Upright factory and dairy cheese press
For pressing, a home-made lever-press, as outlined in the diagram, may be made of a plank or bar, one end of which (C), is stuck under a piece of a board nailed on the wall while at the other end a weight (K) is applied which may be moved in and out to regulate the pressure. The hoop is placed under the plank at the fulcrum (K1) near the wall. If a compound lever-press or a screw-press is available it is better. It is important that the pressure is applied straight so as to make the cheese even and not one side lower than the other. Begin with light pressure and increase it gradually every hour until at night the full pressure is applied. After an hour take the cheese out and turn it in the hoop, then return it to the press and at night apply full pressure. The next morning take it out and weigh it and place it on the shelf to cure in a room of moderate temperature, turning it every day. After a couple of weeks it may be removed to a cool cellar and rubbed with grease. In two to three months it should be sufficiently matured for consumption.
OTHER TYPES OF HARD CHEESE MADE WITH RENNET
A variety of domestic and foreign cheese made at the dairy school of the University of Wisconsin
In the manufacture of the Dutch Gouda, the Danish Export, and other similar types, the “cooking” and matting of the curd, characteristic of the English and American Cheddar, are more or less omitted. Otherwise the process and the result are not greatly different. They are all “hard” or solid cheese of the same class, though there are hundreds of varieties in different localities, each with some peculiarity of its own.
Gouda cheese
Gouda Cheese.—The Gouda, like the Danish Export cheese, is made from whole or partly-skimmed milk which is set with rennet at 90° F. and is coagulated, ready for cutting, in fifteen to twenty minutes. The curd is broken with the “lyre,” so called, a frame on which piano wires are suspended. The curd is but slightly “cooked” and the whey is drawn while still sweet. After being pressed with the hands in the vat to squeeze out the whey the curd, still quite warm, is put into wooden molds and worked and squeezed in them with the hands for half an hour to eliminate more whey, when the mold is placed in a regular press for 12 to 18 hours. To salt it the cheese is placed in a strong brine where it remains for several days. It is then put on the shelf in the curing room where it is turned and rubbed daily and in four to six weeks it is marketed. The cheese is about 10 inches in diameter by 4 to 5 inches high.