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18 The Cheese Guide BY LORRIE BAUMANN Minerva Dairy's Amish Roll Butter offers a taste of history. Adam Mueller, who runs Minerva Dairy with his sister Venae Watts, is a fifth-generation member of the family who founded the dairy in 1894. It is the oldest family-owned dairy in the U.S. "We make more product today than we used to, but we still make it in batch churns, so the texture and the flavor profile of the butter is the same as it was since the beginning," he says. Minerva Dairy is located in northeastern Ohio, in a part of the country settled by family farmers who found the area favorable for raising small dairy herds. Today, about 70 of those family farmers are supplying Minerva Dairy with the milk that provides the cream that the dairy turns into its butter. They're all raising their cows on pasture, with a typical herd size of 50 cows. "We're very proud to be working with them. If they couldn't exist, we couldn't exist either. It's a symbiotic relationship," Mueller says. "When you know that your butter is coming from Minerva Dairy, you also know that the milk is coming from pasture-raised cows with the freedom to roam in and out of the barn – they have a freedom of lifestyle. That's why we prefer 'pasture-raised' much more than 'grass-fed.' It's not just about the feed of the animal – it's about the cow's lifestyle. Cows need to have fresh air and the option to move around, just like they did a hundred years ago." Minerva Dairy uses that milk to make its Amish Roll Butter in small-batch churns that preserve the butterfat that's lost in the high-speed process used to make commodity butter. The result is a butter that's 84 percent butterfat and has all the flavor and texture of an artisanal product. That's why it's called "Amish Roll" Butter – in this context, "Amish" is a dairy industry term that signifies high butterfat and traditional churning rather than a religion or culture. The butter is salted with sea salt, which contributes a lot of salty flavor for the amount of salt that's actually added. While Minerva Dairy cleaves to tradition with its Amish Roll Butter, the most recent additions to its product line represent a departure – with butters infused with flavors in the churn. "All the flavors are made right in the churn. That's a big distinction about our operation – it's not butter that's incorporated with flavors at another time," Mueller says. "It is all natural-flavored butter. We don't use any blends; we don't use any preservatives; we don't use any oils. It's just the butter that you've always known from Minerva Dairy with those different flavors. We're not using any processed or imitation ingredients." The flavored line includes Smoked Butter, which is cold-smoked with maple, and Garlic Herb Butter, both of which are typically used as finishing butters to be melted over a steak or perhaps some grilled vegetables. "Anywhere you might envision using butter, we're able to lighten that up and give a different flair to the recipes," Mueller says. "We're the only smoked butter out there. You can imagine how difficult it is to smoke butter and not have it melt. We did a lot of work to figure out how to do it and have it retain its shape." Along with those flavors, which are available year-round, Minerva Dairy makes some seasonal flavors, with Cinnamon Honey Butter coming out this spring for a limited time. "It's more of a breakfast butter. You're going to be using it on your bagels or your toast," Mueller says. "With the cinnamon honey, other people might use honey extract that's not even real honey. We use actual, pure honey." "We have a really fun time developing new flavors. We have a couple of different flavors that we're working on for our next seasonal offering," he adds. Rumor has it that those flavors might be sriracha and saffron, although Mueller didn't confirm this. "One of my joys is to be able to walk around with samples and get everyone's input. It's a company-wide effort," he says. Minerva Dairy's products are distributed throughout an area bounded generally by Maine in the northeast, Florida in the southeast, Texas in the southwest and Wisconsin on the northwest. "We're not necessarily going after the commodity market," Mueller says. "We are looking at consumers who want to know the entire food chain." For more information, visit www.minervadairy.com or call 330.868.4196. taste t h e f a m i l y f a r m s b e h i n d M i n e r v a D a i r y B u t t e r s

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