DEVELOPMENTS IN DAIRY APPLIANCES.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1715, 11 January 1905, Page 67

DEVELOPMENTS IN DAIRY APPLIANCES.

(By Primrose McConnell, B-Sc., F.G.S.) The exhibition of machinery for handling and manipulating milk and its products at the- recent annual Dairy Show of the British Dairy Farmers’ Association, held at Islington, would o-pen the eyes of some of our onossto-rs if' they could see them. The first great step in advance in modern times was the invention of the CREAM SEPARATOR, brought out by Laval, a Swede, and first exhibited in this country at the Ivilburn “Royal” in 1879. In the interval of time that has elapsed since then, the .separator has been highly developed, and its power of extracting cream fromj milk almost brought up to perfection. One can now have a choice from, a Sharpies separator, with a long tubular bowl without any inside plates, to a “link-blade” separator, where the bowl plates are all hinged together into one piece, and which is easily washed in a bucket or hot water without taking topieces. It was found that the separation was much helped by dividing up the milk in the bowl into thin sheets between -steel plates fit tied into the same, while on the other hand the use of a. tubular bowl, in which the milk flowed; in a thin sheet through the “tube,” while rotating at a high speed, had the same effect, as thus the so-called centrifugal force was allowed prolonged action on the same. REFRIGERATORS. One of the first discoveries in connection with the preservation of food stuffs was the effects of cold on the same inpreventing or retarding putrefaction. We now know that such changes are due to the action of microbes of various kinds, and that cold, so to speak, chills them and makes them keep quiet. The adoption of the ordinary water refrigerator in the ne;v milk trade is now ancient history, and for nearly a generation we have been using the “capillary” refrigerator, in which cold well water runs up between two thin corrugated tinned copper sheets and the warm milk runs down the outside of the same—, using about three gallons of water to one of milk, and if possible getting the temperature down to under GO degrees F. This process also aerates the milk and removes the cowy flavour. But refrigeration has passed a long way beyond tliis stage now, for factories, or where milk is handed in quantity, an extensive and elaborate machinery is used for cooling milk and its products, and for the cold storage of the same. One of the best forms of this, which is even used on an ordinary farm scale, is\ that where a mixture of ice, salt, and,/' washing soda is used, by which a brine ' is produced that reduces the temperar ture to zero or even under it. The ; beauty of this system is that there :

absolutely no machinery about it. Fur storage purposes a tank is attached to an insulated chamber, while for o-din-ary farm purposes the brine at this excessively low temperature is passed through the refrigerator while the milk flows over, thus easily and with a comparatively small quantity of cooling mixture reducing the milk to, say, ft 1 degrees F.

r PASTEURISING AND STERILISING , APPARATUS. 5 The preparation of milk so as to make , it keep for a length of time in bottles t. is quite a large industry in some places, { and manufacturers vie with one another ’ in bringing out sets of apparatus for* * the work, and now small ones can be) ■ obtained suitable for use under ordinary ■ farming conditions. Pasteurising sists in raising the temperature, of the milk to about 180 degrees F. or even more with some sets, for a short time, so as to kill all the active bacteria. s TV lien bottled up in this state it wiljj keep for some time, and sets of apparatus are now made to hold as little as | twelve one-pint bottles at one operation, ' and to sit on a common stove, and as 1 the water may be brought up to> the 1 boiling point and kept there, complete “sterilisation” may also be brought about. CHEESiE MAKING UTENSILS. The last thirty years have seen a good many advances even in the common apparatus for making cheese. For in- , stance, the jacket-tod vat is n>w almost universal, by which the cu/d in the whey is “scalded,” either by the admission of steam or hot water to the jacket, thus eliminating the old cumbrous way of drawing off some whey, heating up the same in a copper or boiler, and returning it to the bulk. For a small set the old way does well enough yet, but for ordinary or extensive work the jacketted set is a vast help. The American curd knives are the only other item the writer can think of as a j recent advance in cheese utensils. These / knives—really frames containing sets of horizonal or vertical blades—have been in use a long time now —but they were a great saving of labour in cutting up '-.lie curd when first introduced. In butter making there have been vast improvements within the last generation also, not merely in the manner of manipulating the butter, but in the utensils to d > it with. The churn with the internal “breakers/’ or diaphragm, is almas) a th : ng ( f ihe past, and a plain open barrel m be to evolve end-over-end has U'ke-.i b s place, even on a pretty large scale in fac.oric ,; . Wo must never touch

tli© "butter with our hands nowadays, so the "butter-worker was brought out—both for hand and power, and now, after churning and washing in # the churn, the water is squeezed out and the butter worked up to the proper consistency on this, and the old cumbrous and tiring process of beating or clapping the butter done away with. These butter-workers can now be had from little ones which fit on to the side of a shelf up to huge steam driven circular ones. The part which sieves or strainers play in the manipulation of milk must not be lost sight of. An efficient milk-filter or even a strainer is not yet invented, hut the new ones are much improved from the old. Perhaps one of the best, consistent with, cost and convenience of work, is that in which on the wire gauze of a common sieve a film of cotton-wool is laid down. These films are cheap, and a fresh one is used every time, while there is no doubt they most effectually remove all dirt and even the finest impurities—possibly even the microbes themselves. On the other band, it chokes up readily, the - least * Thickness” in the milk clogging it up. MOTORS. The connection of motors with dairying is not at once apparent, but it will be an accomplished fact in the new' - milk trade before very long. The recent Dairy Show contained one of the first attempts the writer has seen to carry out an idea he has long held —viz., that a motor vehicle will call round at the farms, pick up the churns of milk, and take them any distance up to fifty miles, and deliver at the shop doors. By this means farms lying out from the railways a little can be very efficiently served. At present any farm beyond two miles from a station has a difficulty in delivering its milk at; the same, hut that difficulty will disappear when a motor-van turns up at the dairy every day and takes it off straight up to town independent of rails. There is a big loss <of trade in store for the railways in the •milk trade, and no one in this trade will be sorry, but will look on it as a just retribution. Five out of six of the railway companies of the country have done their level best to choke off farming by

their unfair charges, and have been - specially oppressive to the new milk trade, hut the end of this evil is within sight. The proper motor is not yet on the market, for one to carry, say, three tons, at twelve miles or so per hour, is

desirable, but we are getting on that way, and one to carry over a ton of

milk is now an accomplished fact.— “Dairy.”