Ideal Temp for Milk Storage

JirehFarmsTN

Ridin' The Range
Joined
Oct 11, 2018
Messages
33
Reaction score
46
Points
56
Hi again!
If anyone has followed our journey with AnnaBelle our jersey, I’m happy to share we now have amazing milk and TWO new additions!
Everything is going great, and we are going to start making fresh dairy products soon, but we have a slight complication...our milk has not been staying fresh for very long, and I’m inclined to think it could be the temp we store it at.
While our farmhouse is being redone we are in a camper-and let’s be honest, with a big family we have a VERY full 1/2 sized refrigerator that doesn’t stay as cold as a “real” refrigerator.
Several folks have told me the reason the milk isn’t staying fresh is likely because it isn’t staying cold enough, I’m curious....
1- Is this likely the cause?
2- What are your preferred temperatures for storage?

Part of the reason I’m lead to think it’s the storage method is a friend of ours who we’ve given some milk to keeps hers in a normal refrigerator and it stayed fresh for about 2 weeks, whereas we get a week at most.
We are keeping things as sanitary as possible-cleaning the cows’ udders thoroughly each milking (and keeping the cows as clean as possible), discarding the first several streams of milk, sanitizing all buckets and jars after each use, and using proper milk filtering methods
 

Mini Horses

Herd Master
Joined
Sep 4, 2015
Messages
9,297
Reaction score
29,351
Points
728
Location
S coastal VA
Must chill fast and keep cold. Small frig....use a great cooler and a lot of ice! Next option, another frig. I put goat milk in the freezer for 30 min to an hour to quick chill, then cold frig. With big family. You always have that door opening. 😁 I have a separate milk frig for all but container in use.
 

Alaskan

Herd Master
Joined
May 9, 2017
Messages
5,366
Reaction score
12,588
Points
553
Location
Kenai Peninsula, Alaska
We did goats... not cows....

And well... we were(and are) NOT super clean. Also, I never liked the idea of the cleaning etc. since it sounded so unnatural to me, and likely to lead to chapped udders. (But then, I am odd.) So... rub animal to get loose hair to fall off, rub udder gently to brush off loose hair or hay... one squirt on the ground and the rest in the milking bucket.

but.... we have a fridge in the mudporch that is kept at maximum cold.

Milk was brought to the house, filtered, and put into the maximum cold mudporch fridge.

There wasn't enough space in the fridge to keep more than about 2 days of milk.

I tried hard to drink what was milked the day before (and I have 5 boys so it was easy to drink over a gallon a day), so whatever was milked had 12-ish hours to chill before drinking.

If we weren't drinking the milk fast enough I made it into ricotta, and used the whey as the water to make rice, or soup.

BUT, if for some reason you want to hold onto milk for longer than 24hours... I have heard that sticking it in an ice bath as soon as possible after milking does help keep the milk longer.

But then.... the longer you keep it, the more storage space you need.
 

Latest posts

Top