Curing.—After 18 hours’ pressure the cheese is taken out of the press and out of the hoop, weighed and placed on a shelf or table in the curing room. For the first week or ten days it is kept at a temperature of about 70°, later the cheese is removed to a cooler room and possibly placed in cold storage. Usually it is paraffined to prevent too much drying and cracking of the rind.
Filling the curd into the hoops
To cure a first-class Cheddar cheese takes from three to six months, but most of the American cheese is made to cure much more quickly and is eaten two to four months old. Indeed, it is generally shipped from the factory eight to ten days old and whatever further curing it gets is in the warehouse of the commissionman or in the grocery store.
The Gang press
Form, Size and Packing.—The old style American cheese is cylindrical, about 14 inches in diameter, and varying in depth to weigh between 60 and 80 pounds. Various other forms are now often made, square and long or in fancy shapes, such as a ball or a pineapple. Aside from such freaks, which have never become very popular, other deviations from the large, standard, American Cheddar, are also made to a considerable extent. People who have visited the beautiful National Dairy Shows held in turn in Chicago, Springfield, Mass., and Columbus, O., the National Milk and Dairy Farm Expositions of New York City, the Ontario Provincial Fair held each year at Toronto, or the annual State Fairs in New York, Wisconsin, Michigan and other cheesemaking sections will have in mind first the prominent exhibits of the regular Cheddar, showing a uniformity in texture, form and taste that is really remarkable. But one will also admire the variety of other forms. There are the Flats or Twins, packed two in a box and weighing together the same as one American; the Young Americas packed four in a box; the Longhorns of six to eight inches in diameter; others made like a loaf of bread and creased so that a pound or two may be cut off fairly accurately, etc.
Taking the cheese out of the press
The Giant Cheeses, weighing five to six tons, occasionally exhibited and cut up at World Fairs and on similar occasions are, like the pineapple cheese, a curiosity rather than an industrial product.