SE Almnas Tegel ALM *200g*

Almnäs Brick (Almnäs Tegel) is a hard-pressed “scalded” cheese, its square shape inspired by the handmade bricks manufactured by the Almnäs brick factory from the 1750’s onwards. On the rind, you can see the imprint of a small child’s foot, a historical reference to real footprints found in the brick floor in the attic of the manor house. Hundreds of years ago as the bricks dried in the sun, the farm workers’ children ran over them, leaving their footprints. Since then, a child’s footprint has been imprinted on every clay brick manufactured at Almnas. Brick production ended in 1976, but we continue the tradition today: the same logo is imprinted in the rind of every Almnäs Brick cheese. The rind is a rustic, brick red, achieved by washing the cheese in salt water. This process benefits a bacterial culture called Brevibacterium linens, which provides the reddish colour. The cut surface of the cheese is smooth, showing occasional small holes and cracks. The cheese colour ranges from ivory to straw, depending on the season. Almnäs Brick has a sweet, fruity aroma, reminiscent of butterscotch. The rind sometimes smells of orange or pineapple. The taste is fruity, with a slightly gritty mouth-feel. Almnäs Brick is aged between 18 and 30 months.

Almnäs has been producing cheese consistently since the 1830s, except for a short break between 1961 and 2008. They have the oldest registered cheese brand in Sweden, “Wrangebäck Sweden,” registered in 1889. The cheesery is housed in the estate’s old distillery building, which was built in 1770. Over the years the building has been repurposed many times, for example to store grain and military supplies. In 1987 due to his father’s poor health, Thomas Berglund returned to the estate and decided to start making cheese again. After many years of planning, traveling to France and Switzerland to study cheesemaking, and gaining organic certification, he re-started production in 2008. Their top-of-the-line, modern manufacturing equipment comes from Switzerland. Made of copper to improve the structural and sensorial characteristics of the cheese.