Powdered Milk

[mikaelkerensky]

Title says it all, relatively non-perishable milk substitute. Just add water and you're good to go. Search function for the forums doesn't work on my phone, so if this topic has already come up please direct me to it so i can like it.

[OnewiththeGun]

Yeah there are a lot of non perishable food items that could be added. For example where is the spam? 

[GoldenBullet]

I will be happy when i can eat a bowl of cereal. Nothing to do with my milk at the moment

[Kajin]

I wonder how one goes about actually making powdered milk? Different types of animals are planned on being added in the future and we might have need of a way to store quantities of milk for long durations of time. Would certainly be helpful to turn cow or goat milk into powdered to help preserve it.

[OnewiththeGun]

Making powdered milk is a fairly complicated industrial process from what I understand.

[Kajin]

I'm looking it up and, while complicated, I don't think it's entirely out of the question to be able to make some kind of machine that could do it. You'd just need some kind of air tight drum, some kind of vacuum pump, a spray nozzle, and some way to heat the various chambers to a controlled 135 degrees Fahrenheit.

 

I do believe it can be done by someone with a decent mechanical skill and the right parts to jury rig together a machine capable of doing it. The process for drying milk into a powdered form was created all the way back in the 1830's, I'm pretty sure you can harvest the technology for it from the remains of the modern world.

[Realmkeeper]

Yeah there are a lot of non perishable food items that could be added. For example where is the spam?

In the Kitchen.

(Some of you older timers will get the joke)

[Suomiboi]

Yeah there are a lot of non perishable food items that could be added. For example where is the spam?

In the Kitchen.

(Some of you older timers will get the joke)

Offtopic

I love kittens!

[mikaelkerensky]

Yeah there are a lot of non perishable food items that could be added. For example where is the spam?

In the Kitchen.

(Some of you older timers will get the joke)

Not an old timer, but I've been ghosting the forums long enough to know... Now I'm off to find the dragon!

[Valdee]

You evaporise water from milk to thicken it, then you have hot rollers to press it and a kinda long metal sheet as a knife, scratching milk powder off the rollers... complicated   what about condensed milk in tin cans? theres plenty of these in markets?

[Sieben]

You evaporise water from milk to thicken it, then you have hot rollers to press it and a kinda long metal sheet as a knife, scratching milk powder off the rollers... complicated   what about condensed milk in tin cans? theres plenty of these in markets?

 

Condensed milk and/ or coffee white would be a good addition. No need to craft it, just loot like coffee, sugar, flour and tea bags.

[Kajin]

Yeah, making powdered milk would be complicated, but like I said the technology to make it was developed all the way back in the freaking 1830's, I'm pretty sure we'd be able to build something like that from the looted remains of a modern civilization.

[ApolloDiaspora]

Depending on how clean you can make something (I'm thinking alcohol, bleach and a LOT of hot steam), it might be possible for you to make your own UHT milk and store it in sterilised, air-tight jars. Or make fermented milk drinks like the Mongols. If they could do it inside yak skins, I'm sure clean, airtight containers would do the job a hell of a lot better.

[Kajin]

Mason jars will be the currency of the apocalypse. If you've got a bunch of those plus a pressure cooker (you can buy a really simple one at wally world for twenty bucks) you can put just about anything into long term storage. The only real problem is that milk doesn't cook very well, and would lose a fair amount of nutrition and flavor in the process. But despite there being a bit of quality decrease, being able to store milk for a long time without refrigeration would be a HUGE benefit. Heck, I didn't even know you could store milk without refrigeration until I looked up UHT Processing.

 

And if sugar producing crops are added, you could add some sugar to the milk while canning it to make it almost impossible for it to spoil, extending shelf life even further.

[OnewiththeGun]

I'll play devils advocate. Would it be worth all the trouble of condensing or powdering the milk instead of just consuming it as the animal produces it?

[Kajin]

A single goat produces 3 quarts of milk a day and a single cow produces 24 quarts of milk a day. That is waaaay more than one person can drink. And if you have one of those animals, you'll probably try and get several of them for breeding. So unless your group is huge enough to consume all the milk being produced daily as you get it, you're gonna have excess. Better to store that excess for a rainy day or for trade than it is to just let it go to waste.

[Scyoni]

Also generally speaking you would want to have more of everything stored for the winter months. Apparently you can still farm in Winter wherever in the states PZ is located (or at least in the game) but when it's colder and more difficult to get produce you want to make sure one bad harvest isn't the end of you Enter whatever else you can find - including milk.

[OnewiththeGun]

Honestly you shouldn't be able to grow all that much in Kentucky during the winter. They usually get a pretty good frost starting in early November and ending late February. I have a feeling they will change the year round farming once we see things like canning salting and smoking introduced.

[Kajin]

Honestly you shouldn't be able to grow all that much in Kentucky during the winter. They usually get a pretty good frost starting in early November and ending late February. I have a feeling they will change the year round farming once we see things like canning salting and smoking introduced.

Yeah, the winters here aren't too awful bad but you won't be growing anything during them. I figure the devs will start doubling down on winter difficulty once enough features have been added that'll prevent a player's untimely demise so long as they prep for it in advance. Warm clothing. Maybe a wood burning stove for indoor cooking and house warming. Food preservation. Really, if you've done everything right and stored back enough food for the winter (like jars full of powdered, sweetened, or ultra pasteurized milk to keep this relevant to the thread) your biggest concern would probably be the zombies and boredom.

[Realmkeeper]

Heck, I didn't even know you could store milk without refrigeration until I looked up UHT Processing.

Really?

You've never seen those cardboard boxes of 'long-life' milk on the supermarket shelves, and wondered "What the heck is that stuff?"

[Kajin]

The stores I go to have powdered milk and condensed sweetened milk but that stuff is evaporated, canned, and full of sugar to keep it from going bad. This is just regular milk. No additives. No condensed evaporation. No anything. I always just figured that it was impossible.

 

I guess UHT Processed Milk just isn't very popular where I live, cause I've never seen non-refrigerated milk that wasn't condensed or sweetened.

[Psycho0124]

Yeah, if you've got critters producing milk, you've already got a solution on hand. Preserving milk is a problem we solved ~7,500 years ago.

Slaughter a calf to collect rennet (you're stealing its milk anyway right?), add rennet  to milk, strain and squeeze curd, add salt and Voilà! Your cheese can last for months. The Grana Padano Riserva in my fridge was made almost two years ago (and tastes incredible)!

[OnewiththeGun]

Boxed milk is not all that common in the states. The exception might be nasty old soy milk. Since when do beans lactate?

[mikaelkerensky]

Topic kinda spiraled out of control Like all the ideas though.

[Kajin]

Yeah, if you've got critters producing milk, you've already got a solution on hand. Preserving milk is a problem we solved ~7,500 years ago.

Slaughter a calf to collect rennet (you're stealing its milk anyway right?), add rennet  to milk, strain and squeeze curd, add salt and Voilà! Your cheese can last for months. The Grana Padano Riserva in my fridge was made almost two years ago (and tastes incredible)!

Cheese would certainly be good to have... In fact it might be a good idea to also turn some excess milk into butter as well. But I think it would still be a good idea prepare milk for long term storage than it would be to just turn all of it into cheese and butter. That way you'd have more versatility in food sources.