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e milk than is the case in butter making. Every effort should therefore be made to furnish to the cheese maker the quality of milk from which he can prepare fine cheese. In other words, the milk should be produced under clean conditions and carefully cooled and handled until delivered to the maker. Poor milk from a single farm may have such an effect upon the cheese made from the milk of twenty farms as to depreciate the selling value of the entire product several cents per pound. The tests that have been previously described (p. 105) have been devised especially for testing the quality of the milk for cheese making purposes, and are of the greatest service to the maker in tracing the source of poor milk. =Cheddar cheese.= The first step in the making of cheddar cheese is the "ripening" of the milk, or the development of a small amount of acid. In this fermentation, the development of acid is preceded by an enormous increase in the number of acid-forming bacteria. Milk for cheese making should show an acidity of about 0.2 per cent or slightly more than in fresh milk. In other words, the maker wishes the milk to be in such condition, bacteriologically, that if kept at a temperature favorable for the growth of the acid-forming bacteria, the acidity will increase rapidly. The curdling of the milk to precipitate the cheese solids is produced by the addition of rennet, which is obtained by extracting the fourth stomach of the young calf with a solution of common salt. In the past the maker prepared his own rennet solution from the dried stomachs ("rennets"), but at present, the extract is prepared commercially, in a much more uniform manner. The rapidity of the curdling is dependent upon the acidity of the milk. In order to secure proper rennet action, a slight increase of acid over that found in fresh milk is usually necessary; thus at the very beginning of the process of making cheddar cheese, the bacteria are of importance. As the milk curdles, the bacteria are enclosed in the curd as are the fat globules. The curd is cut into small fragments by means of a curd knife, and as the mass is warmed, the acid develops, causing the curd particles to shrink, thus expressing the whey. Within a short time, the volume of the curd is not more than one-eighth that of the milk, but in the curd are held over 75 per cent of the bacteria of the milk. To secure rapid curdling in the vat, the milk is warmed to 85 deg. to 90 deg
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