Patent for dairy starter culture delivery system

Danish food ingredients company Christian Hansen has received a new patent for a delivery system for the introduction of a starter culture directly into a dairy process line.

The system is comprised of a sealed enclosure with outlet means for connecting the enclosure to the process line, the sealed enclosure containing the starter culture and/or milk clotting enzyme. The system can be used to introduce a dairy starter culture directly into a closed dairy process line without risk of contamination.

Principal features of the system are as follows: providing a microbial starter culture as a culture concentrate in a sealed enclosure which is provided with outlet means for connecting the enclosure to a dairy process line; combining the microbial starter culture with an aqueous medium to obtain a stable aqueous suspension of the microbial starter culture; combining, without any intermediate transfer or propagation, said stable starter culture suspension with milk in the dairy process line; optionally keeping the inoculated milk under starter culture fermenting conditions to obtain the dairy product.

The patent is registered under patent number: 6335040.