COOLING, STORING AND QUALITY OF RAW-MILK

Full-scale experiments with cooling of raw milk of good initial qualit y from a herd of 70 dairy cows have been performed under practical far m conditions, with different cooling and storage conditions, including instant cooling in a continuous process versus normal cooling in a ba tch process. During each milking, the milk was divided equally and suc cessively for different cooling procedures. Quality evaluations (numbe r of bacteria, acidity and oxidation of fat, sensoric quality) indicat ed that instant cooling/continuous process compared with normal coolin g/batch process over 2.5 hours, both to 4 degrees C, resulted in a sli ghtly slower bacterial growth and a slightly slower hydrolysis and oxi dation of milk fat. Instant raw milk cooled and stored at 2.5 degrees C maintained a good quality for about one to two days more than when n ormal cooling over 1.5 hours and storing at 4 degrees C was used.