Cheesemaking process

1. Standardize Milk
Milk is often standardized before cheese making to optimize the protein to fat ratio to
make a good quality cheese with a high yield

2. Pasteurize/Heat Treat Milk

Depending on the desired cheese, the milk may be pasteurized or mildly heat-treated to
reduce the number of spoilage organisms and improve the environment for the starter cultures to
grow. Some varieties of milk are made from raw milk so they are not pasteurized or heat-treated.
Raw milk cheeses must be aged for at least 60 days to reduce the possibility of exposure to
disease causing microorganisms (pathogens) that may be present in the milk.

3. Cool Milk
Milk is cooled after pasteurization or heat treatment to 90°F (32°C) to bring it to the
temperature needed for the starter bacteria to grow. If raw milk is used the milk must be heated to
90°F (32°C).

4. Inoculate with Starter & Non-Starter Bacteria and Ripen

The starter cultures and any non-starter adjunct bacteria are added to the milk and held at
90°F (32°C) for 30 minutes to ripen. The ripening step allows the bacteria to grow and begin
fermentation, which lowers the pH and develops the flavor of the cheese.

5. Add Rennet and Form Curd

The rennet is the enzyme that acts on the milk proteins to form the curd. After the rennet is
added, the curd is not disturbed for approximately 30 minutes so a firm coagulum forms.

6. Cut Curd and Heat

The curd is allowed to ferment until it reaches pH 6.4. The curd is then cut with cheese
knives into small pieces and heated to 100°F (38°C). The heating step helps to separate the whey
from the curd.

7. Drain whey
The whey is drained from the vat and the curd forms a mat.

8. Texture curd
The curd mats are cut into sections and piled on top of each other and flipped periodically.
This step is called cheddaring. Cheddaring helps to expel more whey, allows the fermentation to
continue until a pH of 5.1 to 5.5 is reached, and allows the mats to "knit" together and form a
tighter matted structure. The curd mats are then milled (cut) into smaller pieces.

9. Dry Salt or Brine

For cheddar cheese, the smaller, milled curd pieces are put back in the vat and salted by
sprinkling dry salt on the curd and mixing in the salt. In some cheese varieties, such as
mozzarella, the curd is formed into loaves and then the loaves are placed in a brine (salt water
solution).

10. Form Cheese into Blocks

The salted curd pieces are placed in cheese hoops and pressed into blocks to form the
cheese.

11. Store and Age

The cheese is stored in coolers until the desired age is reached. Depending on the variety,
cheese can be aged from several months to several years.

12. Package
Cheese may be cut and packaged into blocks or it may be waxed.

Curd-Forming Mechanism
Milk mostly consists of fat, protein, lactose (a kind of sugar) and water. The milk fat is
suspended in the water as fine droplets, which makes it an emulsion. Milk also contains a lot of
proteins that, in this case, are mostly whey and casein. Because casein is poorly soluble in water,
its proteins build spherical structures called micelles that allow them to stay in suspension as if
they were soluble.

The micelle structures that hold the casein protein in suspension, however, are very fragile,
and when you change the conditions of the solution, they can easily break up and form clumps of
casein proteins. This can happen if you change the pH, or acidity, of the milk, which means
making it sourer, and once altered they cannot be reformed. Because the micelle holds the casein
protein in suspension, without it the micelles will clump together and the casein comes out of the
solution.

 We can change the pH of the milk by adding lemon juice due to its acidity or special
‘starter’ bacteria, these bacteria convert the lactose (milk sugar) to lactic acid and lower the milk’s
pH. Some cheeses are curdled only by acidity, however, for most cheeses, rennet is also added to
the milk after a starter bacteria. Rennet is a mixture containing the active enzyme chymosin.
Rennet speeds up the coagulation of casein and produces a stronger curd.

Spoilage of cheese
spoilage in cheese is one of the important reasons that render the nutritious and
tasty cheese not only inedible but also a potential source of infection. The spoilage may
be due to bacteria, yeast or fungi.
a. Bacteria
Bacterial spoilage may occur in fresh cheeses having a sufficiently high pH such as
cottage cheese. The causative organisms are Gram negative, psychrotrophic species viz. 
pseudomonads and certain coliforms. These organisms gain entry and infect the product
through contaminated water used to wash the curd. 

Psychrotrophic bacteria like Pseudomonas, Alcaligenes, Achromobacter and

Flavobacterium species are of primary concern in cheese spoilage due to bacteria.
Pseudomonas fluorescens, Pseudomonas fragi and Pseudomonas putida cause
bitterness, putrefaction and rancid odour, liquefaction, gelatinization of curd, and slime
and mucous formation on cheese surfaces.  Alcaligenes viscolactis produces ropiness
and sliminess in cottage cheese, and Alcaligenes metacaligenes flat, or poor flavour in
cottage cheese. Psychrotropic Bacillus species cause bitterness and proteolytic defects.

b. Fungal
Mould spoilage makes the cheese unpleasant in appearance, conferring it with a
musty taint/odour and liquefaction of the cheese. In some cases, moulds produce
mycotoxins. Moulds responsible for spoilage of cheese include Penicillium, Aspergillus,
Cladosporium, Mucor, Fusarium, Monilia and Alternaria.

c. Yeast
Yeasts too cause spoilage of cheeses, especially that of fresh or soft varieties like
cottage cheese, during storage. The defects produced are gassiness, off-flavours and
odours. Yeasts are also capable of proliferating on the surface of ripened cheeses, more
so, if the surface becomes wet, causing slime formation. Yeasts most frequently
encountered in spoiled cheese include Candida, Pichia, Yarrowia lipolytica, Geotrichum
candidum, Kluyveromyces marxianus and Debaryomyces hansenii. 

Pasteurization Temperature
Pasteurized cheese is defined as cheese produced with milk that has been heated
to a temperature of 161 F for fifteen seconds or to 145 F for thirty minutes or more.

What kind of enzyme?

Chymosin, for example, is an enzyme that alters the casein micelle structure to make milk curdle.
Proteases are other enzymes that disrupt the casein micelle structure by chopping up proteins,
causing milk to curdle.

How to reduce the pH of milk?

You can do it with acid (bacteria that convert lactose to lactic acid also lower the milk’s pH or just
use lemon juice) or heat as well as by letting the milk age long enough or with specific enzymes
(which are proteins that perform a specific chemical reaction).

What kind of casein which are sensitive to enzyme and forming curd?