A guide leading a tour of a farm dairy, explaining how their cheese
IELTS Listening — IELTS Practice Originals, Listening Practice Test 12, Section 2
{# No redirect, deliberately: the text above must be the same thing a reader and a crawler get, and the CTA is how a reader crosses into the timed app. #} Listen and answer Play the recording once, as in the exam, then see every answer with the moment in the audio it comes from. Start nowTranscript
{# Shown in full, as the review screen does after a sitting: it is the text a searcher is looking for, and hiding it would leave this page with nothing on it but a heading. #}Section 2. You will hear a guide leading a tour of a farm dairy, explaining how their cheese is made. First, you have some time to look at questions 11 to 16.
Now listen carefully and answer questions 11 to 16.
MAN: Welcome, everyone, to Applewood Farm, where we've been making cheese by hand for four generations. Over the next half hour I'll walk you through exactly how the milk in our morning churns becomes the cheese on your table. It's a simple process in principle, but timing is everything.
MAN: So, step by step. It all starts with the fresh milk, which arrives here still warm from our own cows. The very first thing we do is heat it gently, we call this pasteurising, to a set temperature to make it safe, then let it cool again. Now, a lot of visitors expect us to boil it, but we never do, boiling would ruin the flavour.
MAN: Once the milk has cooled, we add a starter culture, that's the friendly bacteria, and then a substance called rennet. The rennet is what makes the milk set, and within about forty minutes the liquid milk has turned into a soft, wobbly solid, rather like a jelly. This solid is the curd.
MAN: Next comes the part the children always enjoy. We cut the curd into small cubes with what look like giant wire combs. Cutting it releases a watery liquid, the whey, which drains away, and the smaller you cut the curd, the drier and harder your final cheese will be. Then we gently heat and stir the cubes to firm them up.
Before you hear the rest of the talk, you have some time to look at questions 17 to 20.
MAN: After the whey has drained, we pack the curd into round moulds and press it, that's what squeezes out the last of the moisture and binds it into a solid wheel. And the final step, before it goes to the store, is that each wheel is rubbed all over with salt, which both adds flavour and helps preserve it.
MAN: Then it's simply a matter of patience. The wheels rest on wooden shelves in our cool cellar, and this is where the magic happens, the flavour develops slowly over time. Our mildest cheese is ready in three months, but our strongest is left for a full two years. Right, mind the step, and we'll go through to the cutting room.
That is the end of Section 2. You now have some time to check your answers.