BUTTER MAKING.

Northern Advocate, 30 June 1888, Page 3

BUTTER MAKING.

The propriety of washing, salting and packing butter with-out working does not in any way depend upon whether the cream was sweet or sour before churning or how it was raised, as a Connecticut friend queries or whether it is to be kept or consumed at once. The requisite is that the butter must be gathered in fine granules. If this is not done, and the butter is permitted to mat together into one large lump or a few large ones, working will be a necessity , to get the buttermilk out and the salt evenly distributed. If gathered in granules working will not only be unnecessary but very likely an injury. Moreover, brine-salt-ing will do all "that any salting caa do to prolong the life of butter, but no mode of salting will make the keeping of biitter a sure undertaking. I haveknown brine-salted butter to keep sound twice as long as " midsummer till fall or winter," and then again it has gone off in a hurry. I have tested the butter in several large dairies where butter was packed in 100-pound firkins and kept till it was from a year to a year and a half old that was not only Bound but sold at the top of the market, that was worked and dry salted, while the common experience is, that butter so treated goes off in a tenth of the time. I have seen butter brine-washed with a little salt stirred in while the butter was still wet, and packed in a stone jar at once with-out any working, that was perfectly free from rancidity two and a half years afterward. This was a rare instance and probably could not bo succuessfully repeated more than one time in a thousand. The oldest samples of sound butter I ever saw — three and a half yeras — were neither salted nor worked at all. They were washed and rendered Whether butter will keep several months without changing depends upon conditions which relate to the butter which are not well known. If these are right butter can be kept for some months with but little change ; if not right, no mode of salting, working, packing or other treatment will long prevent its decay. All my experience and observations have gone to show that butter granulated in the churn and freed from buttermilk by washing, then soaked in supersaturated brine at 60 degres for half an hour, and then packed at once without any working, shews the highest, purest and most delicate flavor and the longest keep-

ing, and is the best suited to the taste of butter fanciers. I would not, however, idvise anyone to adopt it with the expectation that his hot weather butter would keep safely till winter, or be seasoned to best please the average taste. The fact is so many people have their tastes blunted by the use of alcoholic or malt liquors, tobacco in its various forms, strong and hot tea and coffee, and by foods strongly seasoned with salt, vinegar, pepper, spice, cloves and other aromatics. that their tastes become obtuse to the delicious, but mild flavor of butter, which is so agreeable to the unpreverted taste. They want something to rasp their dull palate to a bigher excitement, and a little extra salt just does it. I would therefore advise brine-salting as above, and if it is designed for the general market, stir in (not work in) to the butter when it comes out of the supersaturated brine and while it is still wet, dry salt enough after allowing for waste to leave one-tenth of an ounce to the pound in addition to what the brine -salting retains, and it will be seasoned about right for the average taste, and will have the highest flavour, best and brightest appearance, and the longest keeping quality that the manufacturing can hasten. But for all this, the liabilities to depreciation are so great that I would, as a matter of profit, consider it safer and better to sell nice fresh-made butter in the summer for •vhat it will bring, than to run the risk of having stale butter to sell in the fall or winter in competition with new butter jaade at these seasons. — Professor L. B. Arnold.