milk type
Sheep
coagulant
Vegetarian Coagulant
milk treatment
Raw
location
Near Bethesda, North Wales
milk source
Bought-in
breed
Lleyn
season
Summer-Autumn
average age
3-4 Weeks
cheesemakers
Carrie Rimes
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This rare example of a Welsh raw sheep's milk cheese takes its name from the Welsh for 'little bleat'.
background
our work with this cheese
Accompaniments
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Brefu Bach
The texture of this soft sheep’s milk cheese is moussy, light and fluffy, often with a silky breakdown at the rind


This rare example of a Welsh raw sheep's milk cheese takes its name from the Welsh for 'little bleat'.
milk type
Sheep
coagulant
Vegetarian Coagulant
milk treatment
Raw
location
Near Bethesda, North Wales
milk source
Bought-in
breed
Lleyn
season
Summer-Autumn
average age
3-4 Weeks
cheesemakers
Carrie Rimes
background
Wales is a country famed for its sheep farming, but one that never developed a strong tradition of sheep's milk cheesemaking. One woman who is working hard to change that is Carrie Rimes, originally from Devon but deeply embedded in her north Wales community for more than three decades. A few years ago, after a long career as a grassland scientist, Carrie embarked on a new adventure: turning her lifelong interest in cheesemaking, ignited as a child on her family's farm, into a profession. After gaining experience in several French dairies, she applied her new skills to the challenge of developing a distinctive Welsh sheep's cheese made from raw milk. The result was Brefu Bach – Welsh for 'little bleat'. Produced at Ffarm Moelyci in Dyffryn Ogwen, in the foothills of Snowdonia, it is made with the milk of traditional breeds fed on species-rich pastures with the highest welfare conditions, including a small flock of local, organic, grass-fed Friesland-Lleyn ewes.
our work with this cheese
Brefu Bach is driven across the border to Chorlton Cheesemongers, our sister company in Manchester, where we collect it weekly in our van. When it arrives back with us in London, it is typically dried, turned daily and placed in the environment best suited to the batch until ripe enough to sell.