Skip to main content

How to pasteurize milk. Role of pasteurisation in cheesemaking

🇵🇱 PL 🇬🇧 EN

Jak zrobić ser Gouda

Twój polski tekst…

How to Make Gouda Cheese

Your English text…

Why do we pasteurize milk for cheese?

  Milk for cheese or other dairy products should always be of the highest quality.

    Raw milk from cows, goats or sheep contains friendly and desirable milk fermentation bacteria, making it an ideal ingredient for cheese production. The problem arises when pathogens, such as bacteria, are present in the milk, alongside beneficial bacteria. Despite the fact that milk in the mammary glands is still sterile, it can become contaminated during milking or during storage and transportation.

     If you have doubts about the quality of the milk you want to use for production, you should sterilize it.

     Pasteurization is a process named after the scientist Louis Pasteur, which uses heat to neutralize pathogens in food. In dairy production, pasteurization involves heating the milk or product to a specific temperature, maintaining that temperature for a certain time, and then cooling it.

     Using raw or pasteurized milk has its advantages and disadvantages. Undoubtedly, the advantage of using raw milk in cheese making is its characteristic flavor, especially if the animals have been grazing in meadows, as well as the richness of enzymes and lactic acid bacteria. Unfortunately, due to the abundance of microbes, raw milk is less stable. 

    During pasteurization, we kill most of the bacteria in the milk, which we then have to add to the milk to make cheese. I consider this an advantage because such milk is an excellent base for creating almost any type of cheese, precisely because of the possibility of inoculating it with specific bacterial strains. Although pasteurization only slightly affects the physicochemical changes in milk, it is recommended to add calcium chloride to pasteurized milk to restore the milk's calcium balance.

There are two types of pasteurization used in cheese making: 


     Long-term pasteurization at 63°C

     At home, we conduct such pasteurization in a pot on the stove. It is important to heat the milk as quickly as possible to a temperature of 63°C and then maintain that temperature for 30 minutes. After that time, the milk should be cooled as quickly as possible to a temperature suitable for bacterial inoculation or to a temperature of approximately 4 degrees Celsius if we want to store the milk. We cool the milk by placing the pot in a sink, bathtub, or larger pot of cold water, which we change frequently.

     It is important to stir the milk frequently during heating, as it is easy to burn, especially over high heat. Optionally, we can heat the milk in a water bath, in which case we don't have to worry about burning, but personally, I prefer to do it directly on the stove and stir. As a precaution, it is a good idea to heat it to 65°C due to possible thermometer measurement errors.


 Short-term pasteurization at 72-74°C 

    Plate or tube pasteurizers are used for short-term pasteurization, which are able to quickly heat the milk to a temperature of 72-74°C, maintain that temperature for 15 seconds, and then cool it almost immediately. Unfortunately, we are not able to perform such pasteurization at home. Even if we manage to heat the milk to the required temperature very quickly, there is no chance that we can cool it down immediately after pasteurization. 

     Therefore, this type of pasteurization is reserved for larger dairy factories, while for home cheesemakers and small cheese factories, pasteurization of milk at 63-65°C for 30 minutes remains no less effective. 


     In addition to these two methods of milk pasteurization, several others are also used, but I will write about them another time.



Source:

Photo by Manki Kim on Unsplash

https://www.idfa.org/pasteurization

https://www.news-medical.net/health/The-Effects-of-Heat-T

reatment-on-Milk.aspx


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Salting Cheese: Essential Step for Texture and Taste

Salt in Cheesemaking   The salting of cheese has not only the purpose of enhancing its flavor but also significantly affects the ripening and preservation of the cheese. Salt content at a level of 1-2% significantly inhibits unwanted microflora.      During the salting of cheese, salt penetrates the interior while removing a certain amount of moisture. This is usually about 4-6% for hard cheeses and even twice as much for soft cheeses.    For cheese, we use non-iodized salt because iodine affects the fermentation process and kills bacteria and fungi. In table salt, the iodine content ranges from 30mg to 40mg per 1kg of salt. It is not a large amount, and most likely, we will not kill all the bacteria that are still working at this stage. However, considering that non-iodized salt is readily available, it doesn't make sense to find out firsthand whether there will be problems with ripening or not.      The reasons for salting cheeses are: ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Essential Hygiene and Disinfection Practices in Cheesemaking

Hygiene in Cheesemaking: A Professional Guide Cleanliness and hygiene in cheesemaking—and in the entire food production process—are absolutely essential. If we buy milk from a farmer, we have no control over milking hygiene, which is the main factor determining whether pasteurization is necessary. You can find post about pasteurisation on this blog. Even raw milk free from unwanted bacteria can become contaminated during transport or while being poured into a pot or kettle. When making cheese, you want it to turn out perfectly. No matter how good the recipe is, if your equipment, workspace, or hands are not impeccably clean, your cheese has a high chance of becoming contaminated. Potential contaminants include Salmonella , Listeria monocytogenes , Escherichia coli , and spores of Clostridium tyrobutyricum —the latter cannot be destroyed by pasteurization. Maintaining a Clean Work Area If you have a dedicated cheesemaking facility, you likely already know how to manage hygiene. But...
Post a Comment
Read more