Emmental Show Dairy and Cheese-making

The Emmental Schaukaserei is a working dairy and museum, showcasing Swiss cheese production throughout history. You can see various artifacts associated with historical cheese making, view modern cheese making live, and taste a few cheeses from the region.

The main site is free to visit and there is plenty to see without paying extra. But you may enjoy your visit more by paying for their new “King’s Way” audiovisual tour, informational brochures, audio guides, guided tours and cheese making workshops. It’s touristy, but well-done and a fun place to take visitors.

How to get there

The Emmental Show Dairy is located in the countryside between Bern and Lucerne. 

By car: Drive to Schaukäsereistr. 7 Affoltern im Emmental and park in the metered parking lot next to the dairy.

By public transport: Take a train to either Hasle-Rüegsau or Affoltern Weier. Then a bus to Affoltern in Emmental, Dorf. The dairy is a short walk from the bus stop.

Tip: For a day trip from Zürich or Lucerne, you might enjoy this small group tour that visits the dairy, plus the nearby Kambly cookie factory and walking tour of Bern old town.

Planning your day

Opening times

The dairy is open year round, 7 days a week including holidays, generally 9:00 to 17:00, sometimes longer hours in summer.

Prices

It’s free to some of the buildings at the dairy. You can pay for an audio guide (about 30-40 mins), guided tour, workshops or other special activities.

At a minimum, I suggest buying their brochure, available in English, which briefly describes nine locations throughout the dairy. The example below is from our visit a few years ago. It cost CHF 2 at the time, perhaps more now.

Tip: The Emmental Show Dairy is one of four dairies on the Swiss Cheese Passport. If you visit all four withing two years, you get a special prize.

King’s Way Tour 

This self-guided audiovisual tour tells you about the history and process of Emmental valley cheese making. The tour lasts 30 mins and can be started any time during opening hours. In 2023, this costs Adult CHF 16, Child 12 – 17 CHF 8.50, children under 12 free.

Cheese workshop

You can also attend a cheese-making workshop. It used to run daily, but 2023, it is available on Wednesdays and weekends at 14:00. In 2023, it costs Adult CHF 12, Youth 12-17 CHF 6, under 12 free. Check current schedule.

We saw this workshop in progress and I can’t say that it looked very exciting. Basically, everyone was just standing around watching the cheeseman stir the cheese mixture. Maybe it got more exciting after we left.

Photo story

Note: our photos are from our visit in 2015. Although the main buildings are the same, some of the exhibits and displays have changed.

At first, we were a little confused, looking for a place to buy entrance tickets. But entrance is free to the entire complex, so you don’t need a ticket. However, you may want to pick up a map and brochure to guide your visit. The large building shown below has the info desk, gift shop, and a small museum. This is a good place to start.

The info desk will give you the below map for free.

There are a few different buildings in the complex, each housing a different era of cheese making.

If you walk past the info desk in the building shown above, you’ll find an old time small cheese making room, with some tools for cheese making. Your brochure will describe some of the items in this room. A few of the items are interactive.

The cheese making class is also run in this room, though these vats are for display only.

Live cheese making

You can watch the cheese being made for free. Every day at 10:10 and 15:10 you can watch the curd pressed into molds. At 16:00, you can watch traditional production in a cheese hut. The building below houses the modern cheese-making factory, a cheese shop, a small grocery (if you need picnic supplies), and the cafe.

Inside, there is a gallery view down to the live cheese-making. Luckily, we happened to arrive right at 15:00, right in the middle of the live cheese making. It was fun to watch all that curds and whey slosh around.

You can see the grocery at the top level in this picture. We wished that we had bought our picnic here instead of the poorly stocked convenience store in the neighboring town.

We watched the milk get stirred in the enormous vat in the background, then sent down the pipes to the cheese molds, to which the cheese man is attending. Then the curds were pressed. We watched until he put the Emmental labels on the cheese rounds. Then we took a look downstairs where the cheese cures. The audio guide symbol appears at all these stations.

There is a nice cheese counter with lots to buy and a few to taste.

Traditional cheese hut

This is the oldest cheese house from 1750. Inside, they had a large copper pot swinging over an open fire. They make cheese in there too, using less modern equipment.

Playground

There’s a nice playground next to the cafe, with slides, swings, see-saw, etc. There are lots of picnic tables, not connected to the restaurant so you can bring a lunch.

When we went in 2015, there are games and puzzles on various signboards near the playground. Below is a word puzzle and “find the differences” on a picture of cheese making. In the next photo below, you can see a matching game with pictures related to cheese making and more signboards.

Restaurant

Here is the cafe with indoor and outdoor seating. It was quiet when we went on a chilly Saturday in April. But it looks like they expect big crowds in the summertime.