About Our Cheese Pots

Cheese should neither dry out nor “sweat” due to too much moisture.
The combination of high-fired stoneware and the breathable spruce-wood lid creates an ideal climate for cheese: excess moisture can escape through the lid, so no condensation forms—and therefore no whitish film develops on the cheese.
The ceramic is completely non-porous, and the lid keeps the cheese fresh for a long time because it does not dry out.

Each container is thrown by hand on the potter’s wheel—we are professional potters with high standards of aesthetics and function.
We leave the throwing rings that form while pulling up on the wheel visible instead of smoothing everything out. You won’t find two containers that are exactly the same!
We mix our glazes from natural raw materials such as feldspar, clay and lime. We fire at almost 1300 °C, which makes the ceramic especially robust and durable.
You can see the energy and vitality of the making process in every unique piece!
Thanks to our photovoltaic system, the firing process is also largely CO₂-neutral.

For cheese, a temperature in the range of 12–14°C is recommended. If you have a reasonably cool place, you can simply keep the pot outside the refrigerator. Perhaps there is a suitable spot during the cooler seasons.
If not, then it should go into refrigeration, because a warm room is not suitable in the long run even with this pot.
In any case, the pot regulates moisture reliably—even in the refrigerator.

No—we have never had any problems with that. The humidity in the refrigerator is not so high that it would provoke mould.

Yes—the cheese goes into the container without paper or packaging. Unwrapped and uncomplicated!

Most of the containers are used for hard cheese—sliced cheese, mountain cheese or similar. Mixing different types is generally not a problem, except with mould cheeses.

For mould cheeses, we recommend using a separate pot —for example the M or S size. White, blue or red mould can otherwise transfer to other types of cheese. That would be harmless from a health perspective, but visually and perhaps in taste it is usually not desirable.

Because there are so many varieties, this question cannot be answered in general terms. However, thanks to the lid’s moisture regulation, every type of cheese keeps optimally long. It doesn’t sweat and it doesn’t dry out.

Our customers consistently report that they notice practically no cheese smell in the refrigerator—even with more strongly scented cheeses.

Yes, clearly. It absorbs the smell of the contents in a short time—cheese, bread, etc. Even with the honey containers, the lid smells of honey. That’s why we wouldn’t use the container every day alternately for cheese and biscuits.

It is made of solid spruce, laminated in three layers. Spruce is particularly well suited because of its high breathability. The glue line is both moisture-permeable and waterproof. The thickness of the lid is 13 mm.

Yes, the wooden lid is finished with a linseed-oil-based oil that protects it from stains. It can be wiped with a damp cloth or even rinsed, as long as it can dry afterwards. It prefers to be dried off immediately.
Frequent rinsing washes out the wood oil. The lid can be refreshed with linseed oil or regular household olive oil. It becomes particularly nice if it is smoothed with fine sandpaper (grit 180) before oiling.

We fixed it with a special two-component adhesive at high temperature. Trying to lever it off would tear out wood as well.

The three-layer wood practically does not warp—certainly not in any functionally relevant way.

Yes, the ceramic container is absolutely dishwasher-safe. The wooden lid is not. It should be wiped or rinsed by hand and then left to dry in the open air.

The coating is called glaze, because it really is glass.
Cakes can have “glaze” too—chocolate glaze and lemon glaze. In that case it’s just called that; it isn’t glass. 🙂

Our glazes are technically very demanding; they are matte and react very lively during firing. They are the result of years of silicate-ceramic experiments.
Let’s take a look at our green-blue one. It forms three different colours—green, blue and black—yet it never settles on an in-between tone. This reaction is what makes this glaze so exciting. The yellow-brown and blue-shaded show a similar phenomenon.
The former creates a play of light brown, ochre, reddish and darker brown tones.
The blues of the latter range between grey-blue, purple and darker areas.
We are often asked what exactly “black-anthracite” is. We would describe it as a relatively dark, neutral anthracite. Some customers also see blue or green in it, and even red occurs.
White-sand is a warm white that lets the clay underneath show through slightly in places. At edges, corners, etc. it shifts into a light reddish-brown. In this contrast, the white comes into its own.
We like to allow firing runs in green-blue, blue-shaded and white-sand; less so in yellow-brown and black-anthracite.

Yes, our glazes are very resistant. Neither knives nor plastic or metal scouring pads leave scratches.

Absolutely—and more than that: we not only comply with the legal limit values, we also completely avoid lead, barium and strontium compounds in our glazes.
Our glazes consist exclusively of natural raw materials such as feldspar, limestone, talc, clay and mineral colour oxides. They are safe in contact with food—inside and out.

There is no colour application whose lightfastness even comes close to that of high-fired glazes.
Our glazes will not fade for the next thousand years.
Shall we bet? 🙂

The glaze melts in the kiln and is viscous at 1300°C. The underside of the container remains unglazed because otherwise it would stick.
Since our ceramic is completely non-porous, this unglazed area has no effect on function or hygiene.

That’s a design question. We find it more appealing to leave a little of the ceramic visible rather than covering it completely.
We like to show the making process!
But of course it’s all a matter of taste. Perhaps you’d like to get used to these containers that way?

For sausage—both whole and sliced—the situation is similar to cheese. It should not dry out, and condensation should not build up; no damp film should form.
It should stay as fresh as possible. For the same reason, it has proven itself just as well for storing sausage.

It does well in it, because excess moisture escapes through the lid.

Some of our customers have used this pot exclusively for pastries for many years and like the way the lid handles.

Here the wooden lid has no advantage for shelf life. But probably for the durability of the lid itself if it is opened and closed often.

With a cheese dome, the wood would be on the bottom, which would cause it to lose its breathability.
We also find a wooden lid easier to open than a ceramic dome. The container is nicely compact to handle, even in the refrigerator.
That’s our view—best is to simply take a container in your hands and try it out yourself!

Yes, there are three options:

1. You send us your lid and we glue a new handle onto it in the workshop.
   Since we can only do this at the next opportunity, it may take up to four weeks.

   Costs:
   Shipping to us at your expense, plus €7 for return shipping to you.
   We cover the repair costs.

2. We send you a new handle along with gluing instructions, and you glue the new handle onto the lid yourself.
   We are happy to email you the instructions in advance. Please read them and let us know whether you want to do it yourself.

   Costs:
   €7 including shipping.

3. We supply you with a completely new lid.
   For exact fitting in the workshop, we (ideally) need the container or the old lid. You can bring or send us the container or the lid.
   Most of the time we can find a matching one immediately; sometimes we have to wait until the next lid delivery from the carpenter.

   Costs:
   S – cheese pot €9
   M – cheese pot €12
   L – cheese pot €15
   plus shipping if applicable €7

The wooden lid can be replaced, although this is only rarely necessary. However, we have had cases where the lid burned on a stovetop or was torn apart by a dog. Then we supply a replacement.
Please read point 3 above under handle replacement.

Presumably some kind of cheese mould got onto the lid. It can be removed easily with vinegar or vinegar essence.
Because of the smell, it’s best to do this outdoors and place the lid flat with the inside facing up (support it a little). Pour vinegar essence on it undiluted and generously, spread it, let it soak in and evaporate.
Washing it off is not necessary; the smell will soon disappear.
If stains are visible as well, they can be sanded off after drying. We recommend oiling the underside again afterwards.

The lid dimensions are not exactly standardised even within the same size; they vary by millimetres and tenths of a millimetre. We only fit the lids to the respective container after firing the ceramic.

If you can bring the lid to our workshop, we will try to find a matching container. This usually works, but unfortunately not always.

We can also try on one of the markets, which experience shows works in about one third of cases. In that case, however, one option is always to take your lid to the workshop and try again there.

The cost of the base part without a lid is:
S – cheese pot €32
M – cheese pot €40
L – cheese pot €47

We throw our cheese containers in three sizes:
S – cheese pot for smaller pieces or individual types, approx. 0.5 litre
M – cheese pot , almost as popular as the L size, approx. 1 litre
L – cheese pot , the most common household size, approx. 1.7 litres