Yield of raw milk cheese vs. cheese from microfiltered milk

Contamination of milk with spores of Clostridium tyrobutyricum is causing late blowing in hard and semi-hard cheese. The microfiltration at 12°C and 40°C reduced the count of spores efficiently making it possible to manufacture cheese of good quality from silage milk with initially high spore contamination. The mass balance showed that microfiltration at 12°C resulted in more cheese fines in the whey than microfiltration at 40°C or untreated raw milk. The higher amount of cheese fines due to microfiltration at 12°C did not influence the protein recovery since this was compensated with increased water content in cheese. Cheese yield was higher for microfiltered milk than for untreated raw milk because of the slightly increased water content.