Home Distiller

Evening all,

Well, the missus wanted some little lambs for the granddaughters to play with back in the spring, and we started off with a couple of goat wethers. Long story short, my daughter who is raising lambs for meat decided she'd take the full grown lambs in the fall, and we were left with two wethers. So.....gets up to -43 Celcius sometimes here in the winter, and while we have a large barn, having two goat-sicles wasn't a viable option. So it was get rid of them, or get more.

Yeah....uh huh. There's 10 of them now and we have kids on the way for the spring.

So in doing so, I figured as with every hobby it is like the great cartoonist Dave Berry said....."there is a fine line between mental illness and a hobby." Decided if we were getting more, we might as well put the little acreage to use, raise some kids for sale, and if we are weaning kids....then we might as well try some milking. With milk comes cream, and cream comes butter.

So....on to the removing paint. We have a couple of guys in the area who always manage to find the neatest items, and I picked up this fanstastic galvanized butter churn from them for $25 Canadian pesos (about .95 American lol). Only issue is that it was painted at one point in time, but if you don't jump on items for sale from these guys, you lose them....most things are so unique they sell in 30-45 minutes.

I was wondering who might give some advice on the best way to remove the paint from this, and then I thought....I know a huge collection of experts, in ALL sorts of areas. So my long-winded question is....what is the best, and food-safest way, to remove the paint from this? Foreshots? Something else?
I do actually want to use it for making butter, so commercial solvents are a no no for me unless someone knows something food safe.

Appreciate all the experience and advice from you all,
Dunluce.

Nice score. I don't see anything that looks like paint on the inside, the outside doesn't matter.

If the milk isn't too 'goaty', ash cheese is quick to mature and looks great on a cheese board.

If that is paint on the interior, I'd look into a paint stripper, sand blasting (media blasting) or grinding.

I don't think galvanized steel is considered food safe to begin with though. Do you intend to remove the galvanizing too?

There are lots of options for NSF food safe coatings, I would coat the interior rather than leave an exposed galvanized surface.

NZChris wrote: ↑Sun Dec 10, 2023 10:25 pm Nice score. I don't see anything that looks like paint on the inside, the outside doesn't matter.

If the milk isn't too 'goaty', ash cheese is quick to mature and looks great on a cheese board.

Thanks.....ash cheese....never heard of it, but it looks interesting!

Salt Must Flow wrote: ↑Sun Dec 10, 2023 10:48 pm If that is paint on the interior, I'd look into a paint stripper, sand blasting (media blasting) or grinding.

I don't think galvanized steel is considered food safe to begin with though. Do you intend to remove the galvanizing too?

It's hard to say, but zinc is mostly food safe, unless you are using an acidic substance. And seeing as it is milk, there shouldn't be an issue with that, unless you possibly left buttermilk with a pH of around 4.6 in there for a while. So no, the galvanizing will stay.

quadra wrote: ↑Sun Dec 10, 2023 11:08 pm There are lots of options for NSF food safe coatings, I would coat the interior rather than leave an exposed galvanized surface.

Likewise, I think the galvanization is fine. But if I'm wrong, please correct me. Thanks for any and all advice!

Have you got a separator?

I recently watched a doco in which a rural UK family made butter from cows milk without using a separator, just using the 'top milk'. It took their kids hours to churn it into butter, much longer than it took my kids to make butter from separated cream at 40% fat. I doubt using goat 'top milk' would be much different.

Modern zinc is not a problem aside from acidity, but old galvanizing zinc can contain impurities like lead and cadmium. The other advantage of a foodsafe paint is crevice sealing on those pinch seams and a nice easy to clean surface.
Chris, refrigeration works a charm for low tech seperation, I did just read that goat milk takes an extra day to separate well. As a kid we lived in a semi rural town for a few years and had a friend who would drop off gallon jars of fresh milk a couple times a week, in the winter on weekends it was cool enough that by the time we boys had breakfast there was a clear stratification and that cream layer almost made wheatabix taste good! the bottom layer was still far better than any store bought milk and to be honest it ruined us for commercial milk when we moved back to the city.

Also.. as an aside they leftover whey can be used for all kinds of interesting things including, making spirits, fermented foods and sauces, ricotta and mysost cheese..

Galvanized metal is nogo for food as far as I've been told. Totally paint it with a heavy duty protective enamel paint id say.

Ss for removal...scraper, solvents, sanders, strippers