Cold Storage for Milk and Dairy Products

Milk and dairy products are among the foods whose shelf life can be extended by storing them in a cold storage. Milk and dairy products should normally are consumed within a few weeks. However, with the use of cold storage, the life of foods such as milk, yoghurt and cheese can be increased up to a few months.

Milk and dairy products are products with a short shelf life that must be stored in a cold storage. For this reason, animal foods such as milk, cheese and yoghurt should be cooled as soon as possible after their production.

How Should Milk and Dairy Products be Stored in the Cold Storage?

Milk and dairy products have a very short shelf life as they are very inclined to spoilage. For this reason, the processes should be carried out much faster after milking and the product should be put in the cold storage as soon as possible.

Various microorganisms contaminating milk from outside spoil the natural structure of milk or cause various difficulties in processing products such as cheese and yoghurt. Since it is not possible to prevent contamination of dairy products with microorganisms from the outside, these products must be processed and stored as soon as possible.

Milk should be stored as short as possible immediately after milking and its interaction with the outside environment should be stopped. The best possible storage conditions are below 10 ° C. Thus, the activities of bacteria in milk are reduced to a minimum.

It is also of great importance that the milk starts to be processed within 24 hours at the latest after milking. Milk, whose temperature is lowered to 10 ° C, gets harder to process as time passes. With each passing hour, during the conversion of milk to cheese, whey gets harder to come out and the effect of rennet decreases, so the formation time of cheese is prolonged. In order to reduce these effects, CaCl2 can be added to milk.

At What ° C should milk and dairy products be stored in cold storage?

  • Storing sterilized milk (drinking milk) at 4-10 ° C extends its life considerably. The storage life of milk stored in cold storage at 15-20 ° C varies between 1.5 and 3 months.
  • Yoghurt has different storage conditions and storage life. Yoghurt can be stored for about 1 week at 7-10 ° C, 1-2 weeks at 5-7 ° C and 3-6 weeks at 0-1 ° C.
  • The condensed milk products can be stored in cold stores at 15 ° C and below for up to 2-3 years. If stored at temperatures above 15 ° C, gelation and clumping is seen in the product.

The maximum storage life of the cheese varies according to the type of cheese. However, if we interpret it in general, cheese stored at 5 ° C can be stored for approximately 1-12 months, while the storage life of cheese stored at temperatures around 15 ° C varies between 3 weeks and 9 months.

Cold Storage for Milk and Dairy Products