Die kleine Hofmolkerei

Inghild & Manfred Drews 

Production steps

How can you produce the different milk products with the INGA-plant?(For more detailed information and a step-by-step description of the product recipies please read our book "Die kleine Hofmolkerei".

Butter

Instead of using a centrifuge we take advantage of the natural ability of milk to cream. For this purpose 35 litres of milk, which was cooled before down to below 12o C, are filled in the container and afterwards left alone for 12 to 16 hours. Thus we get a semi skimmed milk in the lower part of the container and approximatly 8 litres of cream in the upper part, which we will use for the production of butter. After the cream has been separated from the semi skimmed milk by leaving the semi skimmed milk through the valve at the bottom a sieve will be placed at the bottom position of the container, a common boring machine equiped with a beating-stick fixed at a metal bar. The heating respectivly the cooling will be adjusted accordingly to the fat consistency (17o C at soft fat to 21o C at hard winter fat). Then the cream is beated for approximatly 10 minutes with the beating-stick. The butter grain will be separated from the butter milk by shifting the sieve to top position. Equipment required: container, sieve, metal-bar, beating-stick.

All sorts of cheese

Whole milk or semi skimmed milk from the butter production are filled in the container. Should the cheese not being produced with raw milk it can be pasteurized through thermostat controlled water heating. In this case the milk should be heated from 62 to 65o C for ½ hour. After having cooled down the milk is infected in a first step with the respective culture. In a second step the temperature will be adjusted to prepare the treatment with enzymes. After that rennet is added and the sieve is being placed at the bottom position. The thick milk is cutted with an iron mesh-work and the mixture of wey and curd paticles are both stired for a definite time with the cutter and at a certain temperature according to the different sorts of cheese. The process for soft cheese ends with the opening of the valve and the lifting of the sieve, which is also automatically the mould for the cheese. For the hard cheeses types an additional pressing finishes the process. The raw cheese is taken out of the container, stabilized by a moulding ring outside and salted.
Equipment required: container, sieve, mesh-work, cutter, eventually metal-bar and press.

Joghurt

Milk in quantities of up to 35 litres, wich can contain different degrees of fat, is filled in the container and heated to 85o C, short time afterwards cooled down to 40 to 43o C and infected with a particular joghurt culture. For further procedure it has to be distinguished whether the joghurt should be a more solid nature or a soft and stired joghurt. For the first product the infected milk is filled into small bins or glasses and in the case of huge quantities ripened in a heated cupboard. Smaller quantities of bins do not require a heated cupboard but can ripen directly in the container. In the case of stired joghurt the infected milk is thickened as a total quantity in the Inga-container, cooled down slowly to 20o C over night in the container. The thick joghurt is then stired with the hole stick, filled in small bins and stored in a refrigerator.