[Sca-cooks] Autumn cheese?

[Terry Decker]

I originally found the information of seasonal differences in butterfat in a 
Soviet publication and found some confirmation for the idea in various very 
dry papers from several ag school sources.

Spring is the normal calving time when forage is more plentiful and 
nutritional needs of the calf are more easily met.  As available forage 
decreases, meeting the nutritional needs of the calf requires more effort 
and the butter fat increases.  Chemicals extracted from the forage can 
effect the cheese, but that has nothing to do with butterfat content. 
Actual natural calving time varies by latitude and region.  Calving time can 
be shifted to any time of the year by controlled breeding which provides the 
modern dairy industry with year round calving.  Calves are usually weaned 
between 7 and 8 months, which normally will be October or November in 
Northern Europe.

Whole milk, straight from the cow, normally runs between 3 and 5 percent 
butterfat.   In the U.S., homogenized whole milk is 3.5 percent butterfat. 
Serious cheesemakers either run their own dairy or purchase raw milk in bulk 
and process it to meet their purposes.

Since we can and do standardize the milk before it enters the cheesemaking 
process, seasonality of cheese is probably eliminated, until someone 
reintroduces it as a marketing gimmick.

Bear


Bear said:
<<< It may be that "harvest cheese" is a category rather than a type. 
Butterfat
in milk is lower in spring and summer and higher in fall and winter
(probably based on the natural calving season).  Thus, a harvest cheese
would be any cheese produced from August onward into Fall and Winter and
would have a higher butterfat content than other cheeses. >>>

Ok, I’ll grant that the butterfat content of the cheese is likely to be 
affected by the time of year, but I’ve also seen accounts about the Spring 
milk/cheese being affected by the herbs and the freshness of the grass and 
foliage being eaten by the animals, as Ana suggests.

Why do you say lower butterfat in Spring and Summer? Do we have some figures 
for this? I can well imagine the fat content varies seasonally, but wouldn’t 
it need to be higher when the calves are first born? Which is in spring, 
right?

<<< Butterfat content is not the issue it would have been in period given 
modern
cattle breeding and year-round calving. >>>

And that assumes we are talking about “whole” milk. It seems like most of 
the milk fat is skimmed off before we even get “whole” milk, much less 2 and 
1 percent fat milk.

How is the milk fat regulated these days by cheese makers? Are they using 
“whole” seasonally affected or not milk? Are they adding in more milk fat as 
needed for particular cheeses?

For good or bad, I think we’ve probably eliminated the seasonality from 
cheeses.

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
   Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          StefanliRous at gmail.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/marksharris
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****







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