The factory-made cheese of Canada, the United States and Australasia, which is so largely imported into the United Kingdom, is all of the Cheddar type. The factory system has made no headway in the original home of the Cheddar cheese in the west of England. The system was thus described in the _Journal_ of the British Dairy Farmers' Association in 1889 by Mr R. J. Drummond:--
"In the year 1885 I was engaged as cheese instructor by the Ayrshire Dairy Association, to teach the Canadian system of Cheddar cheese-making. I commenced operations under many difficulties, being a total stranger to both the people and the country, and with this, the quantities of milk were very much less than I had been in the habit of handling. Instead of having the milk from 500 to 1000 cows, we had to operate with the milk from 25 to not over 60 cows.
"The system of cheese-making commonly practised in the county of Ayr at that time was what is commonly known as the Joseph Harding or English Cheddar system, which differs from the Canadian system in many details, and in one particular is essentially different, namely, the manner in which the necessary acidity in the milk is produced. In the old method a certain quantity of sour whey was added to the milk each day before adding the rennet, and I have no doubt in my own mind that this whey was often added when the milk was already acid enough, and the consequence was a spoiled cheese.
"Another objection to this system of adding sour whey was, should the stuff be out of condition one day, the same trouble was inoculated with the milk from day to day, and the result was sure to be great unevenness in the quality of the cheese. The utensils commonly in use were very different to anything I had ever seen before; instead of the oblong cheese vat with double casings, as is used by the best makers at the present time, a tub, sometimes of tin and sometimes of wood, from 4 to 7 ft. in diameter by about 30 in. deep, was universally in use. Instead of being able to heat the milk with warm water or steam, as is commonly done now, a large can of a capacity of from 20 to 30 gallons was filled with cold milk and placed in a common hot-water boiler, and heated sufficiently to bring the whole body of the milk in the tub to the desired temperature for adding the rennet. I found that many mistakes were made in the quantity of rennet used, as scarcely any two makers used the same quantity to a given quantity of milk. Instead of having a graduated measure for measuring the rennet, a common tea-cup was used for this purpose, and I have found in some dairies as low as 3 oz. of rennet was used to 100 gallons of milk, where in others as high as 6½ oz. was used to the same quantity. This of itself would cause a difference in the quality of the cheese.