Taylor Brothers Sugarhouse & Creamery got its start in the seventies when Jim, Bill, and Rob Taylor were youngsters working on their family’s dairy farm. For fun, they tapped some maple trees in the neighborhood, borrowed an old canning pot from their mother, built an arch of concrete blocks and went into the syrup business. Syrup, cheese and more local farm products for sale.
By Helen Brody (April 21, 2010)
Taylor Brothers Sugarhouse & Creamery got its start in the 1970s when Jim, Bill, and Rob Taylor were youngsters working on their family’s dairy farm. For fun, they tapped some maple trees in the neighborhood, borrowed an old canning pot from their mother, built an arch of concrete blocks and went into the syrup business.
Gradually they increased the number of trees and upgraded their equipment, and through their college years developed a passion for making high quality syrup and other maple products. The operation expanded significantly in 1992 when they added a sugarbush nearby that is part of a large managed forest and invested in the new equipment needed to handle the far-larger volume of sap to be processed into syrup.
During the winter of 2010, to go with their maple operation and dairy farm, the family added a creamery. It is located in a new structure called the “cheese house” because it is next door to the “milk house” where the milk from their cows is chilled and stored before it goes to market. The cheese house includes an array of modern processing equipment, including a pasteurizer/cheese vat, presses, and cooler—all the things needed to make high quality cheeses and to comply with stringent food safety regulations.
They are making traditional cheeses of the Connecticut Valley region using recipes that have been passed down through generations of farmstead cheese makers. One is called Mill Hollow Cheese, a yellow cows’ milk cheese made using a washed curd method and coated with yellow wax. The Taylors consider it a “snacking” cheese and also good for grating and slicing for sandwiches and melts. A smoked Mill Hollow is in the works.
A semi-hard “jack style” cheese called Evelyn’s Jack is a mild semi-hard cows’ milk cheese and also a good for melting and snacking and becomes sharper as it ages, although it typically is enjoyed as a young cheese. It comes with a red wax rind and it’s named after a favorite cow in the Taylor Farm herd.
Taylor Brothers Sugarhouse and Creamery
166 Main Street
Meriden Village, NH 03770
603-469-3182
www.taylorbrotherssugarhouse.com
Point of sale: year around farmstand, wholesale and retail