Separation of butter into phases with the Quest™ Heated Puck

Find out how the Heated Puck can be used to investigate the separation of butter when heated using ATR Spectroscopy.

Milk is a colloidal mixture of water and fat particles surrounded by a shell of proteins, which stops them from congealing into larger particles. These proteins include lactose and casein and can be quantified by FTIR [1]. Butter is produced by churning milk to break down the protein shell, allowing the fat to coagulate into large butter particles suspended in a buttermilk liquid phase containing the lactose proteins.

The butter phase, (containing other proteins, including casein) is extracted by washing with water and then worked into a solid mass. This solid mass is an emulsion comprised of fat (~80%), water and milk solids. On heating butter to its melting point the emulsion separates into a fat phase on top and a water phase containing the milk solids on the bottom. This process is known as the clarification of butter. Here we investigate this process by heating butter stepwise 5 °C at a time on a Quest™ ATR with a 30 min hold at each temperature.

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