What Is Sharp Cheese, Really?

While many cheeses are tangy and robust enough to be considered “sharp,” the adjective is rarely used to describe any variety but one. In the cheese vernacular, Cheddar stands alone. But sharp is a controversial term, almost universally derided by cheesemakers and mongers. Australian cheesemaker Marcia Burgmann expresses what many feel about it, “The term makes me cringe. It’s overused by the general public and used to mislabel other flavor traits but that’s probably because they aren’t being educated on the many other descriptors they could be using instead.” And therein lies the problem. What does “sharp” actually mean?

 

Defining Sharp

In USDA Standard for Grades of Cheddar Cheese sharp is mentioned in a listing in the definition of acid, “Sharp and puckery to the taste, characteristic of lactic acid.” If that seems vague, it is because it is. And yet, sharp is used on packages of Cheddar, typically ones with more age. “When we talk about sharp cheese, the main thing we’re talking about is the intensity of flavor,” says Dean Sommer, cheese and food technologist on the senior management team at the Center for Dairy Research in Madison, Wisconsin. A cheese labeled sharp has a more concentrated intensity that develops over time. The longer a Cheddar is aged, the more biochemical reactions it undergoes. The more biochemical reactions, the stronger punch its flavor will pack.

 

Sharp Means Aged

In cheese lingo then, sharp is essentially synonymous with the word “aged,” with one significant difference. In the U.S., only Cheddar that has been matured for a minimum of 60 days can be labeled aged, according to the FDA. There is no minimum aging requirement to be labeled sharp.

“There’s a certain subjectiveness to it and, quite honestly, some cheese companies have higher standards than others of what sharp means to them and their customers,” Sommer says. “What some people call sharp today would have, back in the day, been just a medium cheese.”

 

When is Cheddar Considered Sharp?

Cost efficiency is the biggest driver of the declining sharpness of sharp Cheddar. Waiting a minimum of six months for a Cheddar to mature, the time historically considered the threshold between a medium and sharp cheese, doesn’t make financial sense for some creameries. “From an economic standpoint, there’s always a temptation to get the cheese out the door faster,” Sommer explains.

Aging, itself, is also a gamble for Cheddar producers. “Cheesemaking is still a batch process and no two batches are totally identical,” says Sommer, who spent 18 years working in a Cheddar factory. Not every Cheddar slated for aging can live up to the task and there’s no way to predict for sure which vats will make it and which won’t.

 

Grading Cheese Sharp

Sommer explains that in Wisconsin cheese graders assess cheese every two to three months to decide if its flavor and texture will still be good another few months down the road. Those that don’t make the grade are culled and put it into a “mild program.” Those that do will be reevaluated again in a few months.

“Three months down the line, some more won’t make it and they’ll go into a medium program,” says Sommer. After a year of aging, a company “would be darn lucky if 25% of the cheese that they made still makes a good sharp Cheddar.”

(This is also why you can’t age a mild or medium Cheddar into a sharp Cheddar at home; there’s at least a 75% chance it will go bad before it matures to the intensity you want).

Since economic factors often play a bigger role than flavor in whether a cheese is described as sharp, choosing a sharp Cheddar that actually has the intense, nutty flavor it should is more difficult today than it was in the past. One way to bypass the problem is to look for an “aged” Cheddar instead of a sharp Cheddar. In the United States at least, that wording guarantees that the cheese has been matured for at least six months. Read more about cheese grading.

 

In Search of a Great Sharp Cheddar

Sommer calls sharp Cheddar from the award-winning Wisconsin brand Henning’s Cheese the gold standard by which he measures all others. “It’s aged at least 18 months, and they actually put an age on the package,” he explains. “A few months ago, I couldn’t find it in the grocery store and [they said] that’s because we ran out and the stuff we have is only 16 months old. That’s unusual, most companies would have said, well, that’s close enough.”

His best tip for finding a truly sharp sharp Cheddar, though, comes down to how it feels in your hands. “What I tell everybody is to squeeze the package with your thumb on one side and fingers on the other. If it isn’t very firm, if you can depress it at all, don’t buy it. A really well-aged Cheddar should be almost as hard as a brick.”

That advice seems like a contradiction since many cheeses soften as they age. But because Cheddar undergoes a process called proteolysis—the breakdown of casein proteins—it becomes drier over time. “An aged sharp Cheddar connoisseur is looking for that crumbly texture,” says Sommer. “You try to slice it and it’s brittle and breaks easily. You try to bend it, it immediately cracks.”

Ultimately, whether a Cheddar is labeled sharp or not has become increasingly meaningless. As the late great Pat Polowsky put it on Cheese Science, What does sharp mean? Nothing, stop using it! It’s now up to Cheddar fans to determine for themselves whether a cheese has been aged long enough to develop the sharp flavor they crave. “Sharpness, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder,” says Sommer.