My favorite thing is to find hidden gems in small, Minnesota towns. We recently spent an afternoon at Redhead Creamery in Brooten, MN, and it is one of the best hidden gems I’ve found yet!
Read on for the details of how we spent our afternoon at Redhead Creamery – and add this to your list of MN places to visit ASAP!
Tour of Redhead Creamery
To get the full experience of an afternoon at Redhead Creamery, make sure to go on a tour. The tours are $10 per person and run every Friday and Saturday at 12:30 p.m. No need to make a reservation! Our tour lasted about an hour and a half, and we were able to see the entire cheese making process, from how they raise calfs all the way to the cheese being made. We toured a few different barns, got some lessons on food safety, and learned all about how they use 8% of the milk their cows produce to create 1,000 pounds of cheese each week!
Cows!
Getting up close and personal with the cows was my highlight of the tour! The calves were the cutest – we even got to see one that was just born an hour prior! Each of their cows produces on average 80 gallons of milk per day by eating 109 pounds of food and drinking 50 gallons of water each day. I loved learning all the statistics, but my favorite one was that on a day when cheese is being made, they will milk a cow at 5:30 am and by 12:30 pm, fresh cheese curds are fully produced by that same milk! Apparently this is the best time to try the cheese curds, so make sure you ask if they made a fresh batch on the day you visit to get them while they’re still warm 🙂
Cheese tasting
After the tour, we were treated to a cheese tasting (this is included in the tour price). We tried some brie, garlic cheddar, and some sort of cheese butter which was my favorite! Alise, the resident redhead who started the Redhead Creamery talked us through the different kinds and was willing to answer any question we had! On a side note, everything that Alise has done to start the Redhead creamery is absolutely amazing! She knew that she wanted to start a creamery since she was 16 years old, and she took all the steps to make it happen all on her own. She is someone that little girls and boys everywhere ere should look up to. #ladyboss.
Anyways, we also tried 3 kinds of the pan fried cheese curds: original, maple bacon, and fig! They were all amazing, but I think just the original was my favorite.
Cheese shop
Aside from educating herself on the making of cheese, Alise is also an expert in marketing, and it shows. As a marketing professional myself, she is doing everything right. The Redhead Creamery is a destination and a true experience, and the cheese shop is a crucial part of that. Even if you don’t go on a tour, you can shop, try different cheeses, and even some ice cream! We spent another hour after our tour just relaxing (and eating) in the cheese shop.
All things local
I could go on and on about how great the Redhead Creamery is, but I’ll leave you with one more thing. The creamery is local and it supports local. Central Minnesota has so many fun things to offer and is full of talented makers (make sure to pick up on of their local guides pictured above!) I picked up some North Made marshmallows that I’ve been eyeing for a while and had them in a s’more later that night. They were so yummy!
For more things to do in Central Minnesota, check out my 5 things to do in Alexandria MN. Happy exploring, friends!
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