The Story of Germ LifeConn, H. W. (Herbert William)
Science
The Story of Germ Life
Conn, H. W. (Herbert William)
Bacteria; Bacteriology
In this country, however, this process has not as yet become very
popular, inasmuch as the heating of the cream is a matter of
considerable expense and trouble, and our butter makers have not
been very ready to adopt it. For this reason, and also for the
purpose of familiarizing butter makers with the use of pure
cultures, it has been attempted to produce somewhat similar though
less uniform results by the use of pure cultures in cream without
previous healing. In the use of pure cultures in this way, the
butter maker is directed to add to his cream a large amount of a
prepared culture of certain species of bacteria, upon the
principle that the addition of such a large number of bacteria to
the cream, even though the cream is already inoculated with
certain bacteria, will produce a ripening of the cream chiefly
influenced by the artificially added culture. The culture thus
added, being present in very much greater quantity than the other
"wild" species, will have a much greater effect than any of them.
This method, of course, cannot insure uniformity. While it may
work satisfactorily in many cases, it is very evident that in
others, when the cream is already filled with a large number of
malign species of bacteria, such an artificial culture would not
produce the desired results. This appears to be not only the
theoretical but the actual experience. The addition of such pure
cultures in many cases produces favourable results, but it does
not always do so, and the result is not uniform. While the use of
pure cultures in this way is an advantage over the method of
simply allowing the cream to ripen normally without such
additions, it is a method that is decidedly inferior to that which
first pasteurizes the cream and subsequently adds a starter.
There is still another method of adding bacteria to cream to
insure a more advantageous ripening, which is frequently used,
and, being simpler, is in many cases a decided advantage. This
method is by the use of what is called a natural starter. A
natural starter consists simply of a lot of cream which has been
taken from the most favourable source possible--that is, from the
cleanest and best dairy, or from the herd producing the best
quality of cream--and allowing this cream to stand in a warm place
for a couple of days until it becomes sour. The cream will by that
time be filled with large numbers of bacteria, and this is then
put as a starter into the vat of cream to be ripened. Of course,
in the use of this method the butter maker has no control over the
kinds of bacteria that will grow in the starter, but it is found,
practically, that if the cream is taken from a good source the
results are extremely favourable, and there is produced in this
way almost always an improvement in the butter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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