Production and Processing

High quality dairy foods start with high quality raw milk. Dairy foods processors use cow, goat, and sheep milk to produce fluid milk products, cheese, yogurt and other cultured dairy products, ice cream and frozen desserts, butter, and other products. Each of these product categories has its own unique processing and quality attributes. Whether you are an existing dairy foods processor or a farmer or entrepreneur looking to start a value-added dairy foods business, understanding the nuances of processing your products will help you create high quality products. This section of the Extension website contains tools to help you monitor raw milk quality and manufacture high quality dairy foods.

Milk Quality

Making quality dairy products starts with producing high quality raw milk on the farm and being attentive to handling practices and quality influences all the way through to the finished product. Raw milk quality encompasses bacterial and somatic cell counts, milk composition, and flavor. Milk is a biological fluid that varies with species, breed, feed, and other factors. Understanding the normal variation in milk components, such as protein and fat, is an important aspect of milk quality and making consistent dairy products. The sensory evaluation of milk can help troubleshoot flavor and quality problems in milk and dairy products.

Dairy Product Processing

Processing different dairy products can be as diverse as the products themselves. A processor should know what they want to manufacture before setting up their facility to ensure that they have the correct equipment and rooms to make their product line. For instance, a processor making ice cream will need to have a large freezer capacity that a fluid milk processor does not need. A cheesemaker that makes pasteurized Cheddar cheese needs a storage cooler, whereas someone making a raw milk Cheddar cheese will also need an aging room with correct temperature and humidity controls.

If you are just starting out making value-added dairy products, these introductory videos and fact sheets will help you understand the basics of making fluid milk products, cheese, ice cream, and cultured products.

Processors need to be aware of any product-specific regulations that pertain to their products, which may include compositional or manufacturing requirements.

To help make high quality products, it is important to understand the link between raw milk quality parameters, variation in manufacturing procedures, and the quality attributes of the finished product. Penn State Extension has developed tools for small-scale cheesemakers to track manufacturing and attributes, and these tools can easily be applied to other dairy products.

Developing and implementing an in-house sensory evaluation program can help to track quality parameters in your products and help troubleshoot problems. Penn State Extension has developed a guide for setting up a sensory evaluation program for small-scale cheesemakers, and this guide can be applied to other dairy products by adapting the appearance, body and texture, and flavor attributes as appropriate for the product.