I am glad that this continues to be done by hand, and expect, based on Italian attitudes towards food and tradition, that it will continue being done by hand for another hundred years.

It is interesting how important it seems to us that jobs like this remain done in the traditional way. For all their expertise, I am sure a technical solution would also easily be able to detect what they are looking for: voids within the cheese, or lack of uniform density. This does not seem to be a case where the human expertise and artistry is actually important to the final product, besides the feeling of tradition.

Perhaps the best argument for keeping traditional jobs like this is that, even if that exact job could be done by machine, replacing these humans with machines would be the start of a short process that would end up with indistrially-produced bad cheese.

Probably I'm biased because I'm Italian and I grew up eating them, but Parmigiano Reggiano and Grana Padano are hands down the best cheeses there can be. Many people know and consume them only grated on pasta dishes, but they are especially delicious on their own with some good bread or grilled polenta.

Also, the crust can be chopped up and added to risotto (as you're cooking it) and they turn into wonderful little chewy chunks.

I saw a How it's Made episode about cheeses like this the other day. They mix the ingredients in a giant electric mixer - but dump them in by hand. The inspection is still done by ear with a hammer - but when then need to flip the wheels over every few weeks they have a robot grabber thing do it.

Obviously, there's some balance in technology that is about right, but where do you draw the line? Because this could absolutely be done fully by hand or fully autonomously.

The episode after that showed a machine to milk cows which was fully automated with no human involvement at all!

This reminded me of the story about Charles Proteus Steinmetz diagnosing the problem inside a generator at Henry Ford's auto plant just by listening to it very carefully.

"Ford, whose electrical engineers couldn’t solve some problems they were having with a gigantic generator, called Steinmetz in to the plant. Upon arriving, Steinmetz rejected all assistance and asked only for a notebook, pencil and cot. According to Scott, Steinmetz listened to the generator and scribbled computations on the notepad for two straight days and nights. On the second night, he asked for a ladder, climbed up the generator and made a chalk mark on its side. Then he told Ford’s skeptical engineers to remove a plate at the mark and replace sixteen windings from the field coil. They did, and the generator performed to perfection.

Henry Ford was thrilled until he got an invoice from General Electric in the amount of $10,000. Ford acknowledged Steinmetz’s success but balked at the figure. He asked for an itemized bill.

Steinmetz ... responded personally to Ford’s request with the following:

Making chalk mark on generator $1.

Knowing where to make mark $9,999.

Ford paid the bill."

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/charles-proteus-stein...

If you want to see it in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8Zg3nAtyDc

Just like people sometimes question the human element in judging sports, I wonder if there are cheesemakers who think these guys are simply against them or favorable to their neighbors.

One thing I've also wondered about this process. When I buy Parmigiano Reggiano, it's just sold as "Parmigiano Reggiano". There's no discernable branding beyond that (compared to the Pecorino Romano I buy, which has "Locatelli" plastered all over it). Is this true all over? Do any HNers seek out Parmigiano Reggiano from their favorite dairy?

Curious about this quote: "'My elder colleagues tell me you never stop learning, even after 50 years of doing it,' recounted Stocchi. 'The day you think you’ve learned everything is the day you’ll start making errors.'" - To me this implies that there is more variation among the cheese than I'd expect. In this role don't you see every likely cheese over 50 years? It seems like a static product, where production methods don't change, and that should give you very consistent results from tapping.

It's interesting to me that, from what they describe, they still sell the cheese regardless of the outcome of this tapping test. It's just that they sell it unbranded if it's of the lowest quality, and with a different marking for medium quality than highest-quality.

I suppose wheels of cheese can last a lot longer than normal table cheese, so that's why it makes sense to make this distinction.

Cheese, not the kind that comes in plastic bags, is incredibly cool and delicious. It is nothing like what most people think of as cheese.

There are some youtube videos about people making artisanal cheeses:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM102CO8JL0 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImpROVueIcE

Kids! Do this at home!!! I've been making cheese at home for the last year. It is hard - but not as hard as programming and tastes much, much, better.

I'm wondering if I remember an urban legend or other apocryphal story.

From the headline, I immediately thought of an answer I swear I learned about in some machine learning class years ago. People were struggling with a food inspection device that tapped (cheese? fruit?) like this, trying to emulate what a human expert did.

The punchline was that the human expert didn't really know how to articulate their decision either, and it wasn't listening to the drumming sounds at all, but merely dispersing some odors to do a better sniff test.

There's just something incredible about a skill that exists entirely in someone's ears and hands, passed down person-to-person, not taught in a classroom, not automated, not optimized - just learned over time standing next to someone wiser than you

I'm curious about the False Positive/False Negative rate of the battitore. Do they open up some wheels to double check?

They make it sound really complicated, requiring years of mentorship, but really, it was just determining if the sound is the same on multiple taps. It would seem pretty obvious if you tap over a hollow.

There was a time when I was consuming a lot of industrial cheese. I developed a rash on my legs... One day I realized the rash was certainly being caused by my cheap cheese habit. I'm certain it was related to the "vegetarian enzymes" used as an industrial substitute for the traditional animal rennet. I stopped buying the cheap cheese, and my rash went away.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rennet

Contaminants are a common problem in industrial food manufacturing: citric acid (fungal contaminants), vitamin C (heavy metals), and "enzymes" (?).

I'm glad Italians insist their cheeses be made following the traditional methods.

What a fascinating and unique craft! The skill of the battitori to detect defects in Parmigiano Reggiano with just a tap is truly remarkable.

The sharing of the article and comments: Why I love HN. Thank you.

My 100% favourite part of this write up is the mention of "piano piano".

In 2018 i was renovating my house in Little Italy Toronto (Canada). There was this 91 year old Italian woman, Assunta, living alone in the house next to mine. She was always curious (or nosey?), but only spoke Italian, so we struggled to communicate. She would always say in broken English encouraging statements like "You make it nice", "lot of work, you do so good" to which I would say "thanks" and often talk about the amount of work ahead of me. She would always follow up with "eh, piano piano...".

I had no idea what she meant until one day I Googled this term and i learnt it essentially means "slowly slowly" or "take it slowly".

Assunta is gone now, but she was a lovable character. I think my dog misses her treats, and I miss the snacks she would bring me when I was working on the house.

I wonder whether the cheese would ripen better and get better structure, less defects/voids, if it were subjected to the sound vibrations from Italian opera singing records playing during those months of ripening.

Why not!

TLDR: The Italian way of doing acoustic, non-destructive testing of a material. This is also done in many other things such as pipelines, chairlifts, and welded metals or machines that have pre-recorded acoustic signatures or sound recordings. Hit it with a hammer, listen to the tone. If it sounds very different, inspect or reject.

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The website makes me think they want lots of money. It's as if they are saying leave the cheese to the experts. As a hacker I wonder how much of that is true.

This is like if Toyota were to announce that for each shipping car, they kick all the tires, slam the doors, and honk the horn.

It is probably just a joke for show and to fool naive competition.

Behind closed doors, they must do some actual quality tests.

Will an AI be able to do this too? Probably.

Hey! I don't think it's a good idea. But if it's cheap and effective, guess how long it will take?