TWELFTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VIII 363 



Water ix Butter Can Be Controlled. 



The buttermaker who knows his conditions can make butter with 

 a uniform composition. Changes must be made with the seasonal 

 changes and also of winter and summer conditions. One reason why 

 there has been a great deal of rather high water butter on the mar- 

 kets for the past month is the heavy rains throughout the butter 

 producing territory. Pastures have been revived and butter-fat must 

 be handled the same as during the spring months. It does not seem 

 possible tbat all the high-water butter is made intentionally but 

 rather is due to the buttermaker assuming that his butter is safe, 

 or if the test showed high he took a chance of it passing. 



Men are employing methods which produce butter with a high 

 water content and if they do not desire to change and make butter 

 of normal composition the dairy industry will prosper without their 

 labor. 



Sometime ago in looking over a large number of method blanks 

 I found that nearly one-third of the men were doing things that 

 favored high moisture. If the creamery operators would go back to 

 holding the cream at a low temperature, wash the butter during the 

 summer months with water as it comes directly from the well and 

 not resort to those things that tend to destroy the grain and have the 

 butter still firm when packed, there will be no danger of high water. 



It is surprising what men can do, and the Wisconsin boys that have 

 followed the instructions set forth in the Dairy Department Scoring 

 Exhibition articles and the personal letters will bear me out in this 

 one thing. We have had less difficulty in instructing how to prevent 

 high water than to increase the water content. 



Why a Liberal Standard? 



Whther the standard be for water or fat, it should be sufficiently 

 low to allow for natural variations due to sampling. A sample from 

 a tub may show 15 per cent water and 8 2 per cent fat. while a 

 second sample might show 14 for water and 83 for fat. This differ- 

 ence is due to the method of sampling and the butter not being of a 

 uniform mixture. 



In Illinois Experiment Station Bulletin No. 13 7 a series of 80 

 churnings were used, and samples were taken from four tubs packed 

 from each churning. In nearly 50 per cent of the churnings the vari- 

 ation in the samples from the same butter varied less than .5 per 

 cent, 3 6 per cent varied more than .5 and less than one per cent, 

 while 14 per cent varied over one per cent. 



The buttermaker who tests a churning of butter for moisture should 

 take at least two different samples from the packed butter and if it 

 is found that it exceeds 15 per cent several more tests should be made. 

 Even after the buttermaker has his test made and t^e scale balanced 

 at 15 per cent, another person could change the position of the dish 

 on the scale and have a reading very close to 16 per cent. This vari- 

 ation will be due to the weight of the dish in both cases not resting 

 on the center of the pan. 



