By Whitney Baxter
The new combo batch pasteurizer/cheese vat is up and running at the Iowa State University Creamery, just in time for peak ice cream season.
The purchase of the pasteurizer was made possible by a Choose Iowa Dairy Innovation Grant the Creamery was awarded last year, which provided half of the funding for the $50,000 vat. The rest of the funding came from Iowa State’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
A perk of the new pasteurizer is it can produce more ice cream and cheese than the equipment the Creamery had been using – 200 gallons of ice cream per week versus 150 gallons, and 113 pounds of cheese per run versus 68 pounds.
Danielle Christofferson, Creamery production manager, said they often run out of the more popular ice cream flavors, such as Marston Mash and ChampionCHIP Kyven Dough, during the summer months.
“This new vat with its increase in size will help us keep those in stock more so everyone can get their favorite ice cream,” Christofferson said.
The new pasteurizer also reduces the amount of manual labor required, especially on the cheese-making side. Students used to cut the cheese curds by hand, doing their best to keep them all the same size. Now, the pasteurizer handles that.
“I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to cut the same thing over and over again and have it be the exact same size, but it doesn’t ever really happen,” Christofferson said. “So being able to use the pasteurizer to cut them consistently will help us maintain the ideal three-quarter inch cheese cubes.”
Sarah Canova, Creamery business manager, said 25 undergraduate students operate the Creamery under her and Christofferson’s leadership, aligning with the Creamery’s mission of educating and engaging students in experiential learning. The pasteurizer exposes student employees to modern cheese technology, similar to what they will see in industry positions.
“I’m really excited for them to be able to see how to make cheese with equipment that is fully functioning with better temperature control,” Canova said. “The students will be able to learn this piece of equipment, learn the settings that it needs and see how, just with better temperature control, we can have a better product at the end.”
Source : iastate.edu