Hello!
I believe I have found the perfect cheese vat for our future creamery. It just needs a little tweaking...
It is an old Dari-Kool bulk tank that no longer has the compressor or water pump. These old bulk tanks are "ice bank" chillers - there are copper coils within the jacket that ice over, and at intervals the water pump in the jacket will pump the ice cold water up to the rim of the jacket and the water cascades down the sides, chilling the walls of the vat. There is a larger reservoir of water on one side of the vat that is easily accessible through a moveable cover. The tank also has an overfill pipe that can apparently be removed to drain out the water.
I hope that makes sense! This diagram should help explain it a little better:
Now I just need to switch it over from chilling to heating...
There are two obvious options (to me!) - either place a submersible heater directly in the water reservoir and add a new water circulation pump, or plumb it so that there is an external heat source (on-demand hot water heater) with a circulation pump. Not having a closed/pressurized system for the on-demand heater might be troublesome though.
The heating system/circulation pump could either be manually switched ON/OFF to heat or hold, or I could have an adjustable thermostat on the water heater (PID would be awesome!) that would allow me to set target temperatures.
For cheese making, I would first be heating the milk quickly from 38 to ~90 degrees, then slowly heating the curds to some point between 100 or 120 degrees - both fast and slow heating will be needed.
Which strategy do you think would be most effective for heating 50 gallons of milk in a 100-gallon vat? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you!
