Improved Process Control for Cheese Products

Introduction

In cheese-making, there is a delicate balance between moisture, fat, and protein levels that plays an important role in the quality, flavor and mouth-feel of the final product. Accurately monitoring moisture, fat, and protein throughout the production process not only ensures the best quality finished product, but also has a direct impact on achieving optimum yields, and in turn, profitability.

The SMART 6^TM – ORACLE^TM is a combination system for rapid moisture and fat determination with results in less than 5 minutes. The SMART 6 moisture and solids analyzer utilizes dual-frequency energy to rapidly analyze any product, wet or dry, in 3 minutes or less. ORACLE eliminates the need for method development by completely isolating the signal from fat molecules, even in complex sample matrices. Sprint^® is a direct protein measurement system, which utilizes dye-binding technology to ensure only true protein is detected, not total nitrogen, which can result in erroneous measurements when non-protein nitrogen is present. Sprint does not require regular calibrations, and methods are easy for any lab user to create. Competitive, rapid technologies (NIR, FT-IR, TD-NMR) require ongoing, expensive calibrations and method development for each unique sample due to variations in color, texture, and consistency.