New cultures secure mildness in cheese

Chr. Hansen introduces ‘Mild O’, a new cheese culture range which provides great flavor and texture in various cheese types, particularly in Southern European gourmet cheeses.

The main applications for ‘Mild O’ cultures are soft cheese (e.g. camembert and brie), white brined cheese (feta), quark, a type of fresh cheese, as well as specific gourmet style continental cheeses for instance with blends of goat, sheep and cow milk.

“We recommend the ‘Mild O’ cultures for cheese producers who want to optimize the mild flavor in their cheese and avoid bitterness,” says Theis Bacher, Marketing Manager, Cheese Cultures, Chr. Hansen. “Further, the new culture blends slow down the acidification process which removes the risk of a brittle or hard cheese texture. Finally, the cultures are quite salt sensitive. This is an advantage to cheese producers who wish to avoid post acidification usually causing sour flavor notes in the cheese. Using a ‘Mild O’ culture blend, producers can simply stop the acidification process at high pH and thereby avoid excessive sourness.”

“Commercially, we are expecting these cultures to gain solid footing in several markets and cheese segments within the next couple of years because of their powerful mildness profile and versatile applications. In particular, we know from introductory trials that there is a great potential in specific Southern European gourmet cheese segments such as manchego and pecorino sardo,” Theis Bacher elaborates.

The strains in the ‘Mild O’ culture blends have been carefully selected among hundreds of strains for their ability to remove bitterness in the cheese. The primary reason for their mild flavor profile is the high content of ‘cremoris’ subspecies strains in the blends.

Additionally, the cultures have been developed so they each have several different strains in the blends. This provides the cultures with good protection against phage attacks.

‘Mild O’ cultures come in both freeze-dried and frozen formats.