DE-221

TOPIC
MECHANIZATION AND EQUIPMENT USED
IN MANUFACTURE OF CHEESE.

Submitted By- Ketan Sharma

(L-2018-DT-19-B)
Submitted To- Er.Gursharn Singh
(Assistant Professor Dairy Engineering)
CODST, GADVASU, Ludhiana.
Mechanization and Equipment Used in Manufacture of Cheese

Cheese Making Equipment

The cheese equipment consists of cheese vats, cheese knives, agitator, curd strainers, curd
mill, cheese hoop and press.

Cheese vat: The cheese vat used for coagulation and cooking are made of either SS or
with SS lining rectangular design. The vats are jacketed, allowing space for circulation of
water between the inner and outer container. A steam pipe is fitted at the bottom in between
outer and inner tank for uniform distribution of heat to the inner tank. The outer tank may
be MS construction. The inner tank should not have any sharp corners and the welded joints
should be properly ground and polished for effective cleaning. Fittings such as jacket drain
valve, overflow connection, SS gate valve to draw whey with longitudinal central ridge to
allow the whey to flow towards whey valve with steam and water inlet connections is fixed
on the vat. The vats are supported suitable on adjustable legs.

Agitator: The agitator is used for moving the curd after cutting, fork type motor driven
agitator which reciprocates back and forth from one end of the vat to the other end is
generally used in large vats. The stroke of this agitator is adjustable between two stops. A
Paddle type agitator or wooden rake is used in small units.

Cheese knives: Uniformity in the size of the pieces is the aim of proper cutting. For
these purposes, two kinds of knives are used. One knife cuts the curd into horizontal layers
and the other vertically across these layers from top to bottom, slicing them into small cubes.
The blades are thin wire which gives effective cutting. In some the blades are thin and sharp
of metal construction, cuts the curd with least possible breaking. The distance between the

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blades usually varies from 6 to 17 mm. The curd is cut first with horizontal knife lengthwise
of the vat, then crosswise with vertical knife and finally lengthwise with the same knife. The
knives may be of SS construction or tinned brass.

Gate Strainer: Whey is removed from the vat through a gate strainer which holds back
the curd. It is semicircular in design with perforation which can be fitted to the vat outlet.
Curd mill: The mill, spike-toothed or circular blade type cuts the curd into smalls
pieces of uniform size and should do it without crushing or squeezing the milk fat from the
curd. The mill could be hand operated or motor driven. If power curd mill is used, it should
not be run too rapidly to prevent uneven curd cutting which will result in poor cheese
texture.

Cheese hoop: Different designs and capacities of hoops are available, to give shape to
the curd and compact the same. They are round or rectangular (Wilson type) with followers.
Cheese press: The cheese press is used to press the cheese in the hoops. The loaded
cheese hoops are placed in the press and pressure applied. The hand operated cheese press
consists of a frame having two or three vertical columns, pressing plates fitted to sleeves
moving on the vertical columns, a simple or compound lever attachment or hand wheel with
spindles and proportional weights for applying pressure. The press could be vertical or
horizontal, mechanical or hydraulic type depending upon whether the force is applied by
mechanical action or hydraulic pressure. The pressure on the cheese should be uniform and
there should not be any buckling of the hoops during pressing.

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 Mechanization in cheese making
Mechanization is a system in which most of the stages in cheese making are carried out by
machinery instead of manual labour. The present day cheese making systems involve
handling milk ranging from 2, 50,000 to 10, 00,000 l/day. With increasing cost of labour and
conventional horizontal vats it is very difficult for cheese makers to cut the coagulum and
handle the curd as required for the conventional cheddar process. When the volume of milk
increases it is logical to reduce manual work and drudgery. The adaptation of mechanical
principles in cheese making has grown with the trend of automation in dairy industry.
Mechanization in the major stages of making cheese is given below.
1. Curd making:
Use of banks of rectangular jacketed cheese vats of about 15000 l capacity using built
in swinging stirring units to stir curd-whey mixture after cutting coagulum manually is
an accepted practice. Mechanical cutting is now widely used and nylon thread is
replacing SS wire in many cases. Vats are fitted with pneumatic or hydraulic tilting gears
for emptying the contents.
Besides horizontal enclosed cheese processing tanks, totally enclosed round ended
vertical cheese vats with built-in-stirring units usually made of two frame assemblies with
angle of the blade in the knife agitator frame is so designed that the assembly acts as
cutting knife in one direction and as agitator in the opposite direction. The knives have
rotary or linear movement depending on the type of vats. The vertical vats economise
space. In enclosed vats many operations like filling, adding starter, renneting, cutting,
stirring, scalding and emptying are controlled automatically.
2. Curd/whey separation and texturing of curd:
For the separation of curd pieces from whey various devices are used, viz., troughs
with perforated linings, vibrating mesh separator to separate fine particles of curd from
whey, rotating screens or simple screens. The curd conditioning is done by (a) pumping or
gravity flow of curd/whey mixture, (b) transfer of curd pieces by vibrating belt or conveyor
belt. The stretching and squeezing are affected by belts running at different speeds. The curd
is converted into fibrous slab in cheddar towers where the curd is forced down by the
pressure of the succeeding curd into a square bottom cross section, or in a cheddar box with
regular turning through 900 every 15 min. milled, salted and filled in moulds and carried on
long moving belts.
3. Hooping, moulding and pressing:
The milling of cheddared curd is done by power driven mill and the use of block
shaped perforated SS or light non-corrodible plastic moulds. The feeding of the milled
curd is done by vibrations, and automatic weighing machine.
The pneumatic, hydraulic or mechanical spring press has replaced the lever type of
presses. The demand of close textured cheese has led to the technique of vacuum
pressing of cheese. This system sucks out air between the curd particles and eliminates
open texture in cheese. The press consists of a chamber of rectangular cross-section fitted
with piston at the bottom for compression and extrusion of the pressed curd at the top.
The top removable lid can be replaced by cutters to get blocks. The height of the extruded
curd is adjusted to get required size of the block. Vacuum is applied on all the sides of the
curd block (about 80 kPa). This is followed after about 10 min, a pre-pressing pressure of
about 3,400 kPa for 10 min, raised to about 9,500 kPa leads to a final pressure of 480
KPa on the cheese. The press time varies. Normally, it is 1.5 h under vacuum and 6.5 h
under normal pressure.
For brine salting multitier crates are used for lifting, immersing and taking back of
small cheese blocks from brine bath. For retail use cheese blocks are cut by using
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Mechanical cutters from variously shaped blocks and film packed with suitable materials.
Several mechanical cheese making systems are available for cheddar, hard and semihard
Varieties and soft cheese.

Example of Mechanized Cheddar making is mechanized cheddaring machine

First conveyor- It is equipped with stirrers to facilitate further whey removal.

Second conveyor- Matting and fusing starts on this conveyor.
Third conveyor- The mat is inverted and cheddared. At the end of the conveyor, curd
is milled.
Fourth conveyor- Salting takes place on this conveyor

Continuous cheese making

In this system milk is fed at one end of the machine and continuously converted to
coagulum, curd and cheese during the passage through the machine. Basically the process
Consists of application of heat to cold renneted milk in such a manner that curd is formed
Continuously and then cut for removal of whey and finally ending with cheese.

Fig- Continuous Cheddar making