Read Ebook: Hints on cheese-making for the dairyman the factoryman and the manufacturer by Curtis T D Thomas Day

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PAGE. INTRODUCTORY, 5

BUILDING CHEESE FACTORIES, 9

PRODUCTION OF MILK, 14

COMPOSITION OF MILK, 18

TAINTS AND ODORS, 23

COOLING MILK, 27

DELIVERING MILK, 31

RECEIVING MILK, 36

BIG AVERAGES, 40

CONDUCTORS, STRAINERS, &C., 45

COLOR, 49

RENNETS, 55

PREPARING RENNET, 60

SETTING, 64

CUTTING CURDS, 68

HEAT, 73

ACID, 79

DIPPING CURDS, 84

SALTING CURDS, 87

TAINTED MILK, 91

CURING, 93

GREASING CHEESE, 95

SKIPPERS, 99

CHEDDAR PROCESS, 102

HINTS ON CHEESE-MAKING.

BUILDING CHEESE-FACTORIES.

We frequently receive inquiries from parties who contemplate building cheese-factories, regarding certain details which none but those who have actual experience can readily carry out. For the benefit of all needing such information, we have taken pains to prepare the following:

Small or medium-sized factories now seem to be in order. People do not like to carry milk long distances, and this fact undoubtedly accounts for the tendency to small factories, conveniently located. We will give the size of a building suitable for a dairy of 300 to 500 cows. Let it be 80 by 26 feet, with 16 feet posts and two floors. From one end of the lower story take 24 feet for a make room, leaving the remainder for a curing room. Should more than one vat be used, the make room will need to be about six feet larger one way. It may be made so by taking the space off from the curing room, or by putting a projection on the side. The upper story will be used for curing, but should be partitioned off the same as the lower story. The room over the make room should be lathed and plastered, and provided with heating apparatus, so as to make a suitable place for curing early and late made cheese. The building may be cheap, or as expensive as desired.

Either setters and ranges, or the old style tables, may be used. The latter, since small-sized cheeses have come in fashion, are the more common. They are quite as cheap and convenient, and by using them, factorymen avoid the annoyance consequent upon the pretended patent right which is claimed on the rails and turners.

We shall not recommend any particular style of vat, since by doing so we should seem to condemn others. But we will mention the fact that for small factories, vats with self-heaters are preferable and the more economical. A self-heater can be set up and run anywhere, with a piece of stove-pipe to conduct off the smoke, and the expense of boilers, mason-work, etc., is avoided. Five or six cords of maple stove-wood, split fine and well seasoned, will run a good self-heater through the season.

The appearance of a dairy depends very much on the trueness, as well as uniformity in hight, of the cheeses. Good presses and hoops are therefore essential, and save a great deal of trouble as well as give a great deal of satisfaction. The press, therefore, needs to be made heavy and strong, so as not to spring or warp. Let the sill be 14 by 4 inches; the beam, 10 by 6 inches; posts, 4 by 14 inches, slanted from the sill upward to 10, the width of the beam. The sill and beam should be boxed into the posts three-fourths of an inch, and the posts should extend above the beam some 4 inches or more. The top of the sill should stand about 2 feet from the floor. The space between the sill and beam should be 2 feet 4 inches. The lateral space allowed for each hoop should be 2 feet; and in each space between the hoops the sill and beam should be held in place by seven-eighths inch rods of iron. In the first space from either end, a single rod is sufficient; the next should have two rods, and so on, alternately. The single rod should extend through the middle of the sill and beam, and have heavy washers attached to each end, to prevent the head or nut from settling into the wood. The double rods should go through the edges of the beam and sill, and through heavy washers of iron on the bottom of the sill, and through strong straps extending across the top of the beam. The presses should be made for pressing four or six cheeses, and be made of hard, seasoned timber. The screws should be 1 3/4 inch. Of the various kinds of screws introduced, we know of none better than the old-fashioned ones, with holes through them to receive the bar.

The curd-sink is an important thing in a factory. Its construction is always a matter of considerable speculation and perplexity. We will give dimensions for one suitable for a factory of the size we have indicated. It should be 16 feet long, 2 feet 10 inches in width inside, and 1 foot deep. The bottom should be 1 1/2 inch thick, and the sides 1 inch thick. The legs should be 3 feet high, extending up the sides, so that the top of the sink will be 3 feet from the floor. The sink should be made of clear, seasoned pine, and the legs be well braced, with cross and side pieces connecting them about 6 inches from the floor. Backs and a cloth strainer may be used, or a false bottom with perforated tin strainers may be substituted.

The proper hight of the weighing can, of the dumping window from the ground, and the best apparatus for unloading, are generally matters quite perplexing. The proper hight of the receiving can is that which gives a gentle slope to the conductor, as too much current not only causes the milk to slop over the sides of the strainer, but drives the dirt through the strainer. With vats 3 feet 2 inches high, the platform for the scales should be 3 feet 8 inches from the floor.

Of the many appliances used for unloading, none is simpler, cheaper or more satisfactory than the crane. Make it of scantling 4 by 4 inches, the upright 8 feet long, and the arm 7 feet. Hang it as you would a barn-door. Fasten one end of a strong half or three-quarter inch rope to the end of the arm; run it through a pully to which is attached the tongs; then over a 4 inch pully above, near the end of the arm; run it back over a similar pully next to the upright, then down to a 3 inch roller, with a crank, at a convenient hight for turning. One end of the crank must be sustained by a strong iron strap, bowing outward, in the direction of the arm, to admit the roller lengthwise, and fastened to the upright above and below.

The window-sill should be not more than two or three inches above the edge of the receiving-can, which should stand close to the window, just clearing the sill. The road should be eighteen inches below the platform on which stand the scales and weighing can. Then the can, when raised just enough to clear the wagon-box and wheels, will be of the right hight for dumping when swung round to the window. Many make the mistake of getting the road too low, which causes the unnecessary work of raising the milk 3 or 4 feet by hand before it can be dumped, and wastes strength and time, both in raising the can and lowering it back again into the wagon after it is emptied.

In building a factory, every provision should be made for cleanliness. It should be located near a living spring of water, ranging in temperature somewhere between 45? and 55?. There should be sufficient water to fill, at all times, an inch pipe, and care should be taken to secure a fair head--enough to carry the water above the vats, at least. The water should be carried in pipes under the building, along by the ends of the vats where it is wanted, with penstocks rising from the pipe, to furnish water for each vat. The faucets in the penstocks should be all of the same hight--if any difference is made, the one farthest from the head might be a quarter or half an inch the lowest. Outside should be a penstock, to carry off the superfluous water. The outlet to this should be a few inches higher than the faucets in the penstocks for supplying the vats with water. This is necessary to secure a flow of water in the factory. In freezing weather, and during the winter, the penstocks in the factory can be removed, until needed for use, and the holes in the pipe beneath plugged up. An extra faucet in one of the penstocks at the ends of the vats, inserted high enough from the floor to set a pail under, will supply all the necessary water for cleaning and other purposes.

PRODUCTION OF MILK.

The requisites of good milk have been so frequently and fully discussed, that we need not more than briefly advert to them now. The importance of good milk, for either cheese or butter, will be conceded, and therefore the question need not be argued.

The first requisites of good milk are good cows. But these will disappoint their owners if they have not good keep. Plenty of good clean hay and pure water, with warm quarters, are indispensable. The old-fashioned method of allowing cows, or other cattle, to weather all kinds of storms, with a snow-bank for a bed at night, we believe is pretty effectually done away with. It has been found that it does not pay. It is not yet quite so universally admitted that generous feeding is equally advantageous, nor that a warm stable is as much an advance on an open, cold one, where the cows stand and shiver throughout the twenty-four hours, as a common shelter is an improvement on no shelter. Yet, a warm stable, which may be had for a small expense, is decided economy, in the saving of food, as well as a comfort to the cows; and generous feeding will be found a profitable investment, both by the increased flow of milk and by its increased richness. A poorly-kept cow will give less milk than a well-kept one, and its poorer quality will be more manifest than the diminution in quantity. When turned out to grass, if the feed should prove good, it will take the cow weeks to build up her system and get in the condition she should have been in at the start; and though the quantity and quality of her milk will improve, she will reach the time when the mess naturally begins to shrink before she will have thoroughly recuperated. After this, the richness of the milk will probably be satisfactory. But in case the season should open dry and cold, so that the grass starts slowly, and is then followed by the hot dry weather of July and August, as is not unfrequently the case, a cow that starts "spring poor" will scarcely get in good condition before the grass is nipped by the fall frosts and it becomes necessary to begin to fodder.

There is a marked difference in the quality of the messes of milk delivered at a cheese-factory. The use of the lactometer and cream-gauges will show this. It will be an interesting experiment, for cheese-makers who never tried it, to test in this way the quality of the milk delivered by the different patrons, and then ascertain the style in which each keeps his cows, the character of the pastures of each, the kind of water which the pastures afford--whether brook, river, swamp or spring--and to note any other facts and conditions which may be apparent or may suggest themselves. It will be found, we think, that bad wintering and poor pastures have as much or more to do than anything else with the production of poor milk. No breed of cows nor selection of a dairy can wholly counteract these evils. The yield of milk will undoubtedly be greater and better with some cows than with others; and so with naturally good cows, good wintering and pasturing will show quite as marked improvements.

We have in our mind an instance where, at the opening of a cheese-factory, only a few of the farmers, having the largest dairies, delivered milk. They were all men who fed their cows well during the winter, and gave them meal before and after coming in. The result was an astonishingly large yield of cheese from milk at that season of the year. But as the messes increased, and milk from dairies poorly-kept came in, the yield of cheese in proportion to the number of pounds of milk steadily diminished. The lactometer and cream-gauges showed that the poorest milk came from the poorest-kept cows.

The forepart of the season proved a cold and wet one, which made the grass more juicy and less nutritious. This, with the accidental or intentional watering which the milk got from the rain falling in the cans, either at home or on the road, was also believed to decrease the yield of cheese. It appeared that milk coming long distances through the rain, other things being equal, showed more water than that brought short distances. Manifestly, some sort of shelter to the cans should be devised, to be used both at home and on the road, during rainy weather--and the same for keeping off the rays of the sun, in fair weather, is equally desirable.

All through the season, in the instance referred to, there was a marked difference in the quality of the milk of the well-kept and of the poorly-kept dairies. Swampy pastures also seemed to impoverish the milk. Those pastures that were dry, with pure water accessible, appeared to produce the richest milk. While the milk of the best dairies, on being tested, would indicate a yield of a pound of cheese to eight or nine pounds of milk, the milk of others would not yield a pound of cheese to less than eleven or twelve pounds of milk. The average number of pounds of milk for a pound of cheese, during the season, was about 9.9.

In the foregoing, will be seen a manifest objection to the factory system, as at present conducted. The quality of the milk delivered is nowhere taken into consideration. The man who has a well-selected dairy, keeps it well, and delivers milk that will turn out, for the season, a hundred pounds of cheese for every nine hundred pounds of milk, gets no more returns for a given number of pounds of milk than the man who delivers milk so poor that twelve hundred pounds of it will not make more than a hundred pounds of cheese, or the same as the former's nine hundred pounds. There is a difference of about twenty-five per cent, in the quality of the milk turned out by the good and the poor dairies, one-half of which the owner of the former loses, and the other half of which the owner of the latter gains, by getting his milk made up at the factory. Some means should be devised for remedying this piece of injustice, if the better class of dairies is to be retained by the factories.

COMPOSITION OF MILK.

The composition of milk, though frequently discussed, is not generally well understood. It is quite variable, not only in the milk from different cows, but in that from the same cow at different times, and in different conditions, but especially at different seasons of the year. It is more buttery in winter, and more cheesy in summer. A cow milked three times a day would give more in quantity but poorer in quality, than if milked twice; while one milked twice a day will yield more milk than if milked once a day, but one milking a day would be the richer. The first milk drawn from the udder is more watery than what follows; the last is the richest. The accumulation of milk in the cow's bag is influenced by the law of gravitation. The water being the heaviest ingredient, settles to the bottom, and is the first milked; the cream, which is the lightest, rises, and is the last milked. That is to say, a partial separation takes place in the udder, sufficient to make the "strippings" some ten or twelve times as rich in butter as the first milk drawn. We would, therefore, infer that the first third contains the most water, the second third the most cheese, and the last third the most butter. There is said to be a difference in the milk drawn from the compartments of the udder of the same cow, or from different teats.

The variation in the composition of milk, of course, is indicated by different chemical analyses, no two of which can be found to exactly agree. We give an analysis by HAIDLEN. He found that the specimen contained, in 1,000 parts, 873 parts of water, 30 of butter, 48.2 of cheese, 43.9 of sugar of milk, 2.31 of phosphate of lime, .42 of magnesia, .47 of iron, 1.04 of chloride of potassium, and .66 of sodium and soda. Other chemists have found albumen among the constituents of milk, and this ingredient is believed, by many, to be the one that first commences decaying, in hot weather, and produces, "tainted" milk, "floating" curds, and "huffy" cheese. Skimmed milk has been found, in some instances, to contain as high as 97 parts of water in 100, and only 3 per cent. of solids, or cheesy matter. "Swill milk" has been found to contain as low as 1 1/2 per cent. of butter. An analysis of the first milk taken from a cow's bag after calving, showed it to consist of 15.1 per cent. of caseine, or cheese, 2.6 of butter, 2 of mucous matter, and 80.3 of water. Ordinary pure milk will average about 12 1/2 per cent. of cream. But it is not unfrequently found to yield 15 to 20 per cent., and even as high as 25 per cent. of cream has been obtained. If milk yields less than 10 per cent. of cream, it is below the average, and unprofitable for butter-making.

We know of no single instrument that will at once indicate the quality of milk. What is called the lactometer, but is properly a hydrometer, will indicate the density of milk, and if its specific gravity in a pure state be known, it will show the amount of water added, if any. On an average, milk is about 4 per cent. heavier than water. That is, a hydrometer with a scale graded at 100 for milk at 60? Farenheit, ought to sink to 96 in water. The variation in the density of milk will be shown by an experiment given by CHARLES L. FLINT, in his "Milch Cows and Dairy Farming." He says:

"For the purpose of showing the difference in the specific gravity of different specimens of pure milk, taken from the cows in the morning, and allowed to cool down to about 60?, I used an instrument graduated with the pure milk mark at 100, with the following results: The first pint drawn from a native cow stood at 101. The last pint of the same milking, being the strippings of the same cow, stood at 86. The mixture of the two pints stood at about 93 1/2 . The milk of a pure bred Jersey stood at 95, that of an Ayrshire at 100, that of a Hereford at 106, that of a Devon at 111, while a thin cream stood at 66. All these specimens of milk were pure, and milked at the same time in the morning, carefully labeled in separate vessels, and set upon the same shelf to cool off; and yet the variations of specific gravity amounted to 25, or, taking the average quality of the native cow's milk at 93 1/2 , the variations amounted to 17 1/2 ."

It will be seen, by these experiments, that the richer the milk in butter, the less the specific gravity, thin cream being 30? below the water mark. The richer the milk in caseine, or cheese, the greater the specific gravity, the milk of the Devon indicating 15? above the water mark. Watering milk will of course reduce the specific gravity of milk rich in cheese, and by this means it can be made to indicate the average density of pure milk. In the same way, milk rich in butter may have its specific gravity increased until it nearly reaches that of water, but no amount of watering can make it indicate over 96?, which is the figure given for pure water. A little salt, or other ingredient, may be added to bring the density up to the pure milk mark. So the blueness of milk, produced by either skimming or watering, may be removed by the use of burnt sugar, which will give it a rich color. Or annotto may be used for the same purpose. Many expedients have been resorted to, from time to time, by the dishonest, for the purpose of disguising the impoverishment of milk by skimming and watering.

"But," says some one, "why tell dishonest men how they can skim and adulterate their milk?" We have not done so. We have told honest men some of the practices of the dishonest, with the view of enabling them to detect the fraud. True, the hydrometer is not an accurate or legal test; but it shows the exact density of the milk tried, and this is a very important point. When you have decided this, by the use of the cream-gauges, you can determine the amount of cream; and if you let the milk stand until it coagulates, and the cheese separates from the whey, you can tell the relative proportion of water and cheese. This may be a somewhat slow and clumsy process, but it is nevertheless decisive, and often repays the trouble. Foreign substances, so far as not held in solution by the water, or not entangled in the cheese or cream, will settle at the bottom of the glasses. Besides, with these evidences to start on, the ways of a suspected person can be watched, and he often be caught in the very act of violating the law, which we quote below:

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