3 replies to this topic

[pghosh]

We receive and store blocks of unsalted butter in a cooler. We need the temperature of the butter to go up to approximately 65F prior to processing. 

 

Is there an acceptable way to temper butter? Your help will be greatly appreciated. 

 

Thank you.

 

Piki

[Gerard H.]

Dear Piki,

 

Butter is a very difficult product. In the ideal situation you should have a dedicated room for such an activity. It would be a good idea, that in this room, once the butter has been entered, the room temperature increases gradually from the chiller temperature toward the 65°F. That avoids condensation on the outside of the product (which may cause the forming of moulds).

 

With that, you need to implement good practices to avoid rancidity (caused by oxidation) of the butter.

 

I hope your company is able to invest in such a dedicated room, but in my opinion you will benefit a lot of a controlled tempering process and from the fact that the room is dedicated for the butter.

 

Kind regards,

 

Gerard Heerkens

[GrumpyJimmy]

We receive and store blocks of unsalted butter in a cooler. We need the temperature of the butter to go up to approximately 65F prior to processing. 

 

Is there an acceptable way to temper butter? Your help will be greatly appreciated. 

 

Thank you.

 

Piki

Piki Hi

 

Just a quick one to add, some retailers have their own rules on how long you are allowed to keep butter while/once tempered so always a good one to check up on as i have been caught out once before here in the UK

 

Jimmy

[Ryan M.]

Depends on...your processing (is it a kill step?) and the condition of the room you are tempering the butter within.  In a former life we used bulk 25 KG blocks of butter and tempered them at ambient up to 2 days.  We conducted a risk assessment with this technique monitoring microbiological load over the 2 days at worst case conditions (ambient temperatures in our storage areas got up to 90 degrees F).  We found the worst case microbial load was less than 3 logs of growth over that time period.

 

Alternatively you can use a "hot box" to temper the butter where you control the temperature of the storage or tempering.