Emulsion Paint Crystalised

[mike.peppert]

Our house was painted less than 3 months ago with Dulux Trade Diamond finish paint. I had cause to do a bit of touching up this week, (oh- er!), and the remaining paint, (approx quarter tin), had kind of crystalised and gone gritty, (grains of sugar sized lumps) The paint has been stored out in the shed, and so possibly been exposed to sub-zero temperatures - could that be the reason? [it wasn't still frozen now] I managed to knead a few gritty lumps into just enough paint to smear over my damaged paintwork, but wondered if anyone had come across this before? Mike

[Stuart Noble]

Once an emulsion freezes, it's buggered. Milk for example

[Bob Minchin]

Stuart,

I don't disagree on your statement about the paint but why is milk an example? I buy our milk in bulk and freeze it every week - have done for years and is is fine when thawed, no separation etc.

Bob

[Stuart Noble]

Yes, the cold weather must be doing my head in. I was thinking of what happens in reverse where the curdling process is irreversible once the emulsion is broken. If I wasn't already wearing it, I'd get me coat

[mike.peppert]

Well I suppose at least it gives me a good excuse to free up a couple of desparately needed shelves in the shed!

[RMD]

If you buy 'homogenised' milk (be it full cream, semi or fully skimmed) you can freeze for storage and it will defrost with no problems. Ordinary pasteurised (the milk in which the cream rises to the top) will separate and be unuseable. Most supermarket milk in the plastic bottles is ok to freeze....but check the label for the 'h' word!

Richard

[Huge]

Virtually all milk is homogenized these days. Once the Government introduced regulations specifying minimum fat content, the dairies all started processing the milk down to that level. I haven't seen unhomogenzed milk (the type where the cream rises to the top) for years. Decades, even.

[chris French]

In message , Huge writes

It's still around, but usually as the more specialised stuff, such as Channel Islands milk etc.

[Rod]

I thought that I had read something about homogenised milk keeping better? And that was one of the reasons supermarket milk always seemed to last longer.