Stroage of Condensed Milk

Both condensed milk and evaporated milk are expected to be stored for longer period. Hence conditions should be maintained such that the product should not deteriorate in quality during storage. The room temperature at which the product is stored is one major factor, which will have definite effect on the keeping quality. The present trend is to store both condensed milk and evaporated milk around 10 to 15°C. Very low temperature such as 0°C or below may cause sugar separation in condensed milk leading to a defect called sandiness in the product. The sandiness is due to the presence of very large crystals of lactose. Viscosity of the product also will increase due to low temperature storage. Increase in viscosity may be beneficial up to a certain level, but very high viscosity changes due to low temperature storage may also affect the body and texture characteristics of the product. It has been shown that commercial evaporated milk remains acceptable even after two years when stored below 15°C but deteriorates rapidly when stored at 21°C or above.Humidity of the storage space should also be kept low (below 50%) to check the

spoilage of cans and labels. Periodic inversion of cans in case of evaporated milk during storage will help to minimize fat separation.