Butter making

[Greenbeast]

Anyone doing their own butter?
We have butter made for us currently, but i've found, in storage here, a modern churn and extruder and we're toying with doing it ourselves and keeping more money in house, also reducing product turnaround.
I'm familiar with the process in a domestic scale, i make my own in the house, but i'd like advice, or even better a visit to see the process on a slightly larger scale.
My biggest problem at home is adequate washing and drying. So i'm holding off on playing in the dairy until i've sorted this out

 

[jerseycowsman]

I think Google will be your friend.
I know Ollie neagle in Hampshire with jerseys who is processing, but whether he’s making butter is another thing

 

[Tim G]

Anyone doing their own butter?
We have butter made for us currently, but i've found, in storage here, a modern churn and extruder and we're toying with doing it ourselves and keeping more money in house, also reducing product turnaround.
I'm familiar with the process in a domestic scale, i make my own in the house, but i'd like advice, or even better a visit to see the process on a slightly larger scale.
My biggest problem at home is adequate washing and drying. So i'm holding off on playing in the dairy until i've sorted this out

We make it, but on a very small scale. Perhaps contact Johnny Crickmore at fen farm? I'm sure he'd show you how they do it.

 

[Greenbeast]

We make it, but on a very small scale. Perhaps contact Johnny Crickmore at fen farm? I'm sure he'd show you how they do it.

What are your batch sizes?
Thanks for the recommendation

 

[Tim G]

What are your batch sizes?
Thanks for the recommendation

About 9 x 200g pats per mix.

 

[Greenbeast]

so ~4l cream? what are you using, something domestic or a small commercial churn?
From the looks of what we have i reckon it will do 10l of cream

 

[Greenbeast]

I found a couple of videos yesterday, small and largish scale, seems the thing to do is wash in the churn. Doing it in the house i'm using a kenwood chef and then washing by hand

 

[Tim G]

https://www.agridirect.co.uk/produc...O98EIJVL-yfd580X2kAVFPtMu4IrRJIhoCfyQQAvD_BwE
About 4l yeah, this is the one we have, it's either small commercial or large domestic, not really sure! The next one up was a few thousand and we just couldn't justify spending that at the time. The key is to wash and wash well, and then get all the water out. We sell our 200g pats for £4, it really needs to go up but it already seems expensive to me. Saying that, someone said the other week that they paid £7.50 for raw butter somewhere else and thought ours was better.

 

[Greenbeast]

https://www.agridirect.co.uk/produc...O98EIJVL-yfd580X2kAVFPtMu4IrRJIhoCfyQQAvD_BwE
About 4l yeah, this is the one we have, it's either small commercial or large domestic, not really sure! The next one up was a few thousand and we just couldn't justify spending that at the time. The key is to wash and wash well, and then get all the water out. We sell our 200g pats for £4, it really needs to go up but it already seems expensive to me. Saying that, someone said the other week that they paid £7.50 for raw butter somewhere else and thought ours was better.

We're not quite at that price but then ours is just pasteurised, so not the niche that you have.
Although once again, it should probably go up.
I can't personally justify the price even at staff discount when i can just take the cream for free and make it myself, or get a decent British butter elsewhere.
I'm very keen to try, once i've finished buggering about with pasteurisers i might bring the gear into the main dairy and have a play

 

[Greenbeast]

https://www.agridirect.co.uk/produc...O98EIJVL-yfd580X2kAVFPtMu4IrRJIhoCfyQQAvD_BwE
About 4l yeah, this is the one we have, it's either small commercial or large domestic, not really sure! The next one up was a few thousand and we just couldn't justify spending that at the time. The key is to wash and wash well, and then get all the water out. We sell our 200g pats for £4, it really needs to go up but it already seems expensive to me. Saying that, someone said the other week that they paid £7.50 for raw butter somewhere else and thought ours was better.

What are you using for packaging? Are you hand forming blocks (with paddles?)

 

[Tim G]

What are you using for packaging? Are you hand forming blocks (with paddles?)

It's churned and washed in the machine, then salted and worked with paddles by hand. I'm not sure of the name of the paper it's packed in, but it's like grease proof with a very thin plastic layer on the inside. It keeps really well in that paper, others we've tried weren't so good.

 

[onesiedale]

@Greenbeast what size batches are you thinking of?
What is the churn and extruder you have found in storeage?
I'm currently renovating an old Melotte vertical churn

 

[Greenbeast]

@Greenbeast what size batches are you thinking of?
What is the churn and extruder you have found in storeage?
I'm currently renovating an old Melotte vertical churn

The churn i've found will probably take about 10l of cream at a guess. and the extruder looks like it'll match that and take a few kg of butter.
I wasn't sure about the washing side of things, but now i see it's done in the churn i will have a go at that, although this is not top of the list yet. Currently having trouble with our big new pasteuriser and cream separator which i'm troubleshooting.

 

[onesiedale]

The churn i've found will probably take about 10l of cream at a guess. and the extruder looks like it'll match that and take a few kg of butter.
I wasn't sure about the washing side of things, but now i see it's done in the churn i will have a go at that, although this is not top of the list yet. Currently having trouble with our big new pasteuriser and cream separator which i'm troubleshooting.

continuous or batch pasteurising?

 

[Greenbeast]

continuous or batch pasteurising?

Continuous, rated at 900l/h but the holding time has been tested well over legal min so we've upgraded the heater element and we're pushing it a bit. The separator is rated at 1200l/h and i think some of our issues are to do with it not seeing enough flow through it

 

[upnortheast]

We run a couple of 900 litre Mallinson machines.
Just refurbed the plates on one. Was running too fast so nipping the plates up tighter got it back to 900 ish
Some have a flow controller installed.
Our seperator is a Sietel rated at 1200 l Works fine connected to the 900l pasteruiser. Bit of a black art setting the 3 pressure knobs to get the cream at the right fat %

 

[Greenbeast]

We run a couple of 900 litre Mallinson machines.
Just refurbed the plates on one. Was running too fast so nipping the plates up tighter got it back to 900 ish
Some have a flow controller installed.
Our seperator is a Sietel rated at 1200 l Works fine connected to the 900l pasteruiser. Bit of a black art setting the 3 pressure knobs to get the cream at the right fat %

Oh my word, you could be just the person we need!
Yes we have the Seital SE05X

Up to summer we were on 2x Mallinson 450 machines for bottling, with one going to an elecrem 500l/h separator for creaming, with a 900 Packo machine and a 1000(?) Mallinson sitting unused (no one here had the technical knowledge or time to do anything about it before i started)

Do you have any tips on the Seital? I have just been over to the dairy to check yesterdays test run, it 'seems' perfect but the trouble we've mostly been having is it won't stay whipped for any number of days. I was hoping letting more milk in will cause less of a microfoam effect in the cream and improve whipping ability. But i'm really excited to hear what you have to say

 

[onesiedale]

how do you mean, "it won't stay whipped" ??
btw, what happened to the 500l/hr separator?

 

[onesiedale]

like @upnortheast said, setting the seital knobs is a black art. Certainly not anything you can write into a operating manual!

 

[Greenbeast]

how do you mean, "it won't stay whipped" ??
btw, what happened to the 500l/hr separator?

From what i hear, although yet to fully test it myself, is that it collapses a day or two later, which is no good for our cake making customers.

The Elecrem is still in use and will be kept as a backup, we've had to move back whilst we play with the Seital some more, i ran it faster on Thursday (1160l/h instead of 960/h) and produced cream like thick milk, had to immediately mix that back in to the skim and move back to the Elecrem.
So Currently my plan is to produce all our customer's cream on the Elecrem and run off a couple of buckets on the Seital every day, until it's producing what we need.