DAIRYING 39 



COOLING THE CREAM 



460. It is admitted by all buttermakers that cream should be 

 cooled before it is churned (1) to aid in giving the butter a de- 

 sirable body and grain ; (2) to obtain an exhaustive churning, and 

 (3) to check the souring process. 



461- The cream as it comes from the separator has a temper- 

 ature of about 75 to 85 degrees F. Some good authorities advise 

 that it should be run from the separator over a cooler into the 

 ripening vat as a cooling of 20 degrees or more and the aeration 

 it gets by the cooling are beneficial to the flavor of both cream 

 and butter. This treatment, it is claimed, removes some taint 

 from cream and gives it and the butter a cleaner flavor and bet- 

 ter keeping qualities than is the case when cream is ripened with- 

 out this cooling or aerating. This practice is recommended and 

 followed in Danish dairies and in other European butter-making 

 establishments. In America, however, the common custom of 

 butter makers is to allow the cream to flow from the separators 

 directly into the cream ripening vat without an intermediate cool- 

 ing; it being claimed that cooling after ripening answers every 

 purpose and that unnecessary work and a waste of water or other 

 cooling material is thereby avoided. 



462. The fat in cream hardens and crystallizes slowly, not 

 entirely on account of its failing to reach the same temperature 

 as the cream serum in a given time, but because fat changes from 

 a liquid to a solid condition less readily than the serum cools. 

 Stirring or any sort of agitation, will aid in hastening the crystal- 

 lization of the fat, and the solidifying point of butter fat. A thor- 

 ough cooling of the fat requires the maintainance of a tem- 

 perature near 50 degrees F. for two hours, or more. This is usually 

 done in the ripening vat before churning. 



463. Cooling cream by placing large blocks of clean ice in 

 obtained. The cream immediately surrounding the cake of ice is 



necessarily chilled to a much lower temperature than that a little 

 distance from it, unless the ice is kept in constant motion. This 

 may cause an uneven ripening as well as an unsatisfactory cooling 

 of the cream -and should therefore be avoided whenever possible. 



