It takes quite a little experience to make a good Cheddar cheese and, unless one has the time and opportunity to study it and make it an every-day practice, it is not as a rule advisable to attempt making Cheddar cheese in the home from the milk of one or a few cows. The amateur will usually find it easier to make Neufchatel or Cream or Cottage cheese for home use or for the home market. [Illustration: Danish kettle and cheese vat ] If Cheddar cheese is to be made regularly it is best to get an outfit consisting of a small boiler and a jacketed vat, although cheese may be made in a plain wooden tub or any other convenient vessel. The double bottomed vat generally used in American as well as in Danish dairies facilitates both the heating of the milk before setting and the “cooking” of the curd in the whey after cutting. Either low pressure steam, or—better—water heated by steam, is introduced in the space between the outer, wooden bottom and the inner, tinned steel or copper bottom. If it is cool the milk should be warmed to 86° F. In the summer it may be warm enough as it comes in, fresh from the cow. If not, heat it by steam or by setting it in a “shot-gun” can in another vessel of hot water, stirring frequently, until the thermometer shows 86°. It may be well to add a little buttermilk or sour whey from the preceding day, or a pure culture starter made with Buttermilk Tablets, not to exceed 1% or 2%. [Illustration: Cutting the curd ] If it is desired to make colored cheese add a teaspoonful of liquid cheese color, or ½ cheese color tablet dissolved in warm water, to 100 pounds of milk, more or less according to season and the shade of color desired in the cheese. Next add the rennet. Where cheese is made from less than 500 lbs. of milk Rennet Tablets are handy, one tablet to 80 or 100 lbs. For less than 50 lbs. of milk, Junket Tablets may be used, one to a gallon. Dissolve the tablet, or tablets, or fraction of a tablet, as the case may be, in _cold_ water and stir the solution well into the milk, making sure of thorough mixing. Let stand covered for half an hour until a firm curd is formed. Cut or break the curd very carefully with a big knife or spoon or home-made fork with wires across the prongs, imitating as far as possible the operation with curd knives in the factory. [Illustration: Taking the temperature of the milk in a shot-gun can ] [Illustration: Curd fork ] [Illustration: Mold or “Hoop” ] “Cook” the curd as in factory cheesemaking. If steam is not available, allow the curd to settle and dip off some of the whey which is then heated and poured back on the curd so as to raise the temperature of the whole mass about 2 degrees. Repeat this several times, gradually raising the temperature to 100°, a few degrees at a time.