I am going to try using raw milk soon and I was wondering what methods people recommend to "gently" pasteurize milk. I know that for the most people are just using the raw milk as is, but I may have a pregnant wife in the next few months and it would be more guilt free for her to consume my raw milk cheese if it has been pasteurized.
I saw on Good Eats (http://www.goodeatsfanpage.com/Season8/cheese/saycheesetrans.htm) (one of my favorite shows) that you can pasteurize milk by heating it to 140F for 30 mins (ultra-pasteurization is 161F for 15 seconds). Heating it to only 140F helps preserve the milk flavor.
Has anyone tried this? What are the results?
Batch pasteurization....145F for 30 minutes. You need to keep the air space hot though, that's always the problem. A vat pasteurizer will have a heating coil or steam injector under the lid and it's kept at 155F during the 30 minutes.
Many countries allow thermisation of milk as equivalent to pasteurization. Definitions vary but is heating to about 60C for a short time (15s) and then aging for 90 days at no less than 2C.