Create your own cheese sensory signature

Three new DVS® Full Flavor ripening cultures from Chr. Hansen widen the flavor palette in cheese.

In today’s keen competition cheese makers are looking for a well-defined and consistent flavor, a pleasant texture an appealing appearance. They are also asking for ways to differentiate their cheeses and tap into new opportunities driven by the global health trend and regulatory demands.


Chr. Hansen makes this possible by offering a new range of DVS^® ripening cultures with unique properties that facilitate the development of new cheeses with indulgent flavor and the opportunity to renew consumers’ interest in existing product lines by injecting new life into them.


Widening the DVS^® palette of flavors
The DVS^® CR Full Flavor cultures are designed to bring a natural indulgent flavor to branded cheeses without extra ripening time. They also improve taste and flavor in cheeses marketed as low fat, low salt and vegetable fat and enable the restoration of traditional cheese features in vacuum ripened technics.


“For several years most of the ripening cultures devoted to Continental and Cheddar cheeses consisted of a certain kind of lactic acid bacteria (Lactobacillus helveticus), which is a powerful tool, but often linked to sweet notes. This time our researchers set out to widen the palette of flavors, especially in a savory direction,” explains Soeren Herskind, VP, Commercial Development, Chr. Hansen.


“Looking through our collection of more than 16,000 bacterial strains we selected more rare and original types such as Lactobacillus plantarum, Lactobacillus curvatus, Pediococcus acidilactici or Lactobacillus johnsonii with different enzymatic activity providing different properties in the cheese,” Herskind elaborates.


New research methodology: Creation of a flavor library
Chr. Hansen’s scientists developed new assays to study suitable candidates. Almost 1,000 strains were screened in order to select and compose the most powerful cheese ripening culture blends, building up a library on their metabolism (chemical transformations taking place within the cells).


“Thanks to this library of metabolic characteristics, we can now pick and choose the bacteria with the specific features that we want,” concludes Birgitte Vedel Thage, Senior Scientist, Culture Development, who was in charge of the development project.


Once identified, the “winning combinations” were validated in several types of cheese with different ripening time, and the final selection was made by means of human sensory panels.