Just got my new Plava-2 cream seperator and I am anxious to try it out. Figure it will take me 5 hours to figure out those instructions!

For those of you already using a seperator, I have a few questions.

1. Can I freeze the milk and then process the defrosted milk or will the freezing process ruin the cream for making butter?

2. The instructions say the milk needs to be at 98 - 100 degrees to work - does this mean I can only process my fresh warm milk after milking or I have to heat it slightly?

3. What if I froze the fresh cream and then saved it up for butter making later when I had a larger batch?

I only have about 2 gallons of milk a day to process so I was hoping to save up about 6 gallons, process that and then make my butter. Any suggestions would be great.

-- Tiffani (cappello@alltel.net), April 06, 2002

Answers

Tiffani, 1. I really don't know if freezing the milk will have an effect on the cream, what about keeping the evening milk in a cool place overnight then separating it along with the fresh milk in the morning?

2. Yes, warm milk will separate better. If you have cold milk and are really only interested in the cream it may be practical to warm the milk by adding hot (but not boiling) water to the milk.

You can pre-warm the machine by running a gallon or so of hot water through before you put the milk in.

3. I doubt it is necessary to freeze the fresh cream, just keep it cool and you should be able to go several days. When I was a kid we just added the new cream in on top of the previous lots, I cant remember how many days went together but at least 3 or so.

My experience has only been with cows milk but maybe only two gallons a day is goats?

-- john hill (john@cnd.co.nz), April 07, 2002.

Tiffany, We bought a Plava II also. The milk must be warm to provide the best seperation. We have only used ours a few times with fresh milk. I have found the directions to be very vague and reassembly after cleaning takes practice. The setting of the allen screw adjusts the amount of cream seperated but find the setting only so effective. If you want thicker cream, seperate the thinner cream again. Also cranking fast enough helps too. Lots of variables to try to get right.Let me know if you discover any more tricks to operate the seperator.

-- Tom (tomdarsavy@cs.com), April 09, 2002.