Where can I find out which cultures are in my culture bag?

[meyerandray]

I live in Italy, and so far the only cultures that I have been able to find that are the same names as info that I find in my book ("Mastering Artisan Cheesemaking" by Gianaclis Caldwell) are mesophilic, thermophilic and Roquefort.  The rest of the cultures that I find have the name of ONE cheese type on them, for example today I got some Toma (tomme in french) starter culture.  All that is written is the date it was packaged, the lot number, "Toma" and then "ST TH MX 1".  Does anyone have any insight as to where I can find out what this is, and what other cheeses I could use it for? This is a problem for all of the cultures that I can find in my area, so any advice would be great, I am using USA recipes, but buying the ingredients in Italy, so it is a little tough.

[linuxboy]

Who is the seller or manufacturer

[bbracken677]

While I cannot say for certain, the one example you gave appears to be a single strain (ST) culture. ST stands for Streptococcus thermophilus...and is equivalent to TA 61.

If in doubt, contact the manufacturer of the cultures, perhaps, for further info?

[meyerandray]

The company is called Colombo SRL in Puglia (Italy), I will try to contact them and see what kind of details they can provide.  Thanks for the answers.