Colorado’s MouCo cheese captivates connoisseurs from coast to coast
By Becky Talley, Fence Post Staff Reporter
“Cheese - milk’s leap toward immortality.”
- Clifton Paul Fadiman
The success of the company is due to the hard work and dedication of the husband and wife team, Robert Poland and Birgit Halbreiter, who own and run the cheese company. It is in these two individuals’ history that we can understand the bright future that is ahead of MouCo.
Birgit has a background with a long history in dairy and cheese making. She was raised in Memmingen, Germany, a part of Bavaria, where her father, Franz Halbreiter, has been a master cheesemaker for nearly 50 years. She studied to be a dairy laboratory specialist while living in Germany and worked for one of the worlds largest soft-ripened cheese manufacturers, Champignon. Eventually she left Germany and began working for many food manufacturing companies, including New Belgium Brewing Company in Fort Collins.
Meanwhile Robert worked for New Belgium Brewing Company and was in in charge of fermentation, which led to him meeting Birgit, and as they say, the rest is history.
About six years ago, Robert and Birgit decided to branch out from the beer business and turned toward “brewing” something a bit more on the solid side. They decided to make cheese, mostly because of Birgit’s background and because Robert describes himself as a hands-on food person who really wanted to learn the art of cheese making.
“I’m really into food production,” he relates.
The operation began as an in-home process. Originally, the two got their milk from a local farmer who gave them a great supply. Robert says that finding the right balance to make the cheese was tough for awhile, but eventually he got the hang of it.
“After a couple of years the cheese got great,” he said.
And he wasn’t the only one who began to see the fruits of the couple’s labor. Their friends became instant fans of Robert and Birgit’s product, and the couple’s home hobby started to blossom into something more. They were giving so much cheese out that the issue of meeting health standards came up, because they wanted to make sure they were making a safe product. So because of safety and the burgeoning demand for their product the couple decided to make a business out of cheese making.
“Our only avenue to satisfy our friends was this,” Robert says laughingly.
So MouCo Cheese became a business, one of the only to make this kind of cheese in Colorado, and Robert and Birgit have been busy ever since.
The business is a bit more advanced than the home cheese making operation. First the amount of milk they use has increased quite a bit. Through the Dairy Farmers Association MouCo gets a lot of its milk from La Luna Dairy, a local dairy out of Wellington. The company uses 250 gallons of raw milk to produce its cheese every week, and they are glad to have the relationship with La Luna.
“It’s really good milk and really nice people. They’re in the belief you treat your herd correctly, you keep your cows happy, and they will produce. It’s really nice to work with a dairy like that,” Robert said. This philosophy is very important to him because he works to keep his product healthy and environmentally friendly. In fact as the milk comes off the truck it is tested for antibiotics, a standard practice in the dairy industry. Though it all starts with milk, the initial product, there is so much more to making cheese.
The first step after the milk arrives is to pasteurize it. That happens by putting the milk into an vat and heating it using hot water. At this stage MouCo has set up a way to recapture the hot water used to heat the milk, reuse it to cool the cheese, and then recapture it again to heat up more milk.
“It’s very environmentally friendly. It allows milk to move fast and prevents damage,” Robert said.
After pasteurization, biological cultures are added to sour the milk which will eventually give the cheese its aroma, flavors and creaminess.
Next rennet is added, which is a substance that thickens the milk and turns it into a yogurt-like mass, or “curd.” The curd is then cut into pieces and the whey is drained. You are then left with the curd and can control how much water comes out of the product. This is important because moisture helps give the cheese its consistency. Draining a lot of water from the cheese will create harder varieties like parmesan. Draining less water will create softer cheeses like cream cheese.
From there the cheese is put into forms and is turned to allow more water to drain equally. At around 20 hours, it is salted to bring out the flavors and develop a rind. After that it is allowed to ripen for two weeks, turning daily, and is finally ready to be sold.
One type of cheese that MouCo makes with this amazing process is Camembert, a cheese that has a soft creamy center with a nutty aroma and flavor as well as a creamy texture, according to Robert. The next, ColoRouge, is a cheese that was developed by Robert and Franz Halbreiter, who consults for the company, and is a type of cheese that is not made by other companies in the United States. Robert likens it to traditional European cheeses like Chaumes or Muenster. This unique creation is made just like the Camembert, but includes an extra step called smearing, which consists of rubbing the cheese skin for the first two days after being formed. This gives the cheese its trademark rusty orange-red color that gave it its name. It also has a creamy, buttery texture.
“It appeals to the American palate by being mild and spicy,” says Robert.
According to Robert, these cheeses are used by chefs in foods like salads, pastries and often as a melting item on hors d’oeuvres.
“You want something that adds to the dish but not owns the dish,” says Robert.
With these two outstanding cheeses it is easy to see why all the hard work has paid off for Robert and Birgit. They sell around 1,000 rounds of cheese a week to locations all across the United States, like Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, Hotel Chains like Wyndham and in restaurants in Chicago, Portland and Washington, D.C., just to name a few.
But not to worry if you are craving a taste of this great cheese, there are rounds of it in a store near you! It is available in Albertson’s and Kroger Stores (King Soopers and City Market) and other select businesses in Greeley, Denver, Boulder, Vail, Aspen, Durango, Colorado Springs and Telluride. And right in MouCo’s hometown of Fort Collins you can find it at Toddy’s and Beavers Market and the above mentioned grocery stores as well as the local farmers market and the business, Maggie McCulloughs.
With the amount of business that the company is doing, it still has not forgotten the commitment to keeping things environmentally sound. The company has established a returnable shipping case program. MouCo sends out the cheese orders in insulated boxes that Robert builds on his own, using gel packs for insulation, and pays the postage to have the recipients send the boxes back. According to Robert, it has eliminated a lot of waste and orders from California have quadrupled since they established this concept. In fact, they found out that some of the boxes have traveled over 20,000 miles! That attests to MouCo’s dedication to the cheese industry.
“I hope to help lead the industry in cheese making trends. I think things we do here are cutting edge, but they are not special and people could do it too,” said Robert.
According to Robert this has all been a dizzying ride. The company grew 250 percent last year and is already up 50-60 percent from that, with the holiday season being the busiest time. Through it all, Robert and Birgit have not lost their focus on making a great product and keeping the smaller producing businesses in the cheese industry viable.
“I want it to be something special. I can’t compete with the big companies. So it’s just do stuff that they don’t want to do. I want to make truly exquisite cheeses, maybe just two, maybe just three,” says Robert, who, with Birgit also juggles a family of sons, Maximilian and Kaspar and a third child on the way. But according to him he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“This is what I want to do. I don’t think either of us eight years ago thought we’d be making cheese, but I love it. What else would I do?” 
Co-owner of MouCo Cheese Company, Robert Poland stands with the Camembert cheese that has gained such praise in the culinary world. His wife, Birgit, is the other co-owner of the company.
The milk pasteurizing vessel where the entire process begins by heating raw milk.
Camembert (left) and ColoRouge Cheese (right) ripen in the cooler of MouCo cheese company. This is the final process of cheese making before the rounds are hand wrapped and then sold.
