Fast Dairy Facts courtesy of Austria

I learned so much talking to the Austrian specialists, including:
There are four kinds of cheeses: hard, middle hard, soft and “fresh” cheese. The hardness depends on the amount of water
It’s not enough to have just milk to produce cheese, but you need to add acid to the milk (butter milk, yogurt)
After cheese sets up, you put it in a mold to drain off water. Then you put it in a salt bath because the salt brings out even more water
Hard cheeses like Parmesan take 2 – 3 years to age (although an Albanian professor kept insisting that it was 2 – 3 years to spoil)
Austria produces about 220 different kinds of cheese
The French are known for soft cheese (like camembert); Switzerland and Holland are other known cheese producers
The EU has strict guidelines about milk processing, for example: how many bacteria are allowed to be in 100ml of milk and the requirement of a sink near a milking area
You must wash your hands (in a sink) and udders of a cow (with a disposable towel) to prevent the spread of disease
The first milk that comes out should be put into a special container and shouldn’t come in contact with other milk because it has a lot of harmful bacteria
You should always milk a cow until there is nothing left because the last milk that comes out has a good, high fat content of around 12%
As soon as you are done milking, you should remove the milk from the stall immediately because the milk absorbs the smell of the stall
Milk is cooled afterwards to prevent the growth of bacteria
Before, you used to be able to cool the milk by putting it in cold water, but now it is required to keep it at about 8 – 12 degrees. This is done by machines

For me, last week was nice because I got to practice my German and practice my languages in a different way than what I’m used to. It’s value being able to use previous knowledge and experience and apply it in ways that I normally wouldn’t. I’m obsessed with learning new things, whether it’s new vocabulary or facts about cheese production. I want to learn everything and I’ve always been passionate about learning things I didn’t know before.

I was thinking how my host dad and uncle in Germany knew so much about agriculture and how my uncle had a dairy farm, and how my mom is really interested in cheese and yogurt production; and I thought about how much they would have enjoyed the presentations as well.

The week also provided the opportunity to talk with key figures of the school (the director and vice-director), which is something I hadn’t had the chance to do before. I went on a field trip with the vice-director and ended up talking about politics, immigration and economics. The director organized a final dinner on Saturday, and I sat as the only woman at the head of the table and had a great conversation with the director about religion and politics (“Politics? That’s her speciality,” the vice-director told the director from the end of the table). I also spent a lot of time talking to one of the Austrians, who coincidentally had a daughter with my name, a year younger than me, who had also lived in Philadelphia.