The salty, sweet-cream butter we know and love in Ireland today is in fact a shadow of what would have been made up until only a few decades ago. In this workshop, we will look to make butter as it once was, gaining access to an authentic flavour which has been enjoyed for thousands of years.
We will take a raw milk, natural starter culture and inoculate cream to ferment it, churning in the traditional way and shaping it with heritage tools. This stage of fermentation is crucial to the preservation of butter through its change in acidity, and subsequent release of delicious, complex flavours.
The butter will be buried in a local bog, and dug up for a tasting in 2025.
Max Jones is a traditional food conservationist who documents imperiled food practices that are steeped in our connection with the land and seas, to try and prevent them from becoming lost. He has been working with artisan cheeses around Europe for over a decade, and has been specifically drawn to the traditional alpine pastoralists practicing transhumance in northern Italy. He is also involved in supporting Irish fishermen and works closely with Sally Barnes, the last exclusively wild salmon smoker in Ireland. Max is on instagram @uptherethelast
This event is part of Burrenbeo's Turas : Journeys in Stewardship - a Creative Climate Action project supported by Creative Ireland
The Burrenbeo Trust is a landscape charity dedicated to connecting people and place. Our aim is to help all of us identify ways in which we care for our places.
This is carried out through providing information, education, active conservation and supporting research on the future sustainable management of the Burren region.
