Cheese Goes Commercial
Until the mid-1800s, cheese making was essentially taking place the same as it had been for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years (depending on the type of cheese). All cheese was made from fresh, raw milk, and mechanization was virtually unheard of. Some new curd-cutting knives, and better cheese presses that reduced hand labor were introduced in the 1830s, but milking was still done by hand and for the most part cheese making was a handmade process. The industrial revolution of the mid-1800s, however, changed everything for cheese.
Refrigerated railroad cars used in the 1840s gave cheeses their first climate-controlled, long-distance rides. Then in 1850, a Frenchman, Louis Pasteur, discovered that bacteria in liquids, such as wine and milk, died when exposed to heat. By 1857, specific methods of pasteurization (named after Pasteur) were adopted for milk, and soon, almost all the milk intended for cheese was pasteurized first, which was a revolution in and of itself.
The first U.S. compulsory pasteurization law was passed in 1908, requiring all cow's-milk products to be made from pasteurized milk. Almost 100 years later, this law remains the standard, and has been amended to allow cheeses made from raw milk if they are aged more than 60 days before consumption, as it is believed pathogens can't survive in aged cheese.
Pasteurization opened new doors for large-scale cheese making, as the process killed bacteria otherwise difficult to control in large, mechanized settings, and minimized the risk of infections previously attributed to pooling and storing milk. This meant larger pools of milk could be used safely, and that emerging industrial mechanization could be employed without risking the growth of unwanted bacteria in raw milk.
Meanwhile, all sorts of machines aimed at reducing hand labor were being rapidly invented, and cheese factories began steadily replacing small, handmade cheese operations with larger, more mechanized ones. Two more inventions especially contributed to the industrialization of cheese making.
In 1870 a Danish man, Christian Hansen, developed a way to extract animal rennet without having to dry the stomach lining of the animal in question. He went on to found an internationally successful company, “Chr. Hansen,” that today supplies cheese makers and food producers with enzymes, bacterial cultures, and related products. And, in 1899, an acidimeter test was developed for measuring the acidity of whey, which helped cheese makers figure out when to introduce rennet to whey to achieve optimal coagulation.
