Heating Milk - Using Copper Coil

[ashummel]

Hello Everyone,
I have a copper coil that is used for cooling beer. I was wondering if i heated the milk the same way if anyone thinks it would be quicker than the double boiler, or stove top method? Also could there be any chemical reaction that would be undesirable? I hope this doesn't sound like a completely stupid idea.

[MrsKK]

No question is stupid if you don't know the answer.  Folks here are very patient about answering questions and I don't remember anything like yours coming up before.

I imagine it would be a really good way of heating the milk quickly, but I'm not sure about copper.  There might be some chemical reaction between the acidity of the milk and the metal that would be a negative.

We'll have to wait for an answer from the more scientific members, I think.

[linuxboy]

It'd be fine, but I would be worried about two things

1) Sanitization of the heat exchanger. Mine has some copper wire, and all sorts of bacteria can go hide in there.
2) Off flavors. Mine is covered with wort residue, hop oils, etc. I've soaked, scrubbed, etc and it's still there.

So if yours is clean enough overall and you can sanitize it, using a heat exchanger would be fine. Fast, too.

Copper-acid reaction would be minimal, not a concern.

[ashummel]

linuxboy, Mrskk
Thank you for the feedback. I will definitely clean the heck out of the coil. I was also going to use a submersible pump in a sink of hot water to get the flow of heat through the coil. Would that be the easiest way?

[ashummel]

Wow,
I went out and bought a 30 dollar submersible pump, While doing so i was deciding on which cheeses i was going to make. I had 7 gallons of whole cows milk and 5 pints of heavy cream. I also went out to the library and picked up a couple more books. One cheese i was going to do for sure was a  blue, well in the 200 Easy Home Made Cheese Recipe book there is a recipe for Roquefort. I wanted to incorporate some cream and it didn't call for but i substituted two cups of milk for 2 cups of cream. I also did a Havarti. So I've got four gallons for Havarti and two for the Blue. I put my copper coil in the four gallons and turned the pump on and not even TEN MINUTES later the milk that was at 40 Degrees was breaching 90. I am thinking to myself this is impossible. I took the other one off the stove and dropped the coil in, same outcome. I have cut my intital warming time by at least 45 mins. Well worth the 30 dollars for the pump.