Our Story
Cheese Monkey is a small family-run business based in the UK. The company came about when our family moved to an intentional community based in rural Suffolk, leaving behind our city-based lifestyle. The community is self-sufficient in dairy all products and milking the cows was part of our new daily routine.
At times during the year, the community has an excess of milk. And what do you do when you have an excess of milk? You make cheese of course!
Our cheese making journey began on quite a large scale for home cheesemkakers. Making large wheels of cheese from 90 litres of milk was exciting but also nerve-wracking. That is an awful lot of milk to waste if things go wrong! We were taught the cheese making process from members of the community who have been farming the land here in Suffolk for more than 40 years.
As our enthusiasm for all things cheesy grew we realised that you don’t need your own herd of cows, large cheese vats and presses or a lot of specialist equipment. We set out to make cheese making accessible for all.
Starting by introducing friends and family to quick soft cheeses which they were excited and surprised by the simplicity and taste. We then worked on recipes for more challenging cheeses using rennet that are still achievable on a small scale.
Ten years later we are still living at the same community and are still milking Fern, one of the first cows we milked.