Cheese, some good, some stinky,
some covered in microscopic spiders.
We're making a video about that third one.
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Okay, now back to the show.
(drums tap)
Welcome to Wurchwitz in Eastern Germany,
a small, teeny tiny town here,
kind of in the middle of nowhere.
It's the only town in the entire world, however,
that makes a special kind of cheese
called Milbenkase, mite cheese.
Let's go.
Mites are arachnids.
The cousins of spiders.
Arachnids are basically bugs
with eight legs.
Mites come in all shapes and sizes.
But the sizes are really, really, really, really small,
most less than one millimeter.
A lot of 'em eat plants,
a few suck blood and some eat cheese.
This little town is so famous for it,
the producers erected a statue.
We catch up with Christian and Homis
to ask why mite cheese exactly?
Well, first of all, gentlemen,
it was Homis' birthday yesterday.
So, prost!
He is 75 and we're celebrating with beer.
Okay. So Milbenkase.
Give me a two minute breakdown.
How, why, when, all of that.
- The history is not that people call it mite cheese.
They call it like kind of flour cheese.
In the 19th century,
they put the flour under the microscope and then they see,
"Oh, wow, it's moving."
- It's not a flour.
- It's not flour.
It's just moving, and it's the mites.
And then this research about arachnology and zoology came
and saw okay, what can mites do with their actions
and the mites,
they make the cheese durable.
- Increases the longevity.
Like they can preserve it much better.
- And they ripen it.
And after that,
it became a really hard cheese
and you can hold it for like, years.
- So it can stay good for 50 to
or to even a hundred years.
- Right.
- And can I ask you what it tastes like?
- I think you should describe that for you (laughs).
- But if we were gonna give people
a little bit of a teaser
to what to expect when you're eating mite cheese.
- I think it has a little strong cheese taste and flour,
and it has sometimes a little bit like
this strong aroma.
- Like citrus aroma.
- Yeah. Humis has this little nice story
that the first time he have a look through the microscope,
he didn't eat the mite cheese for two weeks,
but then he start again (laughs).
- (laughs) So you can actually see them in the microscope?
- Yeah, you want to do it?
You wanna a look?
Or you wanna try before?
- No, let's go take a look.
Humis, let's go.
I'm stuck in my chair.
I've had too much beer.
So can you actually see them?
- Yeah, yeah.
You can see them over.
- You can see them with your eyes, too,
but they're so, so, so small.
That's all mites.
Oh my God (laughs)!
That is crazy.
- Do you see, they have little hairs on their body.
You see them?
- So you eat them, just to clarify,
you eat the cheese and it's still covered in the mites.
Completely.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Wow.
Oh my God! Are you serious?
It's millions of mites, generations upon generations,
millions and millions and millions
of crawling little arachnids.
- [Christian] What do you think they taste like?
[Mike] I don't know, but this is,
this is definitely one of the craziest things I've ever.
I haven't even eaten it yet.
They're so hairy.
It's like a horror movie.
And it's the moment where we find the cheese.
Hoo! There's a smell!
- Smells like a horse-
- Like a horse stable?
- Horse stable, yeah a bit.
- Like ammonia.
Like ammonia, yeah.
Look at this.
- [Christian] so we have different boxes here
for different kinds of cheese
and for different riping status,
you can see that.
- (German utterance)
- [Christian] 250 million.
- 250 million little tiny mites,
basically small little spiders.
- [Christian] Of course, Hamlet was counting
them every morning.
- (laughs) That's part of his job.
- So just so you understand
what you're looking at right now,
we have the cheese, which is these little cylinders,
but all of that powder
is not dirt.
It's not sand.
It's mites, little tiny arachnids.
That is insane.
And so these are old ammunition boxes
from World War Two, World War One, somewhere in there.
- World War Two, I don't know.
But it's ammunition box.
And we, we use them because they are so stable
that the mites can't crack them.
So the new ones are not so durable than the old ones.
I can show you how we feed the mites.
If you have to call them like,
boop, boop, boop, boop, boop!
And then you can feed them.
- [Mike] So mites can make noise.
- A bit (laughs).
- [Mike] So what sound do I make?
Boop, boop, boop, boop?
- [Christian] Yeah.
- boop, boop, boop, boop.
There we go.
And so we do this
so they don't need all of the cheese.
Do we add more, or good?
- [Christian] Yeah, you can do more, good.
- All right. We're feeding,
feeding the cheese mites.
So I can take a handful.
- [Christian] Yeah.
- Oh, it's so soft (coughs).
Ooh, (coughs).
That's good.
That's ripe.
And so my hands are covered in mites right now.
- [Christian] Yeah, yeah.
You have to wash them after that
because the mites will eat your nails.
- (laughs) Are you serious?
If you don't wash your hands,
they'll eat your fingernails.
- [Christian] You have to brush them.
- No joking.
- [Christian] No joking.
You brush them every time when we are
ready with working on the mites
that they don't eat your nails.
- They're a little bit long anyway.
Maybe I can leave it for like ten minutes (laughs).
It is the time
you have all been waiting for.
It's time to try the cheese.
And if you look, and I keep the camera
very, very still, and we zoom in,
you can very clearly see cheese
is completely covered in mites.
- [Christian] That's perfect.
- It is perfect.
Well, you know what,
can I take the cheese off of the bread
and have it just how
it's supposed to be?
Also, I want to have the pure experience.
So right here,
we have one big piece of Milbenkase
with probably 300 live mites.
- [Christian] I think so.
- Okay, two, one.
(plays drum roll)
(bell rings)
(laughs) It tastes good. It tastes great.
It's fantastic.
You can smell the ammonia like a stable
or citrus, I guess.
It doesn't taste like that at all.
It tastes like a sharp kind of spicy
and you think it'd be funky
because you're eating live arachnids.
Tastes delicious.
Honestly, guys, it's an amazing cheese
and it's nowhere near as strange
as you think it would be.
I'm going in for seconds. It's great.
All right, guys.
A little behind the scenes here,
we got Greg, Camera Guy, YouTuber.
- Oh! Ah!
- We got Nelly.
- Hi.
- Helping us out here, his girlfriend.
And they are now gonna try the Milbenkase.
- [Greg] that looked really good.
- [Mike] We have the Maestro.
- I can see them moving.
- The smell is so intense.
- Gut en appetit!
- Wow, okay. That's really good.
Oh, what's biting my tongue?
- It's really good.
Really good and you're right, it's spicy.
- [Christian] And then you smell it.
- Mm-hmm. Yeah, it is citrusy.
- [Christian] This aroma you have.
- It is lemon, right?
- [Christian] Yeah lemon, yeah.
- Yeah. It is like a citrus smell.
Okay, it seems like it's a hit all around.
Actually the cheese was delicious,
but don't go anywhere
because we have a little surprise
to finish off behind the scenes.
We learned something about the statue
that is super funny.
So we're gonna go back there
and you'll see the secret of the giant mite.
(upbeat music)
On our way, we passed this earlier,
something came up in conversation that was hilarious,
but we didn't get a chance to catch it on camera.
So now we're back and I'll get Christian and Homis
to explain what's happening.
- The mite statue has a little hole on the back side
and we call it also the mite spot.
So, now we are putting here in this hole.
So Homis said to the artist,
please make a hole inside
so that I can put a cheese inside
the statue and the people they are coming here
to visit Wurchwitz and the mite museum,
and the mite statue.
They can come like this and can get the smell of the cheese.
So it's the only statue where you can smell.
- It's the biggest mite in the world,
as well as the only smellable statue in the world.
You put a cheese, you offer it to the mite God,
you put it in his butt.
And if you'd want to,
it smells like mites.
Guys, thank you for today.
That was fantastic.
- Thank you for visiting us.
- And in Germany,
you said there was something that
YouTubers was say to do with the bell.
- [Christian] Oh yeah.
Die glocke is working.
So ring the bell on his channel please.
- (laughs) Thanks, guys.
Mite cheese is delicious.
If you're in Germany, check it out.
I'll put all the information below.
Give love to this amazing thing in East Germany.
I'll see you in the next video here
on Fearless and Far.
(upbeat music)