This month we are looking at milk cooling techniques in 1940. To start with, this is a milk cooler.

Water passed through the inside and the milk flowed over the plate on the outside cooling the milk.

It was only capable of cooling the milk down to the temperature of the water.

These pictures show the cooler in action and the final one is of part of an old cooler lying around at Norcroft.

Our modern plate cooler in our dairy works on a similar principal but unlike the 1940 version the milk and water are in a sealed unit preventing any contamination occurring.

The water entry is controlled by this valve (left) and the milk is filtered prior to cooling.

 

 

The water is collected and recycled for cleaning the milking parlor.

This is now only a “pre-cooler” as the milk vat’s ice bank (right) can cool the milk down to around 2 degrees Celsius.

Excluding an electricity failure our milk vat keeps the milk cool however in 1940 the milk could be stood waiting collection in the hot sun meaning it could be nearly going sour by the time it arrived at the dairy company this often led to them rejecting the milk.

We have now covered a year in the 1940’s and we do have a more limited footage of the 1950’s so I intend to continue wherever we have some comparisons to make.

I hope you have enjoyed this section over the last 12 months.

PHIL.

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