Keep the Cream - The Book
- Cheese And Yogurt Making
- Jun 4
- 42 min read
Updated: Aug 22
Introduction
Like many people of my generation, I used to have an Auntie Daisy. She was actually a great aunt or possibly even a great-great aunt twice removed or equivalent. However, her main claim to fame was that she was a fully paid-up member of the flourishing “Eccentric Maiden Aunts Society - South Devon Chapter”. Losing our nation’s eccentric aunts, like real, creamy, local milk, has, in my opinion, made our nation poorer. The great news is real milk is back. And Aunt Daisy would have been delighted.
Back in the 1950s, there were complete sections of society that were, by today's standards… how can I put this… non-mainstream. There were odd-ball aunts, whacko uncles, parents’ friends and grandparents’ friends (who we all had to call Auntie or Uncle anyway) who would surreptitiously press a shilling into my hand as they left. People who came into my Dad's newsagent shop for half of Old Holborn and a packet of greens (i.e. Rizla cigarette papers), who would then quietly mutter scriptures as they rummaged through their battered purse… as well as a whole stream of offbeats my Mum regularly met and befriended from Lord knows where.
Unlike today, they weren't shunned by society: they were indulged, listened to, visited, catered for and accepted as part of life's rich bouillabaisse. If they were family, they were invited to tea and this often ended up with them staying the night. In the morning their stories would be listened to by us kids with rapt attention or disbelief. We didn't even need the threat of no pocket money if ever we were rude (i.e. walked out half way through one of their stories to finish off a Meccano project). The tales from way back were always listened to with wide-eyed, open-mouthed reverence.
With hindsight, I realise that this was simply because their earlier “Before-the-War” lives were simply so very different to our present day ones. What usually happened in our own lives (nothing) paled into boring insignificance compared to the stories from The Great Eccentrics – and Aunt Daisy’s stories were right up there with the best of 'em.
Auntie Daisy was quite whiskery, wore beaten up sludgy brown hats and was as deaf as a post, caused by (according to her) “Having my ears boxed as a child”’. She was deaf; really deaf, profoundly deaf. Deaf to the point that she couldn't hear herself parping away at the dining table. What would happen next was she would then turn and ask my Mum, “What on earth has got into those boys?” - because my brother and I had rushed out into the kitchen so we could roll around on the floor, squeaking uncontrollably with flannels stuffed in our mouths and tears running down our faces.
Auntie Daisy taught us a simple form of deaf-and-dumb language as it was then called (political correctness was not even a dot on the horizon) and best of all, related stories in her rather nasally voice from her days as the local midwife, where her stomping ground was a beautiful hilly village in mid-Kent. The stories were truly X-rated stuff: these days it would be preceded with a formal warning, “The following account contains graphic details from the very beginning that some listeners may find distressing.”
But for two lads aged about six and eight and for an older sister too, her tales were seams of the purest gold.
Mostly her stories were gory. They ranged from her being feted by the national newspapers for successfully delivering triplets at a remote farmhouse, to wrapping a placenta in newspaper after another successful delivery (apparently this ex-body part was best thing ever for growing tomato plants in her greenhouse), only to find every dog in the village chasing her on her bicycle - with the said newspaper bundle firmly tied behind her saddle as she peddled home like crazy.
At Christmas, Auntie Daisy’s gift was always opened last, simply because everyone knew it was going to give maximum enjoyment. I remember one year, my sister got a massive necklace comprising a set of large green beads but on close examination we found that two of the beads had been replaced with green Plasticine, although to be fair, it was a reasonably decent colour match. My brother received an obviously used jigsaw and we carefully counted the pieces to discover about a third missing. As a six year old, my present was a pottery ashtray with a 6d sticker on the base. Absolute joy.
However, the reason for Auntie Daisy being involved in this introduction is because of the “milk episode”. Like nearly all families, we had a daily milk delivery left in the alleyway by our back door. And one of the first things you learnt as an infant, along with tying your laces, cleaning your teeth and saying your prayers before bedtime, was that you always had to shake the milk before opening the bottle - to mix in the cream. This was the law - and an absolute, unbreakable law.
Although we could only afford bog standard silver-top and not luxury Channel Island milk (the original, from Jersey and Guernsey cows), there was still a healthy slug of golden cream floating at the top... and it simply had to be mixed in. This meant that everyone, even latecomers, got their exact share of cream in their tea or on their cereals - fairness and equality reigned supreme and all was well in the world. If the blue-tits had pecked a hole in the foil to get their share, nobody really minded – provided the sacred mixing still took place.
One morning, my brother and I were kicking each other under the table as normal when a drowsy Auntie Daisy appeared, having also just got up. She poured herself a healthy dollop of cornflakes in the bowl and shuffled over to the back door to get the milk. As she placed the pint bottle on the table, her eyes lit up: she had spotted the golden two inches of cream at the top.
“Oh! The cream! The cream! I do like the cream, boys” she hummed, as she skilfully poured off every last drop over her cornflakes, which was quickly followed by about a tablespoonful of sugar before proceeding to noisily crunch the whole lot down with a serene, satisfied, parp-free smile on her face. We looked at each other aghast; Auntie Daisy had just shattered one of the major family taboos. We realised that now we only had watery old tackle left to pour over our Shreddies and our lives would never be the same again. Unbeknown to us, this was an ominous sign of Britain’s future milk dystopia.
Fast forward to today's desperately egalitarian, uniform world. Currently over 95% of milk sales today comprise a homogenised, standardised white liquid that is available in just about every supermarket, corner shop, garage forecourt and butchers shop throughout the UK. It has no visible golden cream rising to the top, no need for any shaking or mixing, it has a bland, flat taste... and no character or subtlety whatsoever. This consistency is motivated not by the collective tastebuds of the public, but by the crushingly obvious profit motive. That’s the supermarkets of course, and categorically not the farmers. Who lose. Badly. Seasonal, flavoursome subtleties out. Predictable, corporate-controlled blandness in.
The suppliers (now giant wholesalers and the ‘big five supermarkets’) seem to be desperately distancing the content of their plastic/composite containers as far as possible away from any association with nature – namely cows. If there ever is a picture of an actual cow on the label, it will be a 'Disneyfied' happy cow's head with a smiley face, munching a cartoon representation of a flower. Not actually 'real'. Not from farms, not from animals, heaven forbid.
Mind you, if you look at the agribusiness model for dairies and milk production methods that has already happened in America and elsewhere, then you can perhaps sense this inevitability.
The number of U.S. dairies has fallen from over 678,000 in 1970¹ to 31,657 in 2020², a drop of over 95% - and the numbers are continuing to fall drastically. A Minnesota dairy economist (Dr Marin Bozic³) shocked many in the state’s dairy sector when he estimated in legislative testimony at the State Capitol in 2018 that 80 percent of the remaining dairies in Minnesota are “last generation” farms. Reporting on smaller U.S. dairy farms, a spokesman for Farm Aid said “I don't see anything that would give them hope at this point. The best advice I can give these folks, dairy farmers, is to sell out as fast as you can.”⁴
However, the actual quantity of milk produced has probably increased, mainly because so many of the dairy farms in America have amalgamated to become enormous 10,000 plus bovine mega-cities. The rustic idyllic country image of the dairy farm: farmer with battered hat and straw between his teeth, with his wholesome wife at his shoulder and two rosy-cheeked kids at their side, has long gone. Along with the milking stool.
Their animals (livestock units) are now fed on a ration of highly processed corn and corn silage with additional nutrients and chemical compounds. The precise quantity is always metered into their bowl by computer technology, exactly in accordance with the algorithm that has been designed exclusively for maximum milk production at minimum cost. Of course this all happens automatically, with negligible human interaction: unsurprisingly, the cows don't have the luxury (or the option) of going outside - to eat grass, hay or any other 'primitive', unregulated, foodstuffs. Anything like that could possibly interfere with this scientific production tightrope – and, of course, any deviation could ruin everything.
But when the supermarket is not only King but also dictator, paymaster, judge, jury and jailer, even the biggest mega-dairying concerns, complete with their latest robotic milking parlours and leading-edge technological systems, are still vulnerable. These agri-businesses have to strive to operate on ever tightening margins: recently there have been some really major U.S. dairying concerns filing for bankruptcy, leaving all dairy farms, both big and small, in an even more parlous financial position.
There is a euphemistic term that is used for the massive mega-businesses gobbling up all these small rural dairy farms into a single gargantuan Godzilla-factory: it is called 'consolidation' but to me, another phrase, 'collateral damage' comes to mind. So I can only conclude that in my own humble opinion, the current existing dairy industry in America is a bit like the milk that they now produce – it's not fit for purpose.
And the people in Europe can't feel smug and say, “This sort of thing can't happen here” because it already has; although perhaps not quite to such an extreme extent. Yet.
However, if you want to see the dystopian end-game, I think we have to go to China. Here the Mudanjiang City Mega Farm is now happily milking well over 100,000 ecstatic cows and producing 650 tonnes of wonderful milk every day – well, at least it is according to the Chinese government YouTube video⁵. The farm covers 22.7 million acres (that’s not a typo - this means the farm is the largest in the world and is about the same size as Portugal) and nearly all these countless, virtually treeless acres are used for growing feedstuffs for these zillions of cows, using fields as big as a city. Despite all this enormous outdoor area, the cows are kept indoors throughout their lives. There are hundreds of sheds, each one over 300 metres long to house all of these vast numbers of ‘milk-production units’ - also known as cows. Then there is all the accommodation for the scientific nutritionists, analysts, microbiologists, packaging technologists... you get the picture.
Strangely there was no mention on the video of the impact that this enormous farm has had on the local ecosystems or the environment - or what happened to the existing farms and villages that used to be here but I'm sure this was just a minor omission.
So welcome to “The Farm” - 21st century style….
Thankfully, it doesn't have to be like this.
Quietly, steadily, emphatically, a new (old?) approach has rejected this exploitative, hyper-capitalist business model. As a smallholder supplier of nearly 50 years now (ouch!) I've worked with farmers across the UK and Ireland as they clawed their way out of the calamities of Foot and Mouth, Mad Cow disease, insane EU regulations and crippling supermarket domination. Rocketing rural suicide rates are a stain on this country’s distorted priorities. But thanks in no small part to the shift in consumer demands for more ethical, local, quality farm-to-table food, the leap from ‘milk quota’ oblivion to organic, added-value, community farming is coming back, farm by farm. It’s flown under the radar but is slowly becoming a juggernaut.
I’ve written this to inspire two audiences. One is the farmer, perhaps teetering on the brink financially or musing over which path to take as their corporate masters inevitably chisel another penny off their gate price. And the second is the public, who I know in their hearts, don’t want to be drifting aimlessly through culturally barren supermarkets, enriching tax-dodging CEOs while simultaneously shafting the local farmer and, let us not forget, leaving consumers short changed too. That pint of milk is NOTHING like real milk, despite the cartoon label of a cow. For those brave farmers who went back to producing milk the right way, the evidence is in. Just ask their accountants.
This ‘right way’ is batch-pasteurisation: small, low-temperature batches that neither homogenise nor ultra-pasteurise. Processes that have done everything for corporate profits and nothing for our consumers’ bellies, farmers’ wallets or our environment’s fertility. The difference is incredible, like a real cask ale versus a gassy lager from a giant brand. The cream remains, as do healthy proteins and flavours. Watching a child drink their first ‘real’ glass of milk after years of homogenised supermarket fodder is priceless: their eyebrows shoot up and a grin spreads across their face.
Thankfully, this silent revolution - driven by an awakening public conscience - is putting creamy, healthy milk back on the table. The problem, I think, is that it has happened in a slightly disparate manner, a farm shop here, a vending machine there and so has flown under the radar, save for the odd Guardian article. But when you see it across Britain in its totality it's clear this is a movement, a movement that restores relationships between farmers and their communities, regenerates rural livelihoods and soils, putting control back in the hands of the right people.
“Keep The Cream” isn’t simply harking on about the past. With new technology (delivery apps for example), who knows where the future will take milk? Decentralising profits and distribution means more financial cream for the farmer, who can rebuild ties with local people as they restore their livelihoods. So many farmers faced a crossroads of going big or going broke but not any more. The third way, going ‘batch’, is doing to milk what craft beer did to Budweiser and Miller in America.
In a nutshell, keeping the cream is about regeneration, not extraction. The more farmers and consumers hear the story and back the movement, the more milk vending machines will spring up, the more farms that don’t foreclose, the less agri-business lobbyists pressure our government to inject our cows with steroids.
The future is bright if we back the right horse. Or cow.
1. LaScalA Large Scale Agriculture: Large US Dairy Farms proved more productive than smaller ones (www.largescaleagriculture.com 11 August 2018 ).
Chapter 1
The Great Escape
For small and medium dairy farms, there is a viable alternative - and whilst it may seem insane, we actually have Covid 19 to partially thank for this and no, I haven't been on the export lager.
Please let me explain. One of the consequences that this horrific pandemic has had on the world is that most non-essential shops have had to shut-down for specific periods. This included Starbucks, Costas, Dunkin’ Donuts, other coffee dispensaries, as well as local delis and independent cafes. Yes, many of them managed to struggle on with take-outs, but in the broad scheme of things, the net amount of milk being consumed by these major users suddenly dropped alarmingly.
Naturally there was a knock-on effect.
Co-operatives and milk wholesalers no longer required their normal quota from the dairy farms - and inevitably the price that was paid to the dairy farmer took a dive. We regularly had dairy farmers reporting to us that they were being paid about 26p to 30p per litre for non-organic milk and a few pence more for Channel Island or organic - which is roughly what it cost to produce. So the dairy farmers weren't actually making any real money; they were simply breaking even and flogging themselves working long hours for nothing.
It got worse. We heard stories of dairy farmers in remote areas such as West Wales receiving 18p per litre or less for their milk and this was set to drop to 16.7p. I think the most heart-breaking story of all was a farmer in Yorkshire who told me he received a phone call to say that his milk tanker driver was not going to turn up because he had to self-isolate due to a Covid contact. Being a resourceful type, the farmer managed to borrow a small tanker and took his milk to an outlet about 35 miles away. There he found he was going to be paid 9p a litre, barely enough to cover the cost of his diesel for the trip...
Yes, this disastrous situation has currently improved as of 2022 - but there is still no real money in dairy farming, especially when the farmer is supplying milk to the supermarkets, simply because milk now costs a lot more to produce. In fact in early 2022, reports appeared for the dairy industry⁶ stating that for the UK, Dairy production costs would soar and that the break-even price for milk was likely to exceed 44 pence per litre. By 2023 it is fast approaching 50p with numerous reasons given including the war in Ukraine, Covid, fertiliser prices, Brexit, Climate change, Energy prices, Harry Kane’s missed penalty etc, whilst there are now rumblings that milk prices will once again fall.⁷
Whilst this dairy disaster was unfolding, we became aware that suddenly that there was a massive world-wide (and particularly Europe-wide) spike in interest in local, organic and natural foods - and in particular, those that had not been processed to oblivion. The horrors of over-salted, high fat kid’s snacks went mainstream: pictures seemed to appear almost daily on our news screens that predicted a Covid-inspired “obesity epidemic”. The TV was full of pictures of porcine five-year olds wheezily trying to climb onto the laps of their equally lardy mums and dads, with parents slumped on their sofas, attired in terrifyingly overstretched Lycra at the point of going super-critical, or hopefully clad in slightly more forgiving Trackie bottoms.
Yeah! We’re gonna get healthy, everybody! Say a big ‘Bye-bye’ to that Lockdown Lard…
The Covid 19 pandemic also meant that all the schools were now shut and this coincided with a whole nation chock full of furloughed or redundant parents. Many of these fraught Mums and Dads were frantically trying to keep their brood as healthy as they possibly could, by searching for the best (i.e. the least processed) foodstuffs that were currently available. Simultaneously, many of them were trying to keep the kids occupied before and after all the fun of home-schooling during the endless days of lock-down larks and quarantine tomfoolery. And if you managed to remain with your sanity intact during this joyous interlude without becoming a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, then you have my deepest admiration.
Only it soon became obvious that you can't show little Damian how to make soft cheese or Davina how to produce her Greek-style yogurt with the standardised, homogenised milky stuff you get from the supermarkets... Yes, it's fine for teas, coffees or pouring on your Coco Pops, but the homogenisation process tends to mess with its ability to make cheese or yogurt - or for that matter, anything else in the dairy line.
So this Covid pandemic has, albeit indirectly, focused the mind on healthy eating and contributed to the upsurge in demand for real foods; real bread, real meat, real vegetables... and especially real milk.
And for 'real' milk, it will need to be the low-temperature, batch pasteurised stuff, rather than the high-temperature continuous-flow highly processed product so beloved by the supermarkets - and it must not be homogenised either. Not only will the batch pasteurised milk taste like the wonderful milk and cream that Auntie Daisy craved back in the 1950s and 60s, (complete with its top-hat of re-mixable cream); the public are already happy to pay at least 4 or 5 times the derisory sum that milk wholesalers are prepared to give their farmers. The payment from your purse or pocket will go directly to the farmers too: buyers will at last be able to get their hands on pasteurised milk that tastes remarkably similar to raw milk. Better still, it can also be used to make fabulous cheese and yogurt - as well as kefir, clotted cream, Crème Fraîche and virtually any other dairy products.
This milk is totally safe, healthy, delicious... and really quite wonderful.
OK, I admit I am biased: this could possibly be because we manufacture these relatively small-scale batch pasteurisers in our little factory in Kent… However, this spike in demand did mean that we suddenly had a job keeping up with all the enquiries. Savvy farmers (usually encouraged/pushed/coaxed/harangued by their wives, daughters, mothers, lovers, significant others) suddenly realised that there was now an alternative to flogging themselves all day from the earliest hours in the morning to last thing at night, to make a negligible profit at most.
Best of all, once the farmers had installed batch pasteurisers in their dairies, their destiny was now in their own hands. They could now supply milk and milk products directly to their local customers, get paid directly too - and at full retail price. Legally.
So here is a machine with the capability to produce milk that customers were prepared to travel many miles to buy – even if it was more than double the price they would pay at their local supermarkets... and be more than happy to give it to their kids.
Here is a machine that can produce milk that will receive pages of glowing testimonials on all the social media platforms, where customers queue up to bring their reusable glass bottles back for refilling at the milk vending machine that you have just installed.
Here is a machine that can produce superb milk that can also be used by your customers to make cheese, yogurt, kefir, clotted cream etc. when they get back home.
Here is a machine that would also supply the milk for milk-shakes too and these will be available from the very same vending machine that supplies your milk. The clever farmer also makes sure that flavour changes every week. Mums with push-chairs are now seen vying for position in the queue as they have excited conversations with their hyper-ventilating off-spring:
“What’s it going to be today, Tyvian?! What is it going to beeeee? Ooooh! I do hope it’s your favourite! It is, it is!! It’s Mango!!! Yayyyyy!!!!”
Here is a machine that can also be used for making these very same items - yogurt, cheese, kefir etc directly; ready to be sold in the farm shops, or sent to delis or other retail outlets - and all with profit margins that my grandad would have called “Comfortable. Yes, very comfortable.”
And best of all, here is a machine that should actually be able to pay for itself within a few months from purchase - and will continue to produce many times the return originally received in the form of the 'milk cheque' (alright, it’s no longer a cheque any more, but stop being pernickety).
Like sisters, Farmers are doin' it for themselves - well at least some of them are - and they are doing very nicely, thanks for asking.
Isn’t it good to know that if you are a dairy farmer, even with all of the never-ending avalanche of governmental interference that continues to shower down upon you like manna from heaven, you can still be responsible for the success of your own enterprise.
Chapter 2.
Milk
Farmers still get a lot of bad press. There is a myth that occasionally rears its head that goes something like… “Well, you’ll never see a poor farmer ‘round here”.
There are lots of other rural profundities about wealthy farmers doing the rounds; these are usually heard at the bar of the Golden Cowpat or wherever your favourite drinking haunt may happen to be. So it has to be true.
Well, I'm sorry to debunk this one, but you certainly will be able to see 'em - and they are all appearing at a local dairy farm near you. The average wage of farmers/farm workers in the UK is pretty awful (if you Google it, it was £10.90 per hour in 2022⁸) - so it clocks in as one of the lowest paid occupations. However, to be fair, this is offset by their suicide rate which happens to be amongst the highest in the UK, with 133 farm workers in England and Wales⁹ successfully achieving oblivion last year. So that puts everything in balance, right?
No. Wrong.
As you can see (and as I mentioned in the Introduction), the British dairy farmer is not a happy little bunny. Yes, pig farmers are in the poo and sheep farmers are in the shizen too, but that is another story - and in any case, they can fight their own battles.
So back to the poor old dairy farmers. Here in Britain, according to the AHDB (Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board), in 2021, the average price that the farmer received for their standard non-organic milk was just about 28 - 30p a litre¹⁰ and it had remained at roughly this level for the last 4 years or so. Recent world events have now pushed this miserable price up by a few coppers, but this hardly puts dairy farms in the ‘Golden Goose’ category - and helps explain how some of the big supermarkets could sell whole milk for under 45p a litre in their great big 6 pint plastic bottles (e.g. Morrisons Whole Milk - September 2021¹¹). This also happened to be a roughly median price for the bottled water found on the supermarket’s shelves, but in this case, the owners of Gusset Springs Still Waters don’t have to get up at 4 am every day to start milking, unless this is the sort of thing that floats their boat.
Of course, there are a zillion other things that farmers have to get to grips with and be able to control and cajole before they can get their hands on any milk at all. In fact you could be forgiven for thinking that it could possibly be a teensy bit more stressful and onerous for a farmer to achieve a steady supply of healthy milk throughout the year, than pumping expensive drinking water out of a bore-hole.
The trouble is that it is very easy to just sit back and let the milk tanker trundle in every day and suck the bulk tank dry. It’s done - and Bob, he is your father’s brother. OK, there may be no real profit in it but at least your costs are just about covered and you do get a regular milk payment every month.
That is why it is usually the other family members - those not so directly involved with the dairying and milking - that are the ones who are able to take a clearer overview and can see how the farm is performing. And it soon becomes blindingly obvious that it is the poor old farmer who is knackering himself, getting up at 4 am, doing a 60 hour week or more - and all for very little return, if any.
So in his defence, let us hear from the farmer himself...
“You have to take the farm history into account: my Dad, my Grandad and my Great-Grandad kept the farm afloat before the war when they only got thruppence three farthings a pint and they had to put the milk in 17 gallon churns and cart them down the lane on their backs ready to be collected at 5.30 in the morning and then there was the time that they had to milk ‘em all by hand when the snow brought down the power lines and do you remember when they had to billet the land-army girls in the barn when the doodlebug landed in the village and…”
Stop!
I’m sorry - what I really meant was “Would you kindly stop. Please. Thank you.”
Yes, it is easy to look back on a past age as being one of pure rustic rapture. Perhaps it was. However, no-one can deny that it was also a time of seriously back-breaking, smelly, sweaty and exhausting labour, racial prejudice, gross inequality, shorter life-spans - and as an aside, it also included some pretty horrible diseases (now thankfully consigned to history) thrown in for good measure. In fact, most people would probably agree with me if I said that on the miserability scale, the cons of yesteryear could actually outweigh the pros of today, Covid and all.
Not exactly bucolic bliss then.
But all of this is beside the point. It’s not like it now - and it will never be like it again.
Ever.
There is now a Tesco where the pigsties used to be, the new dual-carriageway has wiped out the Shufflebottom’s smallholding and the agricultural marketplace is now a Leisure Park, complete with a Frankie & Benny’s, a Multiplex cinema and a Burger King etc. And alas, they are not going to go away any time soon. You cannot wave a wand and suddenly fabulous countryside will miraculously reappear where there is now concrete carnage. You can’t simply magic up wild flower meadows, with rare butterflies and endangered species popping by to say hello, before they go forth and multiply, (although this will actually happen in the after-life, according to the religious leaflet that has just come through my letterbox).
In this life, sadly, we have to deal with hard-bitten reality - and work with the current situation, rather than trying to fight battles we cannot ever hope to win. And if that means having to adapt and change our farming methods and practices from what our parents and grandparents did; well I’m sorry. Unless you have any better options?
Yes, it can be pretty depressing to be given hardly any recognition for the huge amount of hard work that you and your predecessors have done over so many years, but we have to play with the cards we are dealt today. This is the hard-bitten reality of farming in the 21st century - nobody really gives a monkey’s about the alterations and improvements that have been made to the farm since you took it over back in 1986, or the fact there is now a well-drained, productive field where the stinking slurry pit used to be. Yes, everybody will have their own mountain to climb during their lifetime: it’s just that for some people it’s like the Maldives with a gentle stroll to a heady 17 feet, whereas for farmers, it’s more of an Everest-scale life-long slog, complete with full back-pack.
As the Sergeant Major used to say in the programme ‘It Ain't Half Hot, Mum’, back in the 1970s “Oh dear. How sad. Never mind”.
If any farmer really wants changes to be as minimal as possible, then all that is necessary is to batch-pasteurise a small(ish) percentage of the daily milk production and still retain the security of having all the rest collected by the tanker as usual. Yes, there may be legal implications and contractual restrictions but these should not be unsurmountable.
You can then gently expand your milk sales (or not) as the market dictates. And since you have a perfect site at the end of your lane where it joins the main road next to the lay-by, you might even think about putting in a vending machine. OK, OK, I didn’t mean right now: but you never know - perhaps one day.
Then there are the owners from the smart new wholefood shop in the village who have been asking for you to supply them with milk for ages and in the next village there is that new couple just taking over the village stores who want to make their own cheese, and…
And you're off. Sorted.
However, there is more to milk than just, er, well, milk. And we are not talking about the ever expanding list of weirdo ‘milks’ - coconut, almond, soy, rice, hemp, cashew, oat, quinoa and Lord-knows-what, complete with all their lactose, sugar-free and flavoured variants that have sneaked onto the supermarket shelves in the last few years. They are usually situated next to the standard cows’ milk in the supermarket aisles - or they might have been moved to the hippy vegan section by now.
Oops! I’ve just been told that I can’t say that: they are, of course, not ‘weirdo milks’ and I must apologise to all vegan sections of the community for insinuating an affinity with hippies.
Sorry…. to all vegans…. and hippies.
Everywhere.
No, we are talking about bog standard milky milk. Today, semi-skimmed and to a lesser extent skimmed, cows versions still seem to be pretty much the norm these days. Over the years, most of the population had become accustomed to the fake-news that drinking full-fat whole milk was akin to signing your own death warrant. If you ever did let this evil liquid pass your lips, then the least you could expect is to watch your arteries visibly contracting like a lens shutter on a camera.
As we now know, all this ‘science’ was total bunkum. Unsurprisingly, the research just happened to be funded by the mega margarine makers and it seemed to show that full fat milk was not beneficial to your health. For some strange reason the data seems to have been - how shall I put this - ‘massaged’ and the results accordingly slightly… skewed.
Lo and behold, it appears that humanity would be saved if we all swapped over and used low-fat spreads rather than butter and only drank skimmed and semi skimmed milks rather than whole milk.
“Low fat milk means low-fat you!” “Lower fat, lower flab” You get the picture.
Luckily this has now all been discredited: once again you can drink whole milk with a clear conscience and without having to say a few ‘Hail Marys’. However, the legacy of this low-fat tosh remains - and remember, the public’s whims are your command.
Put simply, to properly cater for your clientele, you will have to skim some of your milk to a greater or lesser extent. This is usually performed prior to batch pasteurising - and you will also have to make sure you have systems in place that will ensure there can be no mixing, confusion, contamination, repetition, hesitation or deviation…
Yes, adequate quality assurance systems must always be in place to ensure total product integrity… (Make it stop). However, anything that keeps Environmental Health/Trading Standards/Organic Certification mongers happy is just fine by me.
Best of all, you will end up with a load of cream that you have skimmed off. This can now be sold off straight or turned into artisan-butter, or heated in your pasteuriser to make clotted cream (wink wink). Perhaps this should be win-win?
Let’s not forget that your milk that has been gently batch pasteurised at 63°C for 30 minutes, will taste virtually identical to raw milk - and nothing like the continuous-flow standardised stuff from the supermarket that has been heated to at least 72°C for 15 seconds.
As an aside, in Australia and New Zealand, it seems that 15 seconds is far too long a time-scale for this pasteurisation process to take place - you’d have time to down a couple of tubes of Fosters while you wait for that. So they have some different rules.
How about 79.0°C for just 2 seconds? Or even better, 81.6°C for just one second!¹²
Now you’re talking!
But, er, what does this do to the taste of the milk?
Well, with that time-scale, just imagine the throughput.
Yes, but what about the taste?
Yes, but just think how many litres you can pasteurise in a day.
But the taste?
Consider how amazingly low the pasteurisation costs per litre will become.
Taste?
I think you will find that nobody who really matters actually gives a XXXX what it actually tastes like…
9. https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/business/farming/2905042/suicide-toll-on-uk-farming-revealed/
Chapter 3
Adding Value
There is more to Dairy farming than just cows and boring old milk. Yes, we know that your milk is now batch pasteurised, so it’s a lovely, creamy, rich ambrosial, nectar-from-the-Gods stuff that knocks the homogenised supermarket tackle into a cocked hat... but at the end of the day it is still, just, well... milk.
Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with anything just being milk. Nothing at all. In fact it’s really lovely. Yummmm! Oh Yes! I can picture it now - it can be simply batch pasteurised as it is, or you can supply it semi-skimmed, or even skimmed - if that is what the market demands. And it will soon attract a happy band of advocates that will travel miles to get it and hopefully never again plonk plastic bottles of milk into their supermarket trolleys.
But there’s more. A lot more. And if batch pasteurising your milk gives you a financial return that makes you smile, then you would probably have to laugh out loud at the margins that can be achieved when you turn your milk into yogurt or soft cheese, kefir etc.
OK - Sandra and Sheila will need to get involved in this caper, but they have been hankering to sort out that empty room next to the dairy for years anyway and do something like this. You know in your heart that very soon they will end up fully in charge of production and ban you from even going inside ‘their room’... but they’ll make a damn sight better job of it than you ever could. And if it makes a few bob, then so what?
(Yeah - well, they’ve got a lot more time on their hands, haven’t they?).
So what’s involved in this yogurt-making business? How much grief is involved? What is the outlay? And will it interfere with the batch pasteurising of the milk, since this appears to be doing very nicely at the moment?
The answers are “Not much”, “Not much”, “Not a lot” and “Not really, although you might have to sort out your timings with Toby, so you can use the pasteuriser when he’s finished with it.”
There really isn’t much involved with yogurt making. Basically, you take your batch pasteurised milk, then drop the temperature to around 40 - 42°C, add the culture and wait for the magic to take place. Done.
If you can, try to imagine the milk proteins (casein) in your milk as unsupervised kids in a playground, all screaming and shouting with just the odd one or two being quiet, buzzing around, pretending to be aeroplanes, rock stars, super models, influencers, whatever. Suddenly your culture is added. You now notice that the odd couple of kids have calmed down and are holding hands and this chain slowly begins to grow. After a few hours there are long chains of kids that are now no longer able to run around - in a ‘liquid’ state. They have now all linked together and have formed the ‘gel structure’ that gives your yogurt its semi-solid wobbly nature.
As an aside, if a big ‘spoon’ appears from above and stirs and shakes the kids, so that they can’t hold hands any more, your yogurt then becomes much more liquid and runny. If the kids are then left, they can slowly link hands once more and like magic, the gel will re-form. This is thixotropy in action and you can now get your smug points for knowing this.
This also means that if you are making your yogurt in a batch pasteuriser, your stirrer should be set to intermittent, so that it gives, for example, a 20 second gentle whizz every half hour. This means it doesn’t break up your yogurt’s gel-structure but still keeps your added fruit from dropping to the bottom. Sandra is keen to try Whortleberries she got from her friend’s cousin’s allotment and Sheila wants to have a crack with her Rhubarb.
So what can go wrong? Honestly?
Well, we are dealing with a natural, living product here, so we have to take all of nature’s, almost whimsical, variations into account. Unlike its supermarket equivalent, your milk will vary - from spring through to winter, from just-calved to a late lactation of 40 plus weeks, from winter where the cows are stall-fed to spring turn-out where they dine on lush grazed grass, from the cows who you have mixed with others to the ones that have remained in their own happy band… and everything else in between.
That is why your batch pasteurised milk will vary too - and perhaps why the subtleties are so appreciated by the cognoscenti i.e. the bods queuing up at your vending machine, or the regulars at the Farm Shop..
And if the milk varies, then so too will the products it produces; usually not enough for people to say “Well, it didn’t taste like this last time”, but enough to keep their taste buds on their toes: OK, that’s the wrong metaphor but you know what I mean. They will know they are getting a quality, delightfully individual product that is on a totally different planet to the standardised supermarket milk products currently flooding the marketplace.
Back to the dairy. For filling, you will need to put the 2 inch outlet spout onto the pasteuriser and have the stirrer paddle rotating slowly. This means that the thick glop will come out in a steady stream and can go straight into your yogurt pots, ready for capping and then popping into the fridge - where the yogurt should thicken up even more.
If sales take off, it might even be worth getting a small filling machine. Not yet! - let’s see how it goes first. You don’t want to lay out silly money if it’s never going to be used…
Mind you, Sandra has just reported back on how her first batch of yogurt has gone. I’m relieved to be told that it turned out fine and she has made six different flavours. The 150 litre batch pasteuriser made enough for almost a thousand of those little 150g pots and Sand reckons she has already sorted out retailing them at 70p each. This is giving her over 40p profit on each pot. All right, she has got to get them shifted and she was all morning faffing about in that room, but hang on - if they sell, then she’s getting back about £400 - all for a morning’s work!
Strewth! If it was left as milk for collection, all we would get is about £60…
I knew it! Not that Sand is being smug or anything, but simply because her yogurt project is going ballistic, Sheila now wants a piece of the action and she reckons we can use the pasteuriser to make soft cheese too - have to get some more cows at this rate.
So why not use the batch pasteuriser for making soft cheese? Provided that you have the time and space and can sell your product, then there really is no reason not to.
Earlier I wrote:
So what is involved in this yogurt-making business? How much grief is involved? What is the outlay? And will it interfere with the batch pasteurising of the milk (since it appears to be doing very nicely at the moment?).
So for ‘yogurt’ read ‘soft cheese’ and the answers will then remain the same:
“Not much”, “Not much”, “Not a lot” and “Not really'' although you again might have to sort out your timings with the long suffering Toby, so you can use the pasteuriser when he’s finished with it. By now he’s muttering about having to get a bigger vessel.
This time, after you have batch pasteurised the milk at 63°C for 30 minutes, you turn off the heating and use cold water to bring the milk down to your target temperature. This could be 30°C or so but it all depends on the recipe. Culture will need to be added, depending on what sort of final cheesy product you are aiming for. This is hardly the place for a comprehensive and definitive study on all aspects of artisanal cheesemaking, so we’ll keep to the basic basics: if you need some help going down this route, these people13 are a great starting point for your supplies.
When the temperature is correct, the culture is added to the milk as a powder or a solution and this will make it acidic so that the milk tastes sharp and sour. The stirrer is turned on, to allow it all to mix. After the allotted time, add the rennet and after a few magical mixing minutes, the stirrer is simply turned off - and you then simply have to wait. This could be anything from 3 hours to overnight, but once the curd has formed to the correct degree, the whey is drained off. The curd can then be scooped out of the pasteuriser with an appropriate tool and placed in a tray. I know of a cheesemaker who uses a dustpan as a scoop, (but at least it was a brand new one).
The curd can then be rolled to remove any excess whey, salted, and sprinkled with whatever has been decided will make this cheese the one that stands out from the crowd - chives, crushed black peppers, chillies, sun-dried tomatoes, sardines, smashed avocado - well I don’t know, do I? I don’t make cheese. It’s whatever helps push the little wooden boxes into shoppers’ baskets and clinches the sale.
Hang on! Wooden boxes? What's with the wooden boxes? First I’ve heard of them, so where did these wooden boxes come from?
Well, if you wrap your home-produced soft cheese in cling-film and place them on the deli counter, you can ask about £2.99 for a 200g pack. Take that same piece of cheese and swap the cling film for a piece of translucent silicone vegetable food-wrap - the sort that allows the chives on the outside of the cheese to show through. Pleat the paper and fold it under, invert the cheese and place in the wooden poplar cheesebox.
Yes, but what a palaver. And Sheila’s not even finished yet. Now there’s bits of ribbon going round the boxes and then she’s got to fit those ridiculously expensive labels on the lids - and another one underneath. I hope she’s charging for all this.
Don’t worry. She is. She is.
These pretty little boxes are retailing for £7.95 in your farm shop… and are selling like crazy. So even if you allow a 35% discount for selling them through the corner shop, that still leaves well over £5 - which more than covers her time and all the fancy packaging costs. In fact Sheila reckons that on average there is a profit of more than £4.75 on each box - and since she has made 75 boxes of soft cheese from a 150 litre batch, then that’s well over £350 worth.
OK I think she had better carry on with it (and we still only get £60 odd for the milk…).
And we haven’t even touched on Kefir, Clotted Cream and all the other dairy goodies that were once considered outré, but are now rapidly becoming mainstream. All of them have eye-wateringly scrumptious profit margins compared to the negative-equity received for your normal milk that is still being collected by the wholesalers - and all of these dairy delights are relatively easy to make, once you are set up.
Remember,the production of cheese or yogurt or any other dairy products does not depend on ancient wisdom that has been passed down through generations since the mists of time. It has nothing to do with skilled artisan craftspeople who have learned their trade from the ancients and will take their secret recipes or techniques to the grave. Sorry to disappoint, but as far as yogurt, kefir and cheesemaking are concerned, there is no Mystic Meg Magic - I suppose we now have to include Other-Worldly Wayne Wizardry.
No. There is no wise-woman wisdom involved - it’s all simply boring old science: boring, boring, boring. And if you get it right, it’s very profitable too. Of course you will need some experience and experimentation to sort out the best methods, but once you have cracked it - well, you’ve cracked it.
And that’s why everyone considering venturing down this road should go on a cheesemaking course or whatever - and learn how to do it properly. These courses are not expensive and if it pans out as it should, will usually repay you a hundredfold.
Basically, the process for making cheese is simply this: you add culture to your milk which makes it become acidic. Back in the mists of pre-history when I was just a nipper, every summer when the weather was at its hottest peak, we would find that the milk would quickly go ‘on the turn’. Fridges were a rarity back then and milk was stored standing in a basin of cold water. We would then hear Mum saying those fateful words ‘Hmmm, that milk needs using up…’.This meant that I would then get a cup of tea that not only tasted a bit odd; it also had tiny little white beads floating on the surface. This milk didn’t do much for my Shreddies or Weetabix either, but it had to be used up: in those days, nothing was wasted.
What had happened? The bacteria in the air had landed on the surface of the milk - and at the height of Summer, the temperature was perfect for these bacteria to proliferate at a rapid rate. Net result: this bacterial action caused the lactose to turn to lactic acid; the pH then drops as the milk becomes acidic and it then starts to separate, especially when added to hot liquid such as my cup of tea. What happened next? I was able to collect the milky ‘beads’ floating on the surface of my tea with a teaspoon and then flick them on to my brother's neck. Net result: the usual daily fight, with Dad having to wade in to separate us: this was always welcome, because my brother was 2 years older and much tougher than me.
But despite this milk being yukky in tea, it is just about perfect for cheese. In the olden days, milk would simply be left to ‘sour naturally’, using the bacteria floating in the air to work their magic and it could then be used for cheese. Usually this was fine: the bacteria that will naturally sour milk are normally found in the air in huge numbers that will swamp out the other yucky bacteria that you don’t want. However, this is not always the case; hence the relatively large number of failures that ‘cottage cheese’ makers often had with their production.
“I dunno, the cheese hasn’t worked right this time. I asked Mike when he came in from muck-spreading if he had any ideas, but he hadn’t got a clue…”
So if you add culture to your milk, you at least know you are inoculating it with countless billions of the correct souring bacteria, rather than playing a cheesy version of Russian roulette. Yes, nature will normally come up trumps - more than 90% of the time - but if you do have a failure, then it could simply be the wrong bacteria (i.e. anything from Anthrax to Zika) are having a field day and have just floated in to say “hi” - before they carry on to do their worst.
Chapter 4
And….
In my Mum’s bungalow, there used to be a faded embroidery sampler whatsit that used to sit on the wall at the end of the hall. I’ve since discovered that all Mums of a certain vintage adore this sort of stuff. Like most things that hang on the wall, after the first few minutes, nobody will ever give it a second glance, but I do remember thinking that for somebody, this represented an absolutely mind-blowing, stupendous task - that was a total and utter waste of time. Just imagine sitting there for endless hours embroidering hundreds of letters in various coloured silks so that the whole poem could be completed. When this was done, the embroidered thingy would then be able to sit proudly on a wall… and be basically ignored thereafter.
However, I do remember the first two embroidered lines on it: They said
“The coming year, what will it bring? At least we can be sure of Spring”
I suppose in the days when this was painstakingly stitched, climate change was not even a cloud on the horizon, so it does seem a bit churlish to say “... and you even got that wrong”.
However, this does focus the mind on how difficult it is to predict what is going to happen in future. Who knew that Covid would suddenly rear its ugly head? Or Ukraine would be invaded - or my neighbours over the road would get a Jack Russell that yaps half the night?
So how can I predict what will happen in the dairy industry? I can’t. But I can have a pretty good stab at noting what is already happening - and then extrapolating down the line a bit.
So… for the milk vending machines themselves, my star prediction is… Ta Daaah!... that cash will play an ever-decreasing role. Many machines are now card-only anyway - and if this pees off the die-hards who turn up for their bottle of milk and some strawberry yogurt with pound coins and “a pocket full of shrap”, then so be it. You have probably noticed that I’ve learnt all this hip lingo from the kids. And no. I obviously haven’t been able to keep up to date, mainly because it changes so fast.
It also saves all the hassle of counting out stacks of coinage and lugging it down to the bank in great big bags.
Banks? You don’t remember banks? They were places on the High Street - High Street? - You know, the main street in town where all the shops used to be - where people used to take their money for safekeeping. What’s money? Well, we used to carry metal discs in our pockets - no honestly, we did! - and these were called ‘coins’ and were used to pay for stuff. They came in various shapes and sizes with some discs worth more than others. For bigger amounts we had specially printed plastic sheets - we used to call them five, ten and twenty ‘pound notes’ - I can even remember the paper versions we had before that (now that really is showing my age…)
Don’t laugh - this scenario will be a reality sooner than you think. Fingerprint payment will be available shortly and Denmark has already discontinued coins and banknote production - so either take it on board or do the other thing.
Byee.
It is actually preferable to have the contactless card version of payment in the milk vending machines since it saves a lot of time and has other advantages too. For example, if the milk level in the reservoir gets low the latest versions can also send you a warning text and it will also let you know if there are any other problems. This is not just showing off - it is a sensible use of the latest advances in telephony.
In any case, this has got to be better than having some miscreant, who is perhaps in need of recreational stimulants, thinking that there is a cornucopia of hard currency available at the flick of a crow-bar to satiate their somewhat urgent requirements...
The batch pasteuriser itself is already reasonably future-proof: it wouldn’t take much to make them totally controllable by an i-phone. Well, why not? You can now turn on your central heating from an App on your phone whilst you are driving home, so turning on a pasteuriser should be easy-peasy.
“Alexa! Make me 100 litres of Cherry Yogurt”
“Thank you…. Making 100 metres of Sherry dog dirt”
OK. Perhaps there may be the odd teething problem, but you get the picture….
So you have taken the plunge and gone contactless and you now have a nice queue lining up at the vending machine each morning, or a steady stream going into the Farm Shop, all ready to zap-zap-zap away with their Visas. However, ignoring your own financial gain, there are several broader benefits to the whole community that are quietly being addressed here. Your new enterprise with its delicious milk has suddenly become a focal point for the whole village - and possibly beyond.
Well, the Post Office, the local store and the village pub have all closed. Just listen to the women in the Tesco’s car park, bewailing the fact that their village has ‘died’ to her fellow parker in the next bay along - whilst they squeeze the contents of their loaded trolleys into the back of their 4 x 4’s.
“There is nothing left in the village any more, Chloe. Nothing, nothing, nothing! That’s the main reason why we are only staying in our cottage for two weeks this year…”
“Couldn’t agree more. It’s the same with us too, Zoe - and the kids are threatening not to come with us at all next year ‘cos the broadband speed here is just rubbish...”
Sigh.
So your milk supply outlet can become a community focal point and a benefit to your whole area, providing delicious milk and other dairy products with minimal ‘air-miles’ involved. With no bunches of spring onions flown in from Ecuador - and no Ugandan runner beans either.
At the same time, you are showing the world that someone with a little bit of nous can start to resuscitate the village and bring it back from its moribund state. You are the beacon that proves that customers don't have to sheepishly follow the diktats of the megastores.
Let’s amalgamate all of these supermarkets into a single horrifying humongous hyperstore - and we will call it Tessacolimoralwaitas… who has decreed that milk must be a consistent product throughout the year, with unvarying (i.e. minimum) butterfat levels.
It must also be homogenised for extra shelf-life and sold in the cheapest packaging possible - i.e. single use plastic bottles, whilst paying lip-service to the growing eco-lobby. “Yes! We now use transparent lids on all of our milk bottles (skim, semi-skin and whole) so that they can now be recycled…”
The Tessacolimoralwaitas buyers won’t be in the least concerned that some country hick is providing milk in glass bottles as well as yogurt and cheese to all the local people on their patch.They won’t even be aware that the local radio station gave the grand opening of the Farm Shop a full 10 minutes of airtime. However, to be fair, Radio Crapstone is usually desperate to report on anything remotely newsworthy, provided that it happens on their patch...
“...and now back to the studio, where we have the latest report from Taylor Street, where the fire in the dustbin has just been put out - we are informed that the Fire Brigade were not required”.
No: for the Tessacolimoralwaitas purchasing departments, what is of paramount importance is that there may be a major saving to be made if they can somehow source those spring onions from New Zealand rather than Ecuador.
Every little helps.
But the benefit of this communal camaraderie is not solely restricted to the rural life of village folk. Milk vending machines are appearing in town and city centres throughout the UK. Real milk, yogurt and other dairy produce can also be found in Delis, Health Food shops and similar. OK - this may only represent one small step for personkind, one small brick in building the dam that will stand against the tidal wave of High street closures - sorry, got a bit carried away there - but you get the picture.
If the supply of this beautiful local milk helps meet the demands of the local community, helps the farmer get a realistic return, helps the shops stay in profit, helps the shopkeepers pay the local council’s rates and so on, then it can only be applauded.
Yes, every little does help.
But away from the village people, what about the rest of the population who live in towns and cities?
Well, for starters, there are more than 50 City Farms in the UK.
To me, this is an amazing fact: in the heart of London, Glasgow, Liverpool, Swansea, Belfast and numerous other big cities, there are these beacons of green light in the middle of their largely concrete landscape… and they are defiantly resisting the attentions of the ever circling housing developers.
For the first time, cosmopolitan children can see chickens, people can pick pears and city kids can meet a different type of kid - and everyone can basically learn where their food comes from. You will see parties of often quite severely challenged children cuddling a goat or standing in awe next to a Dexter cow or Jacob sheep, whilst teams of volunteers patiently explain and cajole, stop fights, wipe tears, dole out pencils, help put on Wellies and empty collected ‘Maltesers’ out of the pockets of 4 year olds. They basically do the best they can on the 2½ acres of rough scrub land next to the railway lines that is surrounded on all sides by high-rise flats - but this is still ‘Their Farm', their Shangri-La. The whole thing is pretty humbling and their volunteers and workers should all be canonised.
The city farms that are big enough to have goats or cows should perhaps join in the Real Milk revolution and fund-raise to get a small batch pasteuriser - so that their milk can then be sold to the public - right in the heart of their city too.
As a spin-off, this means you are then able to provide courses on yogurt production, cheese making and all sorts of dairy delights - and provided that these items are made with pasteurised milk, then they can be sold to the public as well.
Win-win Rodders, win-win.
Finally, whilst we are looking to the future, it is worth looking at options available for your power supply; for example, what is needed to run a pasteuriser. As I write this in Autumn 2022, the price of energy is going through the roof - and that is exactly where your solar panels should be.
The problem for solar power - and for that matter any other alternative energy source, is heat. Heating is so greedy: it gobbles up kilowatts of power, whereas motors are frugal and only use minimal amounts, whilst for lighting (and especially for LED’s), their needs are negligible.
So if heating is the bad boy where power consumption is concerned, what is actually needed that will allow the fully off-grid dairy queen (or king) to thrive and survive - and pasteurise milk with impunity?
If we consider a 100 litre capacity vessel, it usually is fitted with something like 3 x 3 kilowatt elements, meaning there is a total requirement of 9 kilowatts plus a tiddly bit for the motor: if one allows for 10kWatts in total, then that should cover everything. It is possible to get away with less, but there will be a payback in that it will take a lot longer to reach the pasteurisation temperature.
10 kWatts is a lot of grunt that is needed for all this heating - and this equates to the need for quite a few solar panels and a decent sized Lithium storage battery as well. However, there is some respite from this constant clamour for power. For a start, because the pasteuriser should be really highly insulated, once the required temperature has been reached, the heating will then turn off and will probably not come on again for the whole of the pasteurisation period. So from the point that the milk reaches your set pasteurisation temperature, virtually no power will be required, apart from the parsimonious snippet taken by the stirrer motor.
The other thing to take into account is the fact that modern temperature control isn’t simply a case of “Everything On…… OK everybody, we have arrived at 63°C….. Everything Off!”
No; with modern temperature control systems, it is more a case of ‘phasing’ the power on and off: it ‘learns’ what your temperature profile should be and will eventually adjust the heating programme to minimise any temperature overshoot. Automatically.
O.K… Right…
Personally I find this all super-creepy and more than a bit ‘Big Brother’. I may be old-fashioned, but I feel distinctly uneasy about machines learning what I want them to do. However, it does mean that the pasteuriser will only need to be going flat-out for a very short time, so your total power requirement is not going to be that big. Cost-wise, it will add a minimal amount for each pint of milk it pasteurises, especially if it's a full batch that is being treated.
The farmers can help too. The cows or goats have bust a gut (or should that be an udder) to produce milk at body temperature - this is about 38°C… so pasteurisation-wise, you are already well on the way. Since the pasteurisation temperature is likely to be only 63°C, it seems mad to send the milk to the bulk tank where it will start to be chilled to 4°C or less - only to then have to heat it back up. So if the milk can be taken straight from the parlour to the batch pasteuriser, it will save a load of both heating time and money.
Well, I say a load of money: even at today’s crazy ‘Turn everything off! Now!!’ electricity prices, the cost of the power needed to batch pasteurise a batch of milk should still only amount to less than 1p per litre. However, today everything counts and must be costed.
So why not have a word and encourage your nearest farm - you know, the one that is now almost surrounded by the new housing estate going up - and get them to provide your local town centre shop with some real milk.
It may be your last chance.
Alas, my crystal ball is clouding over: my view into the future is fading fast… and I urgently need to get the hell out of it, mainly because I can hear the sounds of ‘Strictly’ filtering through the door, ready to scramble what’s left of my brain.
Da, da-da-da da-da-daaaaaa… Da, da-da-da Daaaaaa..
Keeeeeeeep Milkin’.
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