Has anyone ever managed to sterilze milk so it would keep for long periods of time (months-years) without refrigeration? How about condensing milk anyone know how? Are there perservatives that can be used or added? I'm also interested in drying whole milk, can it be done? TIA

-- Ross (amulet@istar.ca), February 11, 2002

Answers

Ross, know you milk sheep but you really ought to visit the goat dairy sites, we were just talking about this. You can waterbath or pressure can milk, now I don't know about it lasting forever :) but a very long time, takes up considerably less room than freezing. Condensed milk is just boiled, till half the volume is gone, to reconstitue just add half as much water. Sweetened condensed milk is exactly the same with sugar added. In fact sugar, milk, vanilia, and baking soda boiled down till thick and brown is Mexican carmel topping called Cajeta. Now as for drying, everyone who has tried has had horrid results, sounds like a commercial process to me. The best way to keep milk is to make stuff with it cheese, cajeta, fudge (in fact I just finished pigging out on a pound of Bernice's fudge she makes! Yummy!), this condenses the milk down the most! Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), February 11, 2002.

Ok I should visit WHAT dairy goat sites? Vickie you know me well enough to know, if I'm asking I'm Tres stupid on the subject.

-- Ross (amulet@istar.ca), February 11, 2002.

Awwwww...... thanks Vicki for the compliments about the fudge. I was going to e-mail you to ask if you had finally gotten it. hubby shipped it for me so I hope he packed it OK.

As Vicki mentioned, check out the other lists that are discussing it. You can make powdered milk, but the results aren't that great. I will try to send you a recipie for it before i got ot bed.

-- Bernice (geminigoats@yahoo.com), February 11, 2002.

Ross,

If you want to store that milk without refrigeration then your only really alternative is to pressure can it. Boiling water bath canning liquid milk will NOT do. The problem is that there aren't any directions on how to do this that are approved by the canning authorities of the USDA or the state cooperative extension services. Nevertheless, people do pressure can milk and it seems to work fine. You'll get some color change in the milk and the flavor will naturally taste of cooked milk but once processed it'll keep for several years in the ubiquitous cool dark place.

Pressure can as you would thick soup or stew and you'll be good to go. The resulting product works best in cooking, never cared much for it to drink.

............Alan.

-- Alan (athagan@atlantic.net), February 11, 2002.

fill quart jars to within 1/2 inch of the top. Boiling water bath for one hour.......very little color change and not bad flavor. Done it for years..........keeps about one year (at least for my consumption I have fed it to my goat kids after the year has passed.) I really don't like it for plain drinking, but it works fine for cooking. IMO the product dryed is really YUCKY!!!

The dairy goat forum is on this server. Go to the bottom of the new questions list and find the link to "other discussions on this board", click the link and scroll down.......they are listed by alphabet, to dairy goats. Nice board.

-- diane (gardiacaprines@yahoo.com), February 11, 2002.

Yep I am going to croke at any minute for cooking with milk water bathed? Perhaps a nice service with no flowers, I am allergic for both me and Diane? :)

Ross go to Yahoo and get a fake email, or a real one if you like. Then go to groups.yahoo.com and put goat or sheep in the search engine. Some of my favorites are Sheepandgoatrancher Nubian Talk LaMancha Talk homedairygoats and I know there are tons more. Perhaps you can even find a milking sheep list on their, just put it in the search engine. Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), February 12, 2002.

Oh I am a member of the Yahoo groups and the dairy sheep list there. It's a great list but stays on one topic at a time. (which is nice) Never thought to look for goat dairy boards there. thx

-- Ross (amulet@istar.ca), February 12, 2002.

To be clear, there are no LAWS that state how you MUST preserve any sort of food in your home for personal consumption. You can put it up however you choose since you're the one that's going to be eating it.

There is, however, the perception of RISK. The older our nation becomes the more sensitive we become to what we perceive as a risk. Our forefathers (and foremothers in this instance) of the 18th, 19th and even early 20th centuries did a great many things that we'd find to be too hazardous for our tastes today. Of course, everyone's idea of what is an acceptable risk can and sometimes does vary considerably.

The point I'm trying to make in my roundabout way is that uncultured liquid milk is a low-acid food. Low-acid foods are at a higher risk of developing botulism than high-acid foods and are therefore recommended to be pressure canned. Only in a pressure canner can you develop the temperatures needed to reliably kill Clostridium botulinum spores. It's the bacteria that sometimes hatch from these spores that produce the potent neurotoxin which can cause botulism poisoning.

Although C. botulinum spores are supposedly ubiquitous in nature it's actually fairly rare in the U.S. that there is a case of botulism poisoning. This is mostly because there has been so much research done over the decades to develop methods that are known to be safe and in determining what foods can be safely preserved using what methods. Nevertheless, we still see somewhere between 100-150 cases a year that result from a wide range of causes. In most of the cases where a specific cause can be pin pointed they were a result of improper food handling or preservation.

As I said in my first post the folks who research and teach food preservation methods don't recommend canning dairy products at all. In the case of liquid milk I think it's primarily because the resulting product after pressure canning has little appeal and would disappoint many, though if used in cooking it can be perfectly fine. In the case of the more solid dairy products such as cheese there's no way to safely can these foods in the home-setting no matter what canning method you use.

Now, I've tried to spell out the whys and wherefores for any who are interested. Each person will just have to make up their own minds as to what they want to do. Botulism is a pretty rare thing and you can go for many years, maybe even your whole life, and never encounter it. For those unfortunates that do encounter it they'd probably be luckiest if it simply killed them.

.........Alan.

-- Alan (athagan@atlantic.net), February 12, 2002.