Foods and beverages: apparatus – Mechanical – fluid or heat treatment of dairy food – With temperature or atmosphere modification
Patent
1985-11-06
1988-07-12
Simone, Timothy F.
Foods and beverages: apparatus
Mechanical, fluid or heat treatment of dairy food
With temperature or atmosphere modification
99452, 99458, A23C 1902
Patent
active
047562439
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
This invention relates to a process and apparatus for manufacturing cheese curd substantially continuously and is particularly concerned with the manufacture of cheese curd from rennet-coagulated retentate during the production of hard cheese.
The term "milk" includes, among others, whole milk, low fat milk (part-skim milk), skim milk, reconstituted milk, recombined milk, and whole milk whose composition has been adjusted and similar such materials but is not limited thereto.
The term "retentate" refers to a concentrate of milk obtained by the partial removal from milk of water and water-soluble milk components of low molecular weight, notably lactose and mineral components. The production of retentate is conveniently carried out by a pressure-driven membrane filtration process, for example ultrafiltration (UF).
The term "ripened retentate" usually means retentate in which growth and acid production by lactic acid cheese starter bacteria has proceeded sufficiently to meet requirements of later steps of the process.
BACKGROUND ART
The manufacture of cheese from milk concentrated by ultrafiltration (UF) is a radical innovation in cheesemaking which has been introduced to increase the yield of cheese. The increase in yield is largely due to incorporation into the cheese of soluble proteins, principally .alpha.-lactalbumin and .beta.-lactoglobulin. In conventional cheesemaking, these proteins are almost totally lost in the whey.
Historically, cheesemaking processes based on UF were first applied to the manufacture of soft, high-moisture cheeses. The well-known process by which soft cheeses are manufactured from retentate is based on the concentration of whole or skim milk by UF, with the addition of high-fat cream in the latter case, to yield a product ("pre-cheese") containing about 60% moisture and having a gross composition similar to that of the desired cheese. Coagulation and fermentation of the pre-cheese affords the finished cheese directly, with little or no whey drainage or loss of whey proteins. The rennet requirement is reduced by approximately 80%.
The manufacture of hard cheese from retentate presents difficulties much greater than those encountered in the manufacture of soft cheeses. These difficulties derive from the requirements of (i) removing more water from the retentate (typically 60% of moisture in 5:1 concentrated retentate) in hard cheese manufacture than is necessary in soft cheese manufacture in order to achieve the desired composition, while (ii) retaining the sensory attributes of the cheese variety and (iii) simultaneously achieving a sufficiently high yield increase to justify introducing the UF-based process.
Early attempts to develop manufacturing procedures for hard cheeses based on syneresis of rennet-coagulated retentate were characterized by substantial losses of fat and curd fines in the whey, excessive cheese moisture levels, and by poor cheese quality. More significantly, the cheese yield was increased little, if at all.
The difficulties with these early hard cheese manufacturing procedures were overcome and the basic requirements of a process for manufacturing hard cheese of acceptable quality and with satisfactory yield were established.
However, some of the steps and/or operations in this process had to be effected in a batch or semi-continuous fashion since no suitable apparatus was available for continuous processing, especially continuous coagulation.
One attempt at providing a simple apparatus for continuous production of coagulum from retentate is a single tube, continuously fed with a mixture of rennet and ripened retentate, and in which liquid movement takes place as plug flow. Devices based on these principles have been described (e.g. Grosclaude et al, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,131,688 and 4,224,865). However, experience with a coagulation apparatus of this type showed it to be totally unsatisfactory in practice. Initially, the tube contained a zone of liquid ripened rennetted retentate, a zone in which coagulation was taking place, and a zone filled with coagulum. A
REFERENCES:
patent: 4224865 (1980-09-01), Grosclaude et al.
"Disclosure of the Basic Principles of the Multitube Process for the Continuous Production of Curd Pieces," Schulz, M. E. et al., Milchwissenschaft, 24, 74 (1969).
Freeman Norman H.
Jameson Graeme W.
Radford David R.
Sutherland Brian J.
van Leeuwen Hendrikus J.
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization
Simone Timothy F.
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