A Review of Starter Media for Cheese Making

¹ Department of Microbiology, Oregon State University, Corvallis 97331-3804

In the early days of the dairy industry, raw milk was used to grow starters for cheese making. To improve cheese quality, the raw milk eventually was replaced by selected producer's milk, NDM, and then pretested NDM. The use of pretested NDM eventually gave rise to the starter medium industry, and developments that followed were whey-based media, phage inhibitory media, media controlled externally for pH, and encapsulated time-released neutralizers. Finally, phage inhibitory media controlled internally for pH were developed wherein inert, insoluble neutralizer was solubilized in response to lactic acid produced by the starter bacteria, which allowed neutralization in response to varying rates of acid production by starters. This progress was initially made with starter media for mesophilic cultures, and the technology has now been applied to develop media for thermophiles. Performance examples of commercially available starter media for both mesophilic and thermophilic starters are given and discussed.

Key Words: starter • media • cheese making

Submitted on February 10, 1992
Accepted on August 20, 1992