1 82 BACTERIA IN BUTTER AND OLEOMARGARINE. 



has become more and more apparent with each step toward the 

 concentration of butter-making. The farmer may, perhaps, 

 allow his cream to care for itself, since his product is so small. 

 But such a plan would ruin a creamery where there are thousands 

 of pounds of butter made each day. Only as the ripening can be 

 controlled, is concentration of butter-making successful. 



The Purposes of Cream-ripening. These are as follows: 



1. Ripening the cream makes it churn more easily and increases 

 the yield of butter. This is true, at all events, for gravity cream; 

 it is less significant, and perhaps not true, for separator cream. 



2. Butter made from properly ripened cream is thought to keep 

 better. 3. By far the most important purpose in cream-ripening 

 is the production in the butter of a desirable flavor and aroma. 

 Butter .made from unripened cream lacks the peculiar flavor of 

 high-grade butter, since this is the result of the ripening. If the 

 ripening is not satisfactory, the flavor and aroma of the butter are 

 sure to be inferior. 



The importance of this factor in butter-making for our creameries 

 is very great. The market price of butter depends largely upon the 

 flavor. Butter without flavor or with bad flavor brings a price 

 in the market which hardly pays for the making, while a product 

 with a good flavor and aroma will sell for at least three or four cents 

 more a pound; and the exceptionally fine-flavored product of special 

 creameries brings a fancy price two or three times that of poor butter. 

 The flavor will frequently add one-third or one-half to the price 

 which could be obtained for poorly flavored butter or for butter 

 without flavor. Hence, the success or failure of a creamery business 

 depends, in large measure, upon the ripening. A creamery 

 which fails to ripen its cream properly fails to obtain a desirable 

 flavor. Hence, it obtains a lower price for its butter and may 

 hardly meet expenses; while a neighboring creamery, that is more 

 successful in its cream-ripening, obtains a good product and, 

 consequently, a price for its butter which makes the business a 

 financial success. This matter is of more significance to-day than 

 in earlier years, because our butter-making is coming to be concen- 

 trated in large creameries. 



