CREAM RIPENING. 83 



per cent of starter added the higher must be the 

 temperature of the cream and the slower will the 

 ripening process be. The longer it takes to ripen 

 cream the more danger there is of developing off fla- 

 vors and producing butter which is flat, slightly bit- 

 ter and coarse flavored. Adding a very heavy starter 

 (over 40 per cent) to cream has a tendency to im- 

 part a starter flavor to the butter if the cream to 

 which it is added is ripened at normal ripening tem- 

 peratures and not cooled to a sufficiently low tem- 

 perature after ripening. 



111. Ripening hand separator cream. Unpasteur- 

 ized hand separator cream. Gathered or hand sep- 

 arator cream must be handled differently after it 

 has reached the factory than the whole milk cream 

 is handled. It must be handled according to its qual- 

 ity — that is, according to the per cent of acid and 

 the degree of abnormal fermentation it contains. 

 There are several different methods of handling this 

 cream in use at present. Some creamerymen advise 

 ripening and handling it in the same manner as 

 whole milk cream, while others prefer an entirely 

 different system. Some of the latter advocate not 

 warming it to ripening temperatures. They advise 

 cooling the cream to below ripening temperature 

 when received and holding at this temperature until 

 it is ready to be churned. The reason for not ripen- 

 ing such cream at normal temperatures is that the 

 average quality of hand separator cream has a high 

 degree of acidity and contains a variety of abnormal 

 fermentations at the time it is received at the fac- 

 tory. If it were heated to ripening temperatures 



