Cheese mould and/or follower with roughened inner surface and method for making same

A cheese mould having a wall of plastic material, which wall is provided with fine holes and the inner surface of which may be provided with grooves, said inner surface being subjected to a roughening treatment, for instance rubbing with a steel brush, course sand paper, a rasp or a scouring substance, so that small scratches are made, in order to improve the rind forming properties of the mould.

The invention relates to a cheese mould and/or follower, provided with a 
wall of plastic material with fine holes for draining away the whey with a 
non-smooth inner surface. 
Such a cheese mould has been described in the Dutch Patent Application Nos. 
73.02524 and 77.05990. 
With these moulds it is possible to make cheese having a reasonable rind 
without using cheese cloth. It has been shown, however, that a quick and 
efficient rind forming has great economic value, firstly because certain 
sorts of cheese can be better stored when the rind is good and sound and 
secondly because the time of manufacture can be shortened if the forming 
of the rind occurs under favorable circumstances. 
When using cheese moulds and followers having an irregular or non-smooth 
surface, that contacts the curd, it is of great importance, that the mould 
can be cleaned sufficiently by subjecting it to a normal cleaning process. 
The invention aims to provide a cheese mould and/or follower of the above 
indicated type, which at the one hand procures a quick and good rind 
forming and at the other hand nevertheless can be easily cleaned. 
The above aims are surprisingly realized by roughening the inner surface of 
the cheese mould and the follower. Though any manufacturing method 
resulting in a rough surface of the mould can be used when applying the 
invention, a mechanical treatment making small scratches is preferred. 
Such a mechanical treatment can be scouring, preferably with so called 
course sand paper, treating with a steel brush and possibly with a rasp or 
a scouring substance. Therewith in plastic material, such as polyethylene 
or polypropylene a surface is created, that locally has recesses, which 
normally are oblong and can be called scratches, but at the edge of these 
recesses or at their ends projections or fine threads are present. 
Consequently a surface is formed, that as has been shown, it extremely 
favorable for a quick, good and reliable rind forming. Further it has been 
shown that such an irregular surface can be cleaned as well as a non 
roughened surface. Herewith it is pointed out that the roughening 
according to the invention only adds very little to the manufacturing 
costs and implies a very important improvement of the cheese surface, that 
is the rind. Also the invention allows for an inner wall having fine 
grooves, to apply these grooves by a pressing treatment. Pressed or 
moulded grooves give generally a less satisfactory rind forming, when the 
roughening according to the invention has not been applied, so that the 
invention even enables to speed up the mechanical treatment of the inner 
wall: The small grooves can be made by moulding and thereafter the 
combination of the small grooves and the roughening gives a cheese mould 
having excessively good rind forming properties. 
When the cheese mould has already grooves according a regular pattern, the 
invention can be applied by applying fine scratches that are superimposed 
upon this pattern. These scratches may have a direction or orientation 
that is completely independent on that of the small grooves. 
Roughening the surface creates locally more or less scratch shaped 
recesses, but abutting to them also projections, which have incidentally 
the shape of fine threads or other particles that at the end of a scratch 
remain attached to the surface. The small irregularities have proven to be 
of great importance for obtaining a good cheese rind

A further advantage of the invention is, that it is possible to reduce the 
height of irregularities, such as ribs or pyramids by removing the top 
parts of the ribs or pyramids, as naturally happens when scouring the 
surface. This means, that it is possible to reduce the rind thickness 
and/or modify the rind by varying the duration or intensity of the 
roughening treatment. By reason of this fact it is often very easy to 
adapt a cheese mould to make it suitable for a special type of cheese 
and/or special desires, simply by varying the roughening treatment. 
The invention provides also a method for manufacturing a cheese mould 
and/or follower of plastic material consisting in that the inner surface 
of a mould or a follower, provided with fine perforations is subjected to 
rubbing with a mechanical cleaning means, such as a steel brush, a rasp or 
a scouring substance. This treatment can be applied as well to newly 
manufactured cheese mould or followers as to cheese mould or followers 
which have already been in use during a considerable time. 
The scratches formed by applying the invention generally are visible with 
the naked eye and generally give, when feeling the surface with a finger a 
palpable roughness. Of course the surface is also less reflectant than the 
surface of a corresponding cheese mould, but not according to the 
invention, that means of which the surface has not been roughened. 
Finally a very simple embodiment of the invention consists in that in case 
small grooves or such like are applied in the inner surface of a cheese 
mould or follower, to do this with a non-sharp chisel or fraise. Then at 
the edge of the grooves irregular recesses and projections are created 
that are completely comparable to the scratches obtained by roughening. 
The quite remarkable thing is, that work, that up to now would have been 
unconditionally rejected by each man of the art, to the contrary has 
superior qualities.