Take cheese from the hoops after they have been under pressure about eighteen hours. If they have been properly made and thoroughly cooked, and the cap cloths are sweet and clean, the latter will peel from the ends without making an abrasion of the rind. Allow them to stand an hour or so on the shelves before greasing; the surface moisture will then have evaporated, and the rinds will deepen to a golden color and become crisp and slightly rough under the touch. Heat whey butter as hot as you can bear your hand in it, and, using a large piece of bandage cloth (no other cloth is as good), dip it in the hot grease and apply by a thorough rubbing-in to the cheese surface. The butter being hot will strike in and lend toughness and elasticity to the rind. Date the cheese after they have been on the shelves a day. The bandage cloth will then have become dry, and the dates can be made to show clear and distinct. Turn cheese over every day and rub them thoroughly with a sponge of bandage cloth, well oiled. Dealers, retailers and consumers insist on a good, perfect rind, and, as makers, we must give it to them. Appearance sometimes goes farther than quality, but we want both, and want them united. Sometimes cheese will mould on the sides during damp, muggy weather in summer. It will not do to drive out the dampness with fire, so establish a free circulation of air through the room and the mould will cease to accumulate. In a curing room it is easier to keep temperature where you want it during cool than in hot weather. If the mercury gets to running up above 75° Fahrenheit, sprinkle the floor vigorously with cold water, take out the window sashes, and on the south side keep the blinds closed, or a shade down. Good cheese can endure a temperature of 80° for a while without deteriorating, but such a heat is not desirable; keep it below that if possible during a hot wave. The shelves on which the cheese rest should be of sound lumber, smoothly planed basswood or pine, and each board a little wider than the diameter of the cheese. Care should be taken to have the bandages the exact circumference of the inside of the hoop. If the band is contracted, the cloth will split open under pressure and expose the cheese to the attack of skipper flies; if too large, the cheese will expand on the shelf and make it difficult to be jammed into a box for shipment. The reason the curing room should not be over the make apartment, or in a loft, is that in the former the vapor and odors generated below are not desirable curing factors, and in both cases excessive heat is unavoidable, due to the elevation and the direct rays of the sun on the roof. When cheese get so warmed up that the butter starts, the flavor is deteriorating also. While curing, cheese need ventilation, draughts of air should be avoided, as thereby the surfaces are dried up and checked. Too much light is not desirable in a curing room; shades should be used at the windows to regulate this. It is now customary to ship cheese as soon as they cease to be curdy, which occurs in from ten to fifteen days from the hoop.
EXPERIENCED HELP.
One great set-back to good cheese making is inexperienced and careless labor. This is another cog in the wheel that has been retrograding the reputation of our goods during the last few years. A medical student cannot obtain a diploma authorizing him to take under his charge the welfare of the sick without three years’ study aided by ocular demonstrations of his especial science. Then, he is expected not to have a dim idea of a patient’s condition when diagnosing his case, but to know and understand all about it. No cheese maker is fit for duty unless he can diagnose the condition of a vat of milk on a quick examination. The natural odor of pure milk has a peculiar animal smell, whose nature can be acquired by careful olfactory tests indulged in as the student draws the fluid from the cow’s teats. After an apprentice at the business can tell pure, sweet, untainted milk in any spot or place, he must learn to distinguish between that which is tainted and that which is verging on the sour. Tainted milk is radically different from sour milk, and infused in the product they each tend toward utterly diverse results. To pass a correct judgment on milk quality is thus essential No. 1 in a maker’s practical knowledge. Requirement No. 2, is to have a thorough understanding of the constituents and influence of all of the foreign ingredients that go into cheese. Rennet, the most potent auxiliary of the cheese maker’s craft, should never be handled or applied by ignorant hands. The amateur maker should gain a physiological insight into the lactic portion of animal anatomy, and have an intelligent comprehension of the active force of the peptic secretion. When such knowledge is acquired he will see the importance of never countenancing any coagulating fluid that is not immaculately pure in extraction and free from any subsequent taint. He will also understand its nature enough to always make a judicious application of it to the milk designed for manufacture. Here the necessity of step No. 1 joining hands with No. 2 is apparent, for he cannot make a judicious application unless his olfactory sense is trained to perceive and gauge every variation of the milk quality. Necessity No. 3, is in following the quality variation of milk into the cooking and maturing curd. It is a well-known fact with cheese makers that no two vats of curd will scarcely ever work exactly alike in succession. If one is to know absolutely just what to do and what to leave undone at certain moments of assimilation and maturity in curd, he must have gained that knowledge not from books but from continued practical experience. Here the necessity for previous learning arises. No pettifogger would be expected to argue legal points before the Supreme Court, because lack of advancement in the rudiments of his profession would make him as unfit for such a pleader as a farmer or merchant. Every man to his business, and no man to be trusted in any trade capacity until he has proved himself competent. So, if an amateur lawyer or doctor is not to be trusted, why should responsibility be placed on the shoulders of a green hand at cheese making? He is expected to properly prepare an important article of human food, and, inexperienced and ignorant of the rudiments of the trade, he stumbles along in the dark, doing, perhaps, the best that he can, and not so much to blame for the failures that accrue as are his employers.
Wide dispersion of training schools for both butter and cheese makers is not far off, and I, for one, hail that day with delight.