Stinking Bishop, the cheese of choice of Wallace and Gromitt and a favourite in delicatessens around the world, is made in a Gloucestershire dairy farm using an HDG biomass boiler. A world famous cheese made using old wood; sounds highly unlikely, but it’s true. Stinking Bishop, the cheese of choice of Wallace and Gromitt and a favourite in delicatessens around the world, is made in a Gloucestershire dairy farm using an HDG biomass boiler, supplied by Euroheat and installed by Hereford based installer, Alun Matthews of the Efficient Energy Centre.
Charles Martell, the farmer who invented and makes the cheese has set up his farm and dairy to be as sustainable as possible. When he came to re-design the dairy side of the operation, wood burning was an obvious option as the farm can supply its own timber and there is also a continuous supply of waste wood, mainly pallets.
The dairy needs lots of hot water, primarily for the pasteurisation and heating of the milk to start the cheese making process. Washing down the dairy each day also demands large volumes of very hot water to ensure completely hygienic conditions (Charles needs to make sure that the stinks in the cheese are the ones he wants). Lastly the whole dairy is heated with an underfloor system using the heat from the boiler.
An HDG Euro 50kW log burning boiler, supplied by Euroheat, acts as the main heat source. The boiler feeds into a 3000 litre buffer vessel held at 80ºC. Also feeding into this vessel are solar panels mounted on the dairy roof. The boiler is manually fired, usually once a day, and the ash removal is simple using the front and side doors. The boiler has a Lambda control whereby the flue gasses are continually monitored and two servo motors control the primary and secondary air; this gives operating efficiencies of over 90%.