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Cheese from Ireland, County Cork

Gubbeen

A washed-rind farmhouse cheese made from pasteurised cow milk with a mesophilic starter; the curd is washed during making. After brining it is smeared with a saline suspension of Brevibacterium linens, then turned and washed with dilute brine while it ripens at 15–20 °C and about 90 % humidity.

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedMade by a proprietary farmhouse method; the studies give no batch size or doses. Cheeses are flat cylinders of 200–500 g.
Pasteurised cow milk from the farmPasteurised per the studies; cow milk and the farm's own mixed herd per Culture magazine[brennan2002][culture-gubbeen]
Mesophilic starter culture[brennan2002]
Brine, for salting and for washing the rind[brennan2002]
Brevibacterium linens BL2 smear culture, in salineThe commercial smear strain was recovered only in very small numbers early in ripening[brennan2002][rea2007]
Startermesophilic starter culture; Brevibacterium linens BL2 for the smear
Start
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shapes, not to countCorynebacterium caseiB. aurantiacumC. variabileYeasts

What changes: A mesophilic starter goes into the pasteurised farm milk

Step 1 of 5
Add starter to pasteurised milk
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Corynebacterium casei
B. aurantiacum
C. variabile
Yeasts
Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

A washed-rind farmhouse cheese made from pasteurised cow milk with a mesophilic starter; the curd is washed during making. After brining it is smeared with a saline suspension of Brevibacterium linens, then turned and washed with dilute brine while it ripens at 15–20 °C and about 90 % humidity. Surface smear bacteria, mainly Staphylococcus saprophyticus early in ripening and coryneforms later - Corynebacterium casei, Brevibacterium aurantiacum, Corynebacterium variabile and Microbacterium gubbeenense and Surface yeasts, mainly Debaryomyces hansenii, with Candida catenulata and Candida lusitaniae do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Temperature15–20 °CReported[brennan2002]Ripen, turning and washing
AciditypH 5Measured[brennan2002]Mould and brine

What makes this one different

An Irish farmhouse washed-rind cheese whose rind has been studied in detail. The added Brevibacterium linens strain barely survives there; resident coryneform bacteria such as Corynebacterium casei and Microbacterium gubbeenense dominate the smear.

Composition
Moisture about 45 % and pH about 5.0 one day after making
Size
Flat cylinders of 200–500 g
Named microbe
Microbacterium gubbeenense, described as a new species in 2001 from smear-cheese isolates, made up 12.8 % of surface isolates in a Gubbeen batch

Related ferments

Safety

The milk is pasteurised, and in the study the rind was smeared with a bought Brevibacterium linens culture in saline. The study says smearing young cheeses with smear from mature ones, called old-young smearing, can transfer Listeria monocytogenes and Staphylococcus aureus. It does not say Gubbeen is made that way.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Culture magazine says Giana Ferguson and the Gubbeen dairy team have made Gubbeen since 1979. She grew up partly in Spain, where her family made goat's milk cheese, and later lived in France before marrying into a farming family in Ireland. She and her husband Tom began by experimenting with their own cheeses and then made Gubbeen regularly. Microbacterium gubbeenense, a new species named for the cheese, was described from its rind in 2001.

  1. [brennan2002] Brennan N.M., Ward A.C., Beresford T.P., Fox P.F., Goodfellow M., Cogan T.M. 2002, Biodiversity of the bacterial flora on the surface of a smear cheese, Applied and Environmental Microbiology 68(2):820–830paper
  2. [rea2007] Rea M.C., Görges S., Gelsomino R., Brennan N.M., Mounier J., Vancanneyt M., Scherer S., Swings J., Cogan T.M. 2007, Stability of the biodiversity of the surface consortia of Gubbeen, a red-smear cheese, Journal of Dairy Science 90(5):2200–2210 (abstract)paper
  3. [brennan2001] Brennan N.M., Brown R., Goodfellow M., Ward A.C., Beresford T.P., Vancanneyt M., Cogan T.M., Fox P.F. 2001, Microbacterium gubbeenense sp. nov., from the surface of a smear-ripened cheese, International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology 51(6):1969–1976 (abstract)paper
  4. [culture-gubbeen] Culture magazine, cheese library, 'Gubbeen' (producer, milk and history)web