DAIRYING SERVICE LEAFLET.

Otago Witness, Issue 2242, 18 February 1897, Page 7

DAIRYING SERVICE LEAFLET.

No. 9. In view of the fact that there seems to be a demand for Cheshire cheese in England, the following extract from a letter from Mr Samuel Lowe, of Messrs Weddel and Co., is published by the New Zealand Department of Agriculture for the information of dairymen : — 16 St. Helen's place, London, September 5, 1896. J. B. MacEwan, Esq. Cheshire cheese is sold in Manchester and district at the earliest possible moment it can be taken to market. I have seen it less than a fortnight old. You will find it crumbly and merely a curd on the counters. From that early stage onwards it is saleable. It is, as you are aware, a loose, textured cheese, always crumbly inclined, and possesses an acid flavour in its early days. I enclose you a method of making it which has beeu in use for mauy years, and which may be taken as a standard method. It is for a farmhouse process, but I thought you could vary the utensils, following only the principles, and your own skilt and intelligence doing the rest. As goou as it can be handled for shipment I would suggest yoiMiave it exported. If you will get some factory to send us about 20 as a sample we will cable you how they turn out I should like to have the handling of the first shipment, as I would mjself go down to Manchester and introduce it to the trade. It will not 6ell in London until it is well matured. I believe the prices to be obtained for it in Manchester will be higher than for New Zp aland Cheddar, and, as it ripens much sooner, th-se two points ought to induce a good colonial trade. EXTRACTS FHOM " DAIBT FARMING," BY JOHN CHALMERS MORTON. Cheshire cheere, like the Cheddar, is made only once a day. The evening's milk is placed, not more than,6in or 7iu deap, in tin vessels to cool during the night on the floor of the dairy. It is skimmed in the morning, and & certain portion is kept for butter — in early summer only enough, perhaps, for the use of the house, but in autumn more, and in some dairies at length nearly all the morning's cream is thus taken for churning. The skimmed cream, with a portion of milk, is heated up to 130deg F»br. by floating the tins which hold it on the boiler ; sufficient quantity being taken to raise the whole of the evening's and morning's milk together to 90deg or thereabouts. The rennet is made the day before it is used, 12 or 14- square inches of veil, standing in a pint of salt water, kept in a warm place, making rennet enough for 100 gallons of milk. The Irish veil is used, as it is obtained from very young and wholly milk-fed calves. The curd is set in about 50 minutes ; it is then cut with the usual curd-breaker, a. sieveehaped cutter, very slowly. The whey is siphoned, pumped, or lifted out as soon as possible ; but before it is all removed a portion is (on some farms where the Cheddar system is followed) heated and returned to the tub, and the curd is left in this hot whey for half an hour. The whey is then drained away, and the curd is left to get firm. AVnen firm enough to stand on the hand in cubes of about a pound weight — this is an intelligible indication — without breaking asunder it is lifted out on the draiuer (a false bottom of rods', in a long tub with a etop-cock to it, and there left covered up for 45 minutes, after which it is broken up and well, mixed by hand with 341b to 4i.lb of salt per cwt. It is then allowed to stand with a light weight upon it for about threequarters of an hour longer, and is turned over once or twice during the time, being cut for the purpose into squares with a knife. It is then twice pasted through the curd mill, and afc length put into the vat, a cloth being pressed first into the place by a tin hoop, and the salted curd being packed gently by hand within it. The Tats will hold a cheese of 701b or 801b up to 1001b, and tin hoopi, placed within them, are used to eke them out and give capacity for a larger quantity of curd if necessary. After standing in tbe vat, with a weight upon it, from one to two hours, according to the state of Ike weather, it is turned over and pat (still in its vat) into an oven — a warm chamber in or near the brickwork of the dairy chimney — where fc remains at a temperature of 90deg to lOOdeg daring the night. Both when in the press and here the cheese is skewered, skawers being ihrust into it through holes in the vat, and iVrery now and then withdrawn so as to facilii*Je the drainage of the whey. The cheese is

taken out of the vat next morning aud turned upside down iv a fresh cloth. It is in the press three days, and it is turned iv the press twice a da;, being drj -clothed each time Ib is then taken out, baudaged, and removed to the cheeseroom, where it is turned daily, or at length only occasionally, until it is ready for sile. In sumo dairies all nkewering is dispensed with, and no pressure is used at the time ot making, nor for two days afterwards, but the whey is allowed to run out of its own accord. Chee«e manufactured in this way requires from five to seven days iv drying, bub afterwordß matures more quickly for market. The cheese varieß considerably in quality throughout the year, the earlier make of March and April being considerably less valuable than that of summer and early autumn. Some of this varying quality is owing to the quality of tbe milk, tbe cow a beiug house-fed, but more of it is, iv all prrbability, owiag to the necessity of hoi'diug a portion of curd over from day to day, wheu the quantity is insufficient to make either one, or it may be two, full-eiz^d cheeses daily. In such cases it is common to make one full-sized cheese and hold tbe remainder of the curd over till next day, keeping ib wrapped up on the drainer or pan, and grinding it up in the curd mill along with the curd of the next morning The quantity of cheese made varies from 3Jcwt to 4cwt per cow per annum on good farms. The qututity of butter made weekly in a good dairy is hardly -£lb per cow in the early summer from both whey and milk ; in the autsamn, thft milk being richer, considerably more may be made without diminishing the quality of the cheese. Since the foregoing extract from "Dairy Farming," by John Chalmers Morton was printed, tbe following additional matter, taken Jrom tbe Cheshire Observer of September 19, 1896, od " Cheshire Cheese, aud How to Make It," by John Benson, ha.3 come to haud and is added hereto :—: —