28 West Country Cheeses. 



expected to coat very much as the Single does, and great 

 care is necessary in turning them for the first week or two, to 

 avoid damaging the edges, which are somewhat tender at first, 

 the cheese being softer and less easy to handle than a Oheddar. 



Owing to this fact which is no doubt due to extra moisture 

 retained during the process of manufacture, the cheese does not 

 always keep an absolutely upright shape, but often shows a 

 slight bulging or roundness of the sides. For the same reason 

 the Aveight of ripe cheese per gallon of milk is usually most 

 satisfactory. The standard size for Double Gloucesters is a 

 diameter of some fourteen inches, with a weight of about 

 28 lb., or " four to the cwt." in local parlance. To ensure 

 this twenty-eight gallons of milk is put into each cheese, this 

 being sometimes increased to twenty-nine or even thirty gallons 

 at the beginning of the season when the milk is poor. 



The finished cheese, ripe in from two to three months, is an 

 excellent article, which improves with keeping. Cheese made 

 in the autumn may be held over until the following spring or 

 even later. 



Those who taste the exhibits at the Royal Agricultural 

 Society's Shows must form a somewhat erroneous idea of the 

 quality of the best Double Gloucester owing to the newness of 

 most of the cheese on the bench. It was suggested to me, not 

 long since, by an old and experienced exhibitor of the variety, 

 that as the Society's Show falls so early in the season it might 

 be advisable to give prizes for cheese of the previous year's 

 make, and, provided that sufficient notice of the proposed 

 alteration was given, the idea has much to recommend it. 



Gloucestershire cheese-makers do not, as a rule, commence 

 operations until May, when the cows are out on the pastures. 



The dairies are small, rarely exceeding about thirty cows, so 

 that the output is at no time large, and of late years, as alluded 

 to above, tends to decrease still further, with the growing 

 popularity of milk-selling. 



Still, it only needs a visit to the cheese-tent at the Show of 

 the Berkeley Hunt Agricultural Society, where this year over 

 five tons of Gloucester cheese were exhibited, to convince one 

 that the cheese-making industry in the county is by no means 

 dead. Competition is keen and local interest equally so, and 

 there is no reason why, with a little more enterprise on the 

 part of our dairy farmers. Double Gloucester, at any rate, should 

 not regain and extend the position it once held with the 

 consuming public. 



Flora M. Friday, N.D.D. 



County Council Uiiiry School, 

 Gloucester. 



