Thanks everyone! It has been a long road with more hours spent than I would like to think about, but we are finally here. It feels so good to know what we have accomplished over the last three years.
John….we needed a pasteurizer (and required items that go along with this), pump and cheese vat. The chiller would have been great as well as the bottler, but we were on a budget. I figured a good press was better and since I already have a 49 cu ft. commercial fridge (you can see a portion of the fridge in the right hand side of the photo) I knew I could use that to store milk. We also run off a well so the water is cold enough to chill the vat down for making cheese.
We use the pump to move the milk around rather it be into the vat, out of the vat or into bottles. The pump never touches the milk so the only thing you have to clean is the hose. Very cool design!
Chart recorder records the temperature of the product and we have to keep our charts for 6 months. Along with this we have the air space and product thermometers (accurate within 1/2 degree) which you read and write on the chart at the beginning and end of pasteurization. Little black box is the air space heater and to the right of that is the agitator control.
The vat has two different sized liners you can use which gives you the flexibility of doing 2 – 22 gallons although if you are not pasteurizing you can get about 25 gallons in the large liner. The liners are shaped exactly the same as the outside so when I cut the curds they never try to spin on me which is great.
Let me know if this help and if you have any more question.
