One more. Pasteurization?

[blue8ewe]

I know that cooking the milk is how they pasteurized milk. I have often thought that the milk should be left alone.
I read that to separate milk and cream that you heat the milk.
Can it be done without heating it. Is that pasteurizing it?

[tinknal]

Originally Posted by blue8ewe

I know that cooking the milk is how they pasteurized milk. I have often thought that the milk should be left alone.
I read that to separate milk and cream that you heat the milk.
Can it be done without heating it. Is that pasteurizing it?

Sepperating and pasturizeing are 2 seperrate things You can do one or the other, both, or neither.

[blue8ewe]

let me clarify. I dont know squat. I read you warm to separate and I think I recall cooking is pasteurization. So.......
Can you separate without warming?
AND is warming pasteurization?
If it is, how can I separate without pasteurizing?

[tinknal]

Yes, yup, and youbetch'a

[Charleen]

Pasteurization is heating milk to 165F.

When separating the cream from the milk, the cream separator works best when the milk is around body temp (or a little less) than the goat, probably around 90F.

Or, you can do what we do and drink whole, raw milk

[blue8ewe]

We want to drink whole -raw but we also want to supply our own cream derived products. butter, cheese ETC. I guess I am wondering how to keep it raw AND separate. I guess that can be done by letting it set and taking the cream off the top?
What I dont understand here is... will this method not give much cream? or is it slower? If this is efficient enough, why ever use a separator?

[tyusclan]

I don't really think a seperator is necessary for cow's milk. Let it sit overnight and skim off the cream the next morning. By doing this you can take as much of the cream as you want. If you don't like to drink skim milk, you can leave a little more of the cream, and still have good milk.

I don't like to pateurize, either. I leave it raw.

[GrannyCarol]

Cow's milk you cool rapidly after you milk the cow and let it sit for a while, the cream will rise. I like it when I skim most, but not all of the cream.

As for pasteurization, that's already been covered.

I'm curious though... can anyone tell me how hard it is to separate sheep's milk? Is it possible to make butter from it? Does it require a separator?

Thanks!

[tinknal]

If you like whole milk and have plenty after skimming the cream you can feed the skim milk to dogs, hogs, chickens, whatever.

[homebirtha]

What kind of milk?

Goat milk does not separate easily. If you let it set in the fridge for a few days, there will be a small layer of cream you can skim off. We do that, then freeze it until we have enough for whatever we want to make. But if you want to do a lot with the cream, you'll need a separator for goat milk. If it's cow milk, you'll be able to get a lot more cream just by letting it set in the fridge for a day or two.

Separating doesn't heat the milk too much. It spins it very fast, so it does raise the temp a little, but not nearly enough to pasteurize it or change the properties.

[Jennifer L.]

I usually take my milk from the end of the pipeline after milking (commercial dairy). The milk is still warm from the cow and when I put it in a jar and refrigerate it, the cream and skin separate very well. When I take milk from the bulk tank (cooled to less than 40ºf), no matter what, the cooled milk will never separate as completely as the end of the pipeline milk will. It does separate a LOT, however. Remember that a bulk tank agitates all the time that it cools, so cream never gets a chance to rise in this situation. My take on it is a person in a one family cow situation will probably always have their milk handled like my "end of the pipeline", meaning that you won't get it cooled before the cream rises anyway. So you should have all the cream you want.

Jennifer

[kesoaps]

Carol, I think consensus was that a seperator is needed for the sheep's milk (it'd be similar to goat, as they're both homogonized), but I know that left sitting in the fridge I will often find a layer of cream on the top.

[blue8ewe]

Thanks all. You have been helpful. Saved us some money as well.
Someone had offered a separator, two churns and a wood bowl with paddle for butter. We were considering it but the $ is tight right now. But we are always looking ahead.
I guess a churn would be a nice thing but NOT a must. A separator I cant see getting unless we are realy getting a good amount of sheep milk and that will not happen for at least 2 if not 3 years.
That wood bowl, well I think I can get a new one cheaper then the "antique" one. I dont care so long as it works.
But anyway, thanks for the insight.

[rambler]

Paturizing is heating the milk up hot enough to kill off any bad things in it. There are ways to do it very quickly, affects the milk itself less. There is a time to heat ratio...

Seperating milk is getting the heavy fat particles seperate from the thinner fluid parts of milk. Happens on it's own for most milk types, doesn't need much for heat. Cow milk will seperate overnight pretty well on it's own, or a cream seperator uses centrifical force to speed up the process by whurring the milk around.

Homogenizing is a process of forcing the milk through small tubes to force the creamy fat parts to mash together with the thin fluid parts & not seperate out any more.

--->Paul