In a place where fish fly and fresh produce sprout daily, tourists at Seattle’s Pike Place Market flock to a window-walled factory to peak in on an old-world method of creating one of their favorite foods: cheese.

Peering into Beecher’s Handmade Cheese, wide-eyed visitors watch cheesemakers turn 40,000 pounds of milk, delivered straight from a local farm that morning, into 4,000 pounds of cheese every day. The two silver, metal, open vats, which are filled with milk four times to meet the quota, are a constantly-changing sight of milk, curds and whey.

The open vats, which look large enough for at least 30 of the tourists to have a skin-nourishing milk bath, give the cheesemakers a unique hand-controlled environment to create the delicacies, unlike automated, mass-produced cheese operations.

“We use open vats because it is the way cheddars were made traditionally and it is the complete opposite of the computerized, hands-off method utilized by massive commodity cheddar producers,” said Cheesemaker Brad Sinko, who has been at Beecher’s since its beginning in 2003.

Making cheddars, as Sinko describes, does not result in the hard, yellow and sharp block cheese or America’s favorite plastic-wrapped cheese slices, which actually isn’t cheddar at all, but is a process of kneading cheese curds with salt, then slicing the large curd blocks into cubes to drain the whey by stacking and turning the cheese. 

Beecher’s largely produces Flagship cheese, a pasteurized-milk cheese aged in plastic bags for about a year, with a distinct mellow, sweet taste compared to sharp cheddars.

All the cheese varieties begin the same way, from milk that is heated for a high temperature/short time pasteurization process, killing potentially harmful bacteria milk can potentially carry such as E. coli, Salmonella and Campylobacter. All of the cheese, but one, Sinko said.

Beecher’s sells one type of semi-hard, unpasteurized cow’s milk cheese.

The key to safely producing the controversial cheese, Sinko said, is starting with clean milk, which Beecher’s ensures by standardizing their herd. A herd of 170 cows, including Jersey and Holsteins, from a farm in Duvall, Wash., supplies all of the milk used for Beecher’s cheese, allowing better control of the quality and purity of the milk, which also has no rBST, a synthetic growth hormone.

Although unpasteurized cheese is the least expensive product for Beecher’s to make, because they don’t have to run the HTST pasteurizer, they only make one variety. The unpasteurized cheese is made from raw milk that runs directly from the dairy truck parked alongside the building every morning through pipes to the tubs. The raw milk skips the first step of HTST pasteurization, where the milk is heated to 163 degrees F for 24 seconds, then cooled to 89 degrees F to make the cheese. Other than the heating process, Sinko and his apprentice cheesemakers make the unpasteurized cheese in the exact same steps they use to make other varieties. 

Sinko says unpasteurized cheese is more popular among some, including raw foodies and people from the East and Midwest, than others.

“The unpasteurized cheese is a consistent seller, but by no means does it get close to the pasteurized versions,” Sinko said. “That could be strictly due to availability though.”

Selling unpasteurized dairy products comes with strict laws and regulations, including federal laws banning raw milk interstate sales and U.S. Food and Drug Administration guidelines on cheese aging, but Beecher’s unpasteurized cheese is completely legal.

FDA laws require cheese made from unpasteurized milk be aged no less than 60 days and packaging must include the processing date, curing date and a notice on the label explaining the cheese was made from unpasteurized milk.

Beecher’s unpasteurized cheese is put in cold storage for 60 days after the production date, after which most of the bacteria is killed, Sinko said. After the required duration, the cheese is stored for an extra 18 months, ensuring the pH levels, the acidity of the milk, drop low enough bacteria cannot exist in the environment.

“When pH levels drop in combination with cold storage temperatures during the aging of unpasteurized cheeses, the environment simply becomes inhospitable for pathogens to flourish,” Sinko said.

While the debate on pasteurized and unpasteurized dairy products will continue, Beecher’s shows the naysayers that unpasteurized cheese can be *safe and delicious. Their cheeses have been awarded high marks from the American Cheese Society, the World Cheese Awards and multiple other organizations and fairs.

But the cheesemakers won’t take all the credit; “cheese is only as good as its milk,” Sinko said.

*Reporters at Eat, Drink and Be ate Beecher’s Raw Milk Flagship Handmade Cheese and found it to be delicious with a robust and nutty flavor. We are all still healthy and living, although all unpasteurized cheese has the potential to contain harmful bacteria.