CHEDDAR CHEESE. 51 
107. Stir Milk to Keep Cream Down. 
While the milk is being received it should be stirred in the 
vat to prevent cream from rising. As soon as all the milk has 
been received and the quantity figured up, the steam should be 
turned on, the milk heated to 86° F., and a rennet test made. 
If the cheese maker is suspicious that the milk may be over-ripe, 
he should make a rennet test before the milk in the vat is heated 
up to 86° F., by taking his sample for the rennet test in the 
basin in which the test is made and warming it in a pail of 
warm water. 
If the milk is found to be over-ripe, he will have to hurry 
the process to keep ahead of the fermentation. On the other 
hand, if he finds the milk very sweet, so that he would have to 
wait an hour or more for it to ripen, he should use a starter. 
108. Ripening the Milk. 
If the milk is ripened so as to coagulate in the same num- 
ber of seconds each day, one can tell very closely the time when 
the whey can be drawn off from the curd. It should be ripened 
to a point where in two hours from the time the rennet is added 
to the milk there will be ‘‘one-eighth of an inch of acid’’ on the 
curd, as we shall see later on. (135.) 
With a first-class quality of rennet extract the milk when 
ripened to thirty seconds works off in about the right time, but 
such extract is very strong, one ounce being sufficient to coagu- 
late one thousand pounds of milk in twenty minutes. If, how- 
ever, the rennet extract was so weak that it would require four 
ounces of it to coagulate one thousand pounds of the same milk 
in twenty minutes, it would te only one-fourth as strong as the 
former rennet, and the milk would then have to be ripened so 
as to coagulate in one hundred and twenty seconds instead of in 
thirty seconds. 
109. How to Ripen Milk to the Right Point. 
At the beginning of the season’s work the cheese maker has 
nothing to guide him as to the ripeness of the milk, because he 
does not know the strength of the rennet extract at his disposal. 
The first day he makes cheese, he must make a rennet test of his 
milk at the time he sets it and then observe:how the milk acts. 
