Cheesemaker Education Day

• What: Cheesemaker Education Day is the west coast’s premier educational conference for the artisan cheese industry.
• When: Saturday, January 24, 2026 from 8:30am to 5:30pm.
• Where: Withycombe Hall, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331.
• Who: Creamery owners, employees, and cheesemakers from Oregon, the NW, California, further afield; people interested in starting a creamery business, others related to the artisan cheese industry, and students. In addition to the seminars, there will be a small trade show for cheese industry vendors.
• Tickets: $40 for cheesemakers and owners/employees of cheesemaking businesses; $20 for students (free for OSU students); $95 all others. Ticket includes all seminars, light breakfast, lunch, and cheese reception.
• Friday Affinage Workshop: Friday, January 23, Affinage with Rueben Nilsson of the University of Wisconsin. Tickets are $40 and include lunch.
• Hotel Info: 1/11 is the last day to reserve in our room block at the Courtyard by Marriott Corvallis; Group Rate: $179+tax for standard room; Group link: Book your group rate for Institute for Food and Agriculture; Call in: Call 541-753-0199 (press 0 at the phone tree) and ask for a room under the “Institute for Food and Agriculture” Block.

CONFERENCE SCHEDULE | SAT JAN 24

8:00am Doors Open (Light Breakfast Served)

8:30am Welcome

8:30am Alphabet Soup! Resources for Small Food Businesses

Speakers: Katie Bray, Oregon Cheesse Guild; Susan Pheasant, PCC-DBI; Sarah Masoni, OSU Food Innovation Center; Jim Vu, Don Froylan; Julie Nixon, Dairy West

Who you gonna call? We have a veritable alphabet soup of organizations with all kinds of programs designed to help small and medium food businesses. Starting with a report on the Pacific Coast Coalition- Dairy Business Innovation Initiative’s opportunities and impacts, this session is a concise primer on who these organizations are, the services they offer, and how to access them. Including ODC/DW, SBA/SBDC, OSU FIC, PNW-PFB, DMI, ODA, and more!

10am Break

10:15am Market Trends in Dairy

Speakers: Hilary Renshaw, New Seasons; Steve Jones, Chefs Warehouse

What’s hot at the cheese counter? Flavors? Styles? And what do retailers wish they could source locally? An open discussion with our closest retail partners on what’s selling and what they’d like to see from all of you.

11:15am Recall Preparedness

Speaker: Ashley Vulin, Davis Wright Tremaine

Product recalls can have a serious impact on food brands, including both economic impacts and the risk of severe health consequences to consumers. This presentation will provide member cheese companies with a comprehensive refresher on recall preparedness, focusing on practical strategies to ensure regulatory compliance and prevention of food safety issues, and then provide guidance for how to effectively manage a recall and the ensuing issues if something does arise.

12pm Lunch

12:30pm OSU Grad Student Quick Fire

Quick updates on the exciting research projects related to cheesemaking that OSU’s talented grad students have in progress.

• Controlling Late Blowing Gas Defects in Cheese | Madeleine Enriquez, OSU
• Understanding Heat Resistant Bacteria | Garrett Botz, OSU
• MAP Usage to Control Mold in Shredded Cheese | Dylan Kelzer, OSU
• Bovine Colostrum as a Functional Food | Clara Honsinger, OSU

1:15pm The Physics of Affinage, Troubleshooting and Specification Development

Speaker: Eric Meredith – remote, Fromaginary

How to use physics to understand your aging space and common air conditioning processes. We’ll walk through the R&D process for creating a new item or item variations. The most common affinage related defects with their root causes along with the importance of a specification to the quality control process.

2:45pm Break

3pm Regulatory Update

Speaker: Karel Smit, ODA

• ODA Dairy Program Update
• ODA Ag Services Inspectors: Milk and or Milk Products/Water/Coolant Sampling
• Appendix N Milk Testing
• Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI)

3:45pm OSU Pilot Plant Update and Introduction

Speaker: Brandon Riesgaard, OSU

Oregon State University has a brand new make facility and all kinds of robust educational programming to go along with it, including their extension and continuing education activities. Check out what’s new at OSU! Facility tours will follow presentation.

4:15pm Cheese Reception and Tours

FRIDAY, JAN 23 from 9 to 4, Affinage Workshop led by Rueben Nilsson of the University of Wisconsin

Room 109 of Oregon State University’s Memorial Union Building at 2501 SW Jefferson Way in Corvallis

9-12:30 A deep dive into several aspects of affinage, from the make process to your facility to defects and how to identify and deal with them.
12:30-1 Lunch
1-2:30 Participants will have a chance to present questions and issues they’ve had and workshop solutions in real time.
2:30-3:30 Sarah Marcus of Briar Rose Creamery will lead the group through a tasting of cheeses that she and Eric Meredith made to exemplify various aspects of affinage manipulation.

Contact Katie Bray at katiembray(at)gmail(dot)com for more information on Cheesemaker Education Day.