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GENERAL BOARDS => DAIRY FARM - Equipment => Topic started by: hplace on October 25, 2009, 06:15:29 AM
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Any suggestions for cooling milk faster? I get 3-4 gallons per milking out of my Jersey cow and you can imagine how long it takes to cool a 4 gallon pot of milk in the refrigerator. I split it up into smaller containers to help cool faster, but if someone has a better approach I would love to hear it!
At a restaurant supply store I noticed some long plastic containers that you fill with water and then freeze. You can use them to stir soups to help cool faster for storing. I thought about trying that, but I don't have a lot of free space in my freezer and wasn't too excited about having one more thing to wash twice a day.
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I keep my milk in glass gallon jars and it seems to cool quickly enough that I don't have any problems with it. I have the fridge set at about 35 degrees, too, so that helps.
I got these jars free from a local bowling alley - they are pickle jars. I got the pickle odor out of the lids by coating the insides of them with dish soap and allowing them to sit that way for 3 days, then washed them out. No more pickle odor!
That's a lot of milk, isn't it? My cow freshens at about that level, too, but I sharemilk with the calf, so I don't have to manage it all. Plus, we keep chickens and raise pigs each summer, so I feed them a lot of clabbered milk, too. It helps cut down on grain costs for those animals.
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I've heard of people using those glass jars. I'll have to ask around to see where I can get some. It would help to split up the milk in smaller quantities for sure. When I don't have time for cheesemaking or don't have somewhere else for the milk to go, I also give it to the calf and to the chickens.
Thanks for the input!!
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Put it in the sink in ice water?
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I have faced the same problem. I milk three every day and get 7.5 gallons total every morning. I have 2 fridges and I keep one designated for the fresh milk and then move them to the other in the am; freshest milk is always on the right. The main thing is to keep the door shut and make sure the air can circulate each jug In gallon jugs they get to 33 pretty fast. I do use a few glass jugs when there is too much milk but the plastic gallon kraft mayo jugs seal better and i dont worry about breaking them. They have very wide lids making it easy to cream them too. and handles! You just have to eat a lot of mayo! The pic I attached has 4 of these; the ones with big blue lids. i keep my fridge set very low also.
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I milk goats, not cows, but probably use the same stainless steel milk bucket and inflations. Here is what I do:
I have 2-two gallon buckets of brine solution (Salt Water) that I keep in my freezer. When I get ready to milk the goats I empty the contents of these buckets into a larger rubbermaid bucket with handles (bought at Walmart). I then submerge the stainless steel milk bucket in the brine solution. As I am milking the goats, it cools down in the stainless steel milk bucket. So, by the time I finish milking and take the stainless steel milk bucket inside for processing, the milk is already at 55 - 60 degrees. I then bottle it and immediately place the bottles in the freezer. I sell most of my goat milk frozen and have never had a complaint! :)
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I have a five gallon covered can that I carry milk from the barn into the house with. On the days I'll be longer in the barn, I put the pail of milk in a bucket and fill it with cold, running water. I leave it running until I'm ready to bring the milk inside. Sometimes it's been chilled for 1/2 hour that way. Obviously, you have to do that outside, but it does chill the milk pretty fast and gives you a jump start on getting it chilled in the fridge.
In the house, I put the can in the sink and fill it with cold water and ice if I can't get to it right away.
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Great suggestions! Thanks again! And I did find a source for some gallon glass jars. I have three on the way.
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MiaBella, salt water is a great idea. It pretty much stays liquid in freezer. duh! Why haven't I thought of that.
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The age old problem....before I graduated to a bulk tank I used a can cooler, which you can still buy in some places (minw was an antique though). It ran off a garden hose and worked great.
The other old trick it to use a chest cooler, filled with brine and a water fountain pump. Suspend your milk cans in the brine, turn the pump on to circultate and the brine will chill the milk down.
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I use a well chiller much like what Francois described. Commercial grade alcohol mixed with water will work in place of brine if the salt ruins your pump.
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MiaBella, salt water is a great idea. It pretty much stays liquid in freezer. duh! Why haven't I thought of that.
Yes, it does, but as time goes by, you have to add more salt or it will start to solidify :)
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In large operations, the cooling system often uses a heat exchanger or a system of heat exchangers. Shell and tube systems are the most common. It's possible to build one yourself, but it requires some welding. Or you can use a more basic counterflow condenser to initially get a 30-40 degree drop right away from ~100 to 60-70. Like this one: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/How_to_make_a_Counter_Flow_Chiller (http://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/How_to_make_a_Counter_Flow_Chiller) . Substitute copper for 316 stainless flexible pipe and ask a welder to make sanitary connections for you, and just pump the milk through while having the hose on. May take some flow regulators to make sure the milk and water are being pumped at the right rate to get the temp drop you want.
For a cheaper readily available solution, you can use a wort chiller with the milk gravity fed or gently pumped so as to not overagitate. Something like this
http://www.austinhomebrew.com/product_info.php?products_id=2222 (http://www.austinhomebrew.com/product_info.php?products_id=2222)
Or you can sanitize and use an immersion chiller in a bucket.
http://www.wortomatic.com/php/articles.php?ID=11 (http://www.wortomatic.com/php/articles.php?ID=11)
There are stainless immersion chillers, too.
The temp drop required for wort before yeast pitching is about 60 degrees, which just happens to be around the same temp drop required to get milk down from 100 to 45. :)
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But why not copper? I think these chillers would be used for 6.5-ish pH milk and that's pretty close to neutral. Is there a reason we would not want to have copper in the fresh milk for a few moments? I think trying to bend 316 stainless would be pretty difficult if you wanted to make your own immersion chiller (like home brewers use), but if made from copper then it's easy.... not to mention much more cost effective.
Thx,
Brian
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Corrosion and cleaning. Depends how you do it. With a counterflow enclosed chiller, it's pumped through, not exposed to air. If you do that, milk stone can form, and you need to remove milk stone with an acid rinse. Acid rinse and copper don't play so well together. Also you couldn't use copper commercially.
If you did a regular immersion chiller in a bucket, you could do that, use copper. But then sanitation is kind of a PITA. With a CIP system and heat exchanger, pretty easy to pump it all through, clean out, and be done with it.
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Yeah ..sanitation seems to be the bugaboo and who wants to find out several weeks or months down the road that your cheese is now inflating....
I think if I were to use a coil type immersion chiller, then I'd make one with as few nooks and crannies as possible, e.g. lose the copper wire ties that everyone seems to use on these so there's nothing but smooth copper pipe in the milk ...and then I'd use steaming to sanitize. I think a large pot with a couple of inches of water in it might work. Wipe the chiller down with a strong chlorine mixture, rinse, then steam in the pot for 20 minutes or so ...make a foil lid that can be 'fit' around the copper tubes where they come out over the top of the pot. With beer brewing, you get sanitization for free by putting the chiller into the boiling wort around the time you add your late hops. When done chilling, rinse in cold water, wash, then wipe down with chlorine and rinse. Might work.
Brian
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Could work, that's a decent way of doing it. A little overkill, IMHO. Easier to milk into a 5-7 gal dairy bucket that sits in another bucket or tub full of ice. By the time you're through milking most of the milk will be in the 40s, and then it's easy to get the last little bit in the fridge or freezer.
I just couldn't see myself milking twice a day and dealing with an immersion cooler.
Or bring the pails back and put into a chest freezer full of glycol (or if you're cheap, salt water).
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We have tried different ways and found the best to be 1/2 gallon mason jars. We milk and filter strait into the jars, then we move the jars with lids on but not tight to the freezer. They stay in the freezer for about 40 min then are moved to the fridge. It works great and is the least amount of work.
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Could work, that's a decent way of doing it. A little overkill, IMHO. Easier to milk into a 5-7 gal dairy bucket that sits in another bucket or tub full of ice. By the time you're through milking most of the milk will be in the 40s, and then it's easy to get the last little bit in the fridge or freezer.
I just couldn't see myself milking twice a day and dealing with an immersion cooler.
Or bring the pails back and put into a chest freezer full of glycol (or if you're cheap, salt water).
Sorry ...I should explain. My milk cooling is not for cooling just-milked milk, but instead cooling home-pasteurized milk from a raw milk cow share. Slightly different need since I'd be heating the milk to 145 F, letting it sit 30 minutes at that temp, then quickly cooling it to either the temperature needed for culturing and making cheese or storing in the refrigerator.
Brian
PS: I'm looking into the whole cow share thing and just working out the details about what that would mean in different ways...
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Does anybody have plans for making chest freezer milk cooler?
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Here is what we have been doing for over three years to cool our milk. We keep a 20 oz bottle of water in the freezer and put that in the milking pail during milking. I have not measured the temperature of the milk as it comes in but it is substantially cooler than when we do not put the bottle in the pail. We use a soda bottle. I remove the plastic ring that is left behind when you initially open the bottle. We give it a quick wash (or rinse) before putting it back in the freezer. The only problem that we have had is that the plastic bottle can split over time and slightly dilute your milk. That has happened a couple of times in three years. When I milk I often try to aim the spray at the bottle to get maximum heat transfer.
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Look for a used beer chiller\cooling snake.
Or alternativly if you have cool water running @ your kitchen you can submerged a sanitized SS\Brass\copper coil connected to your tap on one end and emptied into the sink the other end. Its very wasteful in terms of water use but it works. you can use a submerged pump instead to recirculate the water and keep adding ice to them.