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Next Course Dates: March 18-20, 2025 | REGISTER NOW | Registration closes on March 4, 2025

Course Fee: $1250

Course Description
Immerse yourself in cheese during this in-person course at our new facility on the UW-Madison campus in Babcock Hall, with our CDR experts. Engage in lectures, demonstrations, and lots of hands-on activities with graders from the industry to enhance your cheese grading and evaluation skills. This course is structured around the cheese grading standards covered by Wisconsin Ag chapter 81 and USDA grading standards, as well as informal industry standards for cheeses without Wisconsin standards.

Learning Objectives
• Define grading terms and other terms related to evaluation.
• Learn the basic principles of sensory and basic cheese flavors and textures.
• Learn about the basics of manufacturing for up to 15 unique cheese varieties and how to identify their common flavor attributes.
• Evaluate and identify how to grade industrial-size (5 to 40-pound) samples of blue cheese, swiss, parmesan, mozzarella, brick/muenster and american-style cheeses with expert graders from the industry.
• Describe how to evaluate the functionality of mozzarella in culinary applications.

Brandon Prochaska - CDR technical course contact
Contact with questions on course content or if this course is right for you.

Heather Cooper - CDR events coordinator
Contact with questions on registration, certificates, or other questions.

Course Instructors: Brandon Prochaska | Dean Sommer | Dr. Rani Govindasamy-Lucey | John Jaeggi | Gina Mode | Alex Sobeck (DATCP)

Next Cheese Grading & Evaluation Course: October 21-23, 2025, registration closes 2 weeks before course start date.

Certificate of Completion
Certificates will be printed and issued in-person on the final day of each course for all in-person courses.

Agenda Outline

Parking on campus | Lodging in Madison

Full list of CDR short courses