) is the lovely, caramely brown cheese. I love to put paper-thin slices on a toasted English muffin or piece of julekage (holiday bread).

Between Dumplings

Wait does this refer to the mites that make the rind on Mimolette?

roni 💥

hearing my voice in the episode today was wild! so dope i made it into the spotify podcast zeitgeist. that being said, does hearing how your voice actually sounds ever stop being weird? for this entire episode i could not stop thinking about how casu martzu being called the “most dangerous cheese in the world” will never not be funny, because that phrasing in particular makes it sound like the reason the cheese is dangerous is because it’ll unexpectedly explode if you leave it on a shelf for too long, and not just because it has bugs in it and they might make you sick if you eat them. that feels silly to me. anyways thank you alie for pronouncing my name right, i greatly appreciate it 🫡🫡🫡

Davis Born

It feels important to say that I got the push notification about this thread while waiting to go into the Tillamook Creamery

Rachel Guthrie

This episode was so good I had to go make a cheese plate for myself before I even finished listening to it!

Alie Ward

Yes, I was trying to pronounce it!

Alie Ward

It never gets more comfortable, hearing your own voice. Well, for me at least. Thanks for the great question! I was horrified to learn of the answer!

Alie Ward

Wellllll how about that. You get any curds?

Rachel Guthrie

I had brie and parmesan with salami, crackers and apples! It was amazing!

Noel Dietz

My husband was not a fan. He called it yuckost.

Brain 🧠 Shenanigans

You can pry the can of sawdust powder cheese out of my cold dead hands. At least it’s natural! 😂

Felipe Jimenez

It was a fun episode, but I highly recommend that you do a Bromatology episode (food science). There were some errors from the chemistry point of view :/

Jeremy

No, Casu Marzu/Martzu is made by intentionally introducing fly larvae (maggots) to a wheel of sheep milk cheese. There is concern that they can cause diseases and the Sardinian government outlawed the cheese, but that hasn't totally stopped production. Cheese mites, in contrast, are harmless and live on pretty much every cheese with a natural rind. Affineurs actively get rid of them through brushing and vacuuming, except on Mimolette, where they're cultivated and allowed to go to town.

Spencer Parks

I loved all the vegan cheese talk! I've had a number of vegan cheeses but there's still so many to try! I really need to have a vegan cheese potluck party.

Jeanette-o-saur

I'd just like you fine folks to know that I've appropriately wrapped my new block of Parmesan in parchment paper instead of leaving it in the plastic and I feel like a very responsible cheese parent 😊🧀

Emily Akin

Ayyyy EKW004 (didn’t even realize that my college email was my username but that was def my review) got a shoutout! I feel so special 🫶 thanks, Alie! This was a fantastic episode.

The Other Maya

My entire reality shifted when the Turkish food cart owner across the street from the Engineering Building at my university let me sample some raw milk fresh sheep's milk cheese. He was like "I can't sell this too you because the US government forbids it, but you're a good customer so you should try". It had so much flavor, subtle and sweet, I actually had to think about what I was tasting - cheese had always had one flavor, cheese flavor, some of it stronger than others but sill cheese = cheese. Cutting out a lot I'll fast forward you to the end of what I realized, after a few trips to France: only Americans really drink milk, most dairy having cultures favor cheese. The cheese making process is their safety and stabilization process to keep that dairy from going off and getting you sick. If your food culture and cuisine evolved without refrigeration, it makes perfect sense. I feel like I could do an entire TED talk about refrigeration, transport, and pasteurization and how cheese in Europe started happening thousands of years before the American system of centralized agriculture and milk being moved by highway and by rail. It just really made sense one day when I was looking for milk at the MONOPRIX, everything was ultra or high temp pasteurized, yet the cheeses from the Marché that morning were truly wild, things I'd never seen and will probably never see outside of that market. Also all of the bottles of milk were small. I was like wait - there's a wine bottle in this basket bigger than any of these bottles of milk - I'm the weird one! French people don't drink milk, they cook with it. Even down to coffee - there's no drip - it's only espresso so there's no cream for coffee. The vast majority of dairy consumption is from cheese. Which is preserved milk. Which means it doesn't get pasteurized because the cheese making process is the safety and preservation method. I think, personally, if you want to get Americans happy and comfy with unpasteurized dairy, it's not going to come from the mega agriculture and the milk tanker on the highway, it's going to come from a return to small farming and being able to talk to your farmer/producer and ask questions, see the cows and know that it's actually different. Which might be hard for folks that don't have farmers markets, but at least the Markets in Oregon and Washington have Double Up Food Bucks, so if you're broke you can still get the good stuff at a good price, everyone wins.

Ranger France

My husband kept texting me while I was driving home so my car would read it and wait for me to say my response and sent it. Ya know, fancy cars nowadays. But it pauses whatever is playing which is of course this episode. So I ended up having to rewind the part on maggot cheese SIX TIMES before I could actually listen to it all the way through and get every detail of it.

Taylor campbell

I cant stop thinking about a masters in gastronomy since hearing about this ologist. Might change my life in a big way. I thought the only way you could study food was solely in food science, I had no idea there were programs where you can study food from a cultural view.

Claire Gebben

Ahhh having my question read made my whole day, maybe my whole summer!!! This was such a a great 2 part episode ❤️❤️❤️ I learned so much!

Mouse Paxton

Very happy my name got used for a cheese joke, it's all I ever wanted lol. Fr tho, these episodes were fantastic!

Evan Wilkoff

Wow, what a great double episode. Kyra was an amazing guest with the ability to explain things so clearly and easy to relate. Thanks to everyone for pulling this off!