ACS 2008: butter and curds
Aug. 5th, 2008 07:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gordonzolaI made some concessions to the fact that the ACS conference is large now. With around 800 attendees, the sessions are much more lecture-based and even if one is able to ask a question there’s no time to discuss the answer. Therefore, I only go to subjects that are over me head or that I do not get stomach pains from attending because I want to give my point of view so badly.
Therefore, after the 25-year anniversary video and panel discussion at the general session, I went to “Understanding Butter Flavor” and then “Demystifying Rennets and Coagulants”. These were good for me because 1. I don’t buy butter for the store and 2. The rennet one was high-level cheesemaker talk, assuming a bunch of chemistry knowledge, not meant for retailers.
The butter workshop was really about the concept of scientificizing taste. I went to the panel by this professor at last years conference, and her work is around gathering groups of consumers,* teaching them how to name what they are tasting/smelling, and then graphing these results on the flavor wheel. In general, I think these types of studies have very limited uses, but they do have an industry one… how to study the regionality of acceptable flavor profiles and what types of people like what types of taste. Basically, better market research.
The attendees were such liars. Only 3 of us admitted to ever eating margarine.**
The gist of the panel was that if you are making so much butter that it will sit in warehouse refrigeration for over 9 months, you should freeze it. Makes sense to me.
The rennet converstation was hampered by storms on the Eats Coast preventing a panelist from attending. The great Marc Druart pinch hit, but unfortunately, without hand-outs, I had to write as fast as I could and just take in what information I could.
Turns out that I should have gone to the retailer/cheesemaker town meeting where war broke out over the fact that most large goat cheese producers in this country cannot meet their orders without the use of frozen curds.*** Embarrassingly, an employee from another goat cheese company denied using them even though it is common knowledge that they do. We are planning a panel discussion on this at the February Sonoma Valley Cheese Conference (and I wrote about it in my manuscript) But it is great to see this issue not being a dirty little secret anymore.
*interestingly enough mostly these groups are all women because women still make, by far, most of the purchasing decisions for grocery items.
**I only eat the non-hydrogenated Earth Balance stuff sometimes, but I grew up on margarine, I won’t deny its soft, over-salted goodness on certain things.
***Butter is produced somewhat seasonally (i.e. more butter is made when demand for Ice Cream is low, more butter is needed at the Nov/Dec food holidays than any other time, etc. ) so this isn’t just a question of mass production.
****Some frozen curds would be in house, saved from times when there is more milk for the times when goats are kidding. More commonly, these are bought from other regions or even other countries but not labeled as such. Poor locovores.
Therefore, after the 25-year anniversary video and panel discussion at the general session, I went to “Understanding Butter Flavor” and then “Demystifying Rennets and Coagulants”. These were good for me because 1. I don’t buy butter for the store and 2. The rennet one was high-level cheesemaker talk, assuming a bunch of chemistry knowledge, not meant for retailers.
The butter workshop was really about the concept of scientificizing taste. I went to the panel by this professor at last years conference, and her work is around gathering groups of consumers,* teaching them how to name what they are tasting/smelling, and then graphing these results on the flavor wheel. In general, I think these types of studies have very limited uses, but they do have an industry one… how to study the regionality of acceptable flavor profiles and what types of people like what types of taste. Basically, better market research.
The attendees were such liars. Only 3 of us admitted to ever eating margarine.**
The gist of the panel was that if you are making so much butter that it will sit in warehouse refrigeration for over 9 months, you should freeze it. Makes sense to me.
The rennet converstation was hampered by storms on the Eats Coast preventing a panelist from attending. The great Marc Druart pinch hit, but unfortunately, without hand-outs, I had to write as fast as I could and just take in what information I could.
Turns out that I should have gone to the retailer/cheesemaker town meeting where war broke out over the fact that most large goat cheese producers in this country cannot meet their orders without the use of frozen curds.*** Embarrassingly, an employee from another goat cheese company denied using them even though it is common knowledge that they do. We are planning a panel discussion on this at the February Sonoma Valley Cheese Conference (and I wrote about it in my manuscript) But it is great to see this issue not being a dirty little secret anymore.
*interestingly enough mostly these groups are all women because women still make, by far, most of the purchasing decisions for grocery items.
**I only eat the non-hydrogenated Earth Balance stuff sometimes, but I grew up on margarine, I won’t deny its soft, over-salted goodness on certain things.
***Butter is produced somewhat seasonally (i.e. more butter is made when demand for Ice Cream is low, more butter is needed at the Nov/Dec food holidays than any other time, etc. ) so this isn’t just a question of mass production.
****Some frozen curds would be in house, saved from times when there is more milk for the times when goats are kidding. More commonly, these are bought from other regions or even other countries but not labeled as such. Poor locovores.
