How they saved the holes in Swiss cheese

Camera: Tobias Buchmann
Thanks to Rafael Ferrara and Remo Schmidt for the suggestion!

(you can find contact details and social links there too)

[TomScottGo]

This video has a correction: the second interviewee is Noam Shani. I accidentally copied-and-pasted the wrong name, and it somehow got through all the video checks. Apologies to Dr. Shani!

[Lizlodude]

The fact that we got good at making cheese, got too good to where it's too clean, then had to carefully and safely add barn dust to it in order to fix the cheese is absolutely amazing.

[Onager]

I’m reminded of a whisky distillery I visited in Islay, Scotland. They installed a new still as the century’s old one was on the way out.
They noticed they did not get the same flavour profiles, despite ensuring the product in was identical.
Turns out the old dents and ‘imperfections’ in the old still changed how the sprit distilled.
So they literally took a hammer to the new still and lo and behold they got the product out they wanted.
A perfect blend of science, tradition and art.

[negativenumber]

There are swiss children out there who want to grow up and become cheese scientists. That is honestly such an incredible and hyperspecific job I'm slightly jealous

[gaarakabuto]

For those who missed it, they use the same technology we use to detect bone and tissue damages for counting cheese holes.

[zagreus]

This takes preserving your culture to a whole new level.

[equesta]

A lab dedicated to analysing exactly how the the holes in Swiss cheese are made is the most Swiss thing I've ever seen.

[BearODice]

1 mg of hay powder per 1000 liters of milk? That's absolutely mind-bogglingly small but wonderfully incredible to learn, thanks so much

[zapfanzapfan]

I've worked in protein crystallization, also a very finicky process. One lab can get crystals while another one doesn't despite using the same protocol. Crystals need something to grow around, a nucleation point, one lab where people smoked (this was long ago) got crystals while others didn't. It's the small things...

[BigWheel.]

As someone who's from Wisconsin this is EXACTLY what I want to see being researched.

[hello.i.t]

While holes do not affect the taste (flavour), they do have great effect on texture. And texture is very important in forming the complete experience of the taste.

[Quotenwagnerianer]

To have one understand how particular the cheese industry is about their homemarket IN Switzerland one only has to make a little taste test with Gruyere cheese. The one you can buy in Germany, even though directly bordering Switzerland does not taste quite as distinct as the one you can get in Switzerland. I always suspect that is because they keep the real good stuff to themselves.

[butsulo]

As a swiss person, im impressed how much we care about cheese, I mean, it is obvious, but to what lengths we go to make sure we always have good cheese is fascinating

[etzool]

Knowing that I could've been a _cheese scientist_ instead of a programmer is perhaps the most tragic thing I've ever learned... thanks, Tom. Thanks a lot. -_-;;

[PowerfulmaxMage]

This is why I love this YouTuber. Tom covers topics I never even imagined were a thing. Always so interesting and surprising.

[TheCrewdy]

There is a metaphor in medicine (and other industries) about a Swiss Cheese model - where each layer of a service has certain vulnerabilities (holes) but using more layers helps stop there being a vulnerability which runs through the whole system unchecked (or a hole all the way through the cheese). I think the fact that the holes in Swiss cheese are created by very slight imperfections in the milk fits well with this analogy as the vulnerabilities of a system are often slight imperfections which how the real world works.

[zwergomir]

I'm from Switzerland and want to say that your videos are very interesting! And even if you live in the same country, unless you're living at the places you visit or are a part of the topic discussed, you learn something new!
Also, fun fact a year after watching your video about the "falling rocks" sign in Brienz in a lecture about engineering geology at ETH this place was discussed, which I find very fun! Thanks to your video I already new something very specific which is also part of a univerity lecture...

[ZaphodHarkonnen]

Hah! The moment they said ‘impurities’ I immediately guessed stuff was too clean. Always interesting to see that we’re able to do stuff so well we unintentionally remove things we actually want.

[jimi]

An advanced research lab dedicated to cheese. With scientists doing scans and mesurements of specific cheese attributes. And the cheese archive in there as well! It's just so brilliant! Not in a million years I would have thought I'd see anything like this.

[Vixikats]

I have a special appreciation for buildings that look exactly like what they are. You introduce an agricultural research center and I see several buildings all topped with foliage and making use of the rooftops for said agriculture. Fair play.