O’ Brien’s Artisan Cheese
Hazel Cottage Farm, is family owned and run for eight generations. They are passionate about family, land and animals and have always harboured a love of food, both the production and the sharing with family and friends around the kitchen table.
As a boy, Jim O’Brien watched his father shuffle across incandescent light and low cloud to fetch his cows for quiet, pre-dawn milking. Hours later, tankards of frothing milk that bubbled at the rim were loaded on the pony trap and ridden to Ballyhahill creamery, a mile of green hedges and warm salutes. There, farmers grouped together on the low village wall and time was measured in the thickening of milk to cheese.
Established in 2014, O’Brien’s cheese represents a devotion to this simple, ritualistic way of life. Some 40 years later, Jim still delights in the rhythm of the twilight milking, the sweet smell of milk, and the quiet hours spent slowly mixing and warming it ’til it reaches the rich, golden consistency that characterizes the delicious flavour of O’Brien’s cheese. The long years of perfecting his recipe and the months spent waiting with an artisan’s patience for wheels to ripen to perfection have made O’Brien’s cheeses some of the best in the country.
Milk type: Cow
Style: Fresh cheese and soft cheese
Flavour: Crumbly with real depth of flavour and relatively subtle salting
Paste: Crumbly, Light
Rennet: Vegetarian
Season available: Available all year
Made with raw milk: No
Milk type: Cow
Style: Cheddar
Flavour: Clean sharp flavour that dovetails beautifully with the rich creamy milk
Paste: Hard, pale yellow paste
Rind: Wax rind
Rennet: Vegetarian
Season available: Available all year
Made with raw milk: No
Milk type: Cow
Style: Semi-soft bloomy rind
Flavour: Buttery flavour, creamy texture and smells fresh with a light hint of mushrooms and the local flora from the fertile pastures of West Limerick
Paste: Soft, creamy interior
Rind: White, bloomy rind
Rennet: Vegetarian
Season available: Available all year
Made with raw milk: No
Milk type: Cow
Style: Hard cheese
Flavour: Sweet and buttery taste that intensifies and lingers on the palate and a fresh aroma
Paste: Rich yellow colour
Rennet: Vegetarian
Season available: Available all year
Made with raw milk: No
