Front-Face Fluorimeter for the Determination of Cutting Time of Cheese Curd

The yield of product (cheese) during the cheese-making process depends on the cutting time of the cheese curd. However, the determination of optimal cutting time on an industrial scale is difficult as current standard methods are destructive or analyse only small volumes and not the entire milk to be curdled into cheese. This paper presents a novel front-face fluorimeter (FFF) that is designed to be immersed into a milk batch to enable the determination of the cutting time of cheese curd without the destruction of the sample. The FFF sensor signal corresponds to physical changes in milk during cheese formation and has high predictive power (r > 0.85) and good accuracy (RSE = 30%, considering daily variation between milk samples). The performance of the presented fluorimeter was on par with standard rheological and Berridge methods.