New cultures eye perfect Swiss cheese

20-Nov-2008 - Last updated on 20-Nov-2008 at 16:19 GMT

Danisco Cultures has launched a new culture for producing a “more consistent” Swiss cheese and to enable faster processing.

Containing propionic acid bacteria, the new Choozit Eyes cultures can reportedly reduce the ripening time of cheese by 20 to 30 per cent, thereby offering financial benefits to cheese manufacturers by reducing moisture loss and boosting yield.

Talking to DairyReporter, John Rea, global business director for Danisco’s cheese culture business said that the industry still faces processing challenges when producing large eye cheeses such as Emmental, Massdam, and Swiss type cheese.

“There are still reports of either insufficient or no gas/eye formation or too aggressive or irregular and inconsistent gas/eye formation,” he said.

The new cultures can reportedly produce “perfectly formed eyes that consumers associate with high quality and a good taste”, said the company.

Rea added that the cultures could also allow cheesemakers to differentiate their products and help them standout in a busy marketplace.

“This strain was not only selected on its functionality but we also felt it was important to confirm that it is different from other competitor strains currently employed by the industry,” he said.

Two forms

The cultures are available in two forms, confirmed Rea. One is a frozen concentrate form and the other in a freeze-dried form. While both are available globally, shipping of the dried form around the world is easier and at a lower cost, he added. “Both are applied directly into the cheese vat,” said Rea.

Tried and tested

Rea said that extensive competitive benchmarking was performed during the development of the product and this particular strain was selected based on its superior gas production.

“Furthermore we undertook to study the conditions how we could control by either increasing or decreasing the gas/eye formation, this was done by studying the influence of adjunct cultures such as our Choozit Flav range on how they interact in either a synergistic or antagonistic fashion with Choozit Eyes,” said Rea.

“We also studied the influence of dosage, pH, salt and storage temperature,” he added.