Milk Production ‘Moo-ving’ Forward!
Our Belgian Chocolate + Milk production is moving along now that we have the bottling machine installed.
Projects are fun, they never go exactly as planned, always cost more and take longer than expected. Nothing new here.
So, after what feels like an eternity, we shifted the milk bottling machine this week into the new room we have built, a small step, but a step in the right direction.
The new-to-us pasteuriser and the refurbished old, but much higher capacity homogeniser, are in place-albeit not connected, but in place.
The homogeniser on its own should be remove five hours of wasted time in the production process per week. The much-awaited separator, enabling us to do light milk, cream etc should be on site in a fortnight.
The separator will also play a role in clarifying the milk which should help remove any impurities resulting in more shelf-life stability. The new gas boiler is due on site at the end of next week, and with it, we are aiming to deliver hot water with no temperature fluctuations to the pasteuriser and clean-in-place unit.
The 80kva chiller is half connected, this means we will not have to rely on the temperamental ice bank system which cools the main dairy milk.
The game changer is still a month away, when we can hook them all up to run in tandem- the separator, the pasteuriser and the homogeniser all in a single production process whereby when we turn them all on within a couple of minutes, and rom where ready-to-bottle chilled milk pops out at a flow rate of 2500 litres per hour.
Sounds like a lot to a peasant farm boy but the reality is lots of the big milk processing sites can do more than 15 million litres of milk per day- or 625,000 litres per hour.
Talk about putting me into perspective- a very small perspective. But it is good to have the occasional reality check to keep your ego only mildly inflated.
Also can you please tell me what we are going to call our iced coffee, light milk, cream and butter? I have a plan, but if you have any creative ideas, please shoot through a message on our Facebook page.
Is the iced coffee, “Milk + Coffee” to be consistent with the chocolate milk or is it “Milk + Espresso” or just “Iced Coffee”?
Last question of the day, how many two litre bottles of regular milk and how many chocolate milk bottles do you think my five boys drink in a week? I am not sure I should admit to this, but in a typical week our family goes through three boxes of farm milk, 18 bottles or 36 litres- that’s nearly a litre per day per boy!
How many chocolate milks do they drink? None!
On a recommendation from my niece, we did try to make ice cream out of the chocolate milk and let’s just say phase one went about the same as most of my projects- poorly planned, poorly executed, but still, lots of fun!
Editor’s Note: Successful attempts to create ice-cream outside of Paul’s kitchen have been made! For the recipe click here