28 MANUFACTURE AND CURING OF CHEESE. 
a warm temperature without injury and could even be cured at a 
temperature of 70° F. and come out with an almost perfect score, 
as has been shown on many occasions, this is no proof that the warm 
temperature is desirable for curing. 
REPORT OF RECENT EXPERIMENTS BY THE DEPARTMENT OF 
AGRICULTURE. 
The Dairy Division thought it wise to conduct further experiments 
in cold curing, as the only commercial test made in which the Depart- 
ment cooperated was so unsatisfactory that it did not lessen the 
desirability for further work of this nature. Again, market condi- 
tions had changed so radically that the work performed and the 
conclusions drawn therefrom, which might have been entirely satis- 
factory a few years ago, would not apply to present conditions. 
A number of questions have been advanced by dealers who utilize 
cold storage in regard to recommendations made on the basis of pre- 
vious experiments to the effect that cheese should go into storage 
direct from the hoop. The dealers have been afraid to adopt this 
view entirely, though the general method of handling is perhaps 
growing slowly in this direction. Perhaps the reason advanced by 
most dealers against buying perfectly fresh cheese is that it is impos- 
sible to tell, when a cheese is inspected too young, just how it will 
develop. Any bad qualities, or at least a few of the bad qualities, 
which are likely to show in the cured product can not be detected 
in a cheese a day old. The most important of these possibly injurious 
qualities is in connection with the development of acid, though unde- 
sirable flavors would perhaps be mentioned by many of the dealers. 
It is well known that a high-acid cheese appears perfectly normal as 
it comes from the press, and the fact that there is too much acid 
does not show until the cheese is at least a week old or even two 
weeks old. In certain seasons of the year this is a fault that is very 
likely to occur at times in all factories, and as a high-acid cheese 
brings a much lower market price the dealers have a just reason for 
being suspicious of fresh cheese. The contention that other faults 
may develop will not be so difficult to overcome. It has already 
been proven that cold storage checks a great majority of the unde- 
sirable ferments, and a fault which is not noticeable in the green 
cheese will not be likely to develop after the cheese is placed in 
storage at a temperature too low for bacteriological changes. This 
needs to be demonstrated perhaps a little further and to be impressed 
upon the Thinds of the dealers. The work heretofore conducted has 
been almost without exception with a very high-grade product. In 
previous tests the cheese ripened at the ordinary curing-room tem- 
peratures rated above the requirements for the highest market price, 
and because of this the experiments did not demonstrate the great 
advantages of the early application of cold temperatures. 
