aciditycanningfood-preservationmilk
Based on online reading, it seems like decreasing PH to < 4.5 is the way to reduce spore-former activity.
Is it possible to decrease the pH of milk without significantly affecting its taste and not letting it curdle?
I have thought about using an emulsifier to potentially prevent curdling, and am thinking about various kinds of acid (gluconic/lactic) that may be less strong in taste than citric. Any suggestions?
If you want to shelf store the cooked legumes in plastic, you need to buy boilable pouches
They are a great space saver, and somewhat environmentally friendly as the oil/energy required to make one glass preserving jar can make 50 to 100 of these bags. And how many preserving jars survive 50 times without breaking!
You will find plenty of sources on the Internet, typical prices $50 to $200 per 1000
The process varies from each bag supplier and vacuum system, but is similar to normal home preserving
If you get the foil lined (light proof) pouches they will preserve food for many years
Example suppliers caspak pacrite
This process is popular in NZ and AU, but as I have just discovered, not so in the USA? So it maybe easier to order from here
The energy, weight, and space saving of plastic pouches is significant
I'd never heard of ESL until your question, so I had to look that up. A local company did a lot of work developing UHT milk; I remember samples when they were first starting up production, and they were trying to find flavors additives which would mask the flavor change from the UHT processing. Since then a lot of companies have adopted the processing methods for other products, or just adopted the packaging. So, before I relied on any random box-packed product to be shelf stable, I'd check into how it was produced.
Proper UHT milk doesn't go bad until it's opened. It's sterile, and in a pretty sturdy container. Once opened, bacteria will get back into the container, and the milk will go bad as normal. When the local company started production of UHT milk, they were putting 2 year code dates on packages, and that was just the longest date the government would allow; I've had boxes 3-4 years old, which were fine.
Best Answer
The major protein in cow's milk, casein precipitates at pH 4.6. It matters very little which acid you use to get to 4.6, casein will still precipitate. pH 4.6 is about the same acidity as canned beets, a food not known for its tartness, so you won't achieve a very sour flavor before things start curding up on you. Adding emulsifiers could help some with the isoelectric precipitation, but emulsifiers have flavors too, and you'll have to add them at a not insignificant fraction of the protein (casein) concentration.
For shelf stable chocolate milk, I'd go with a mix of powdered milk and cocoa powder; just add water. All the storebought room temp chocolate milk products I've seen are ultrapasturized or similar.