The Chilling Experiment.

Opunake Times, Volume II, Issue 88, 7 May 1895, Page 4

The Chilling Experiment.

Particulars are given by a southern contemporary of the experiment being made of sanding Home chilled meat by the Gothic. The after-hold of the steamer is being fitted up as a hermetically sealed chamber, the brine pipes used for freezing purposes running into it. In the centre of the chamber is an exhaust fan, which takes the air from a series of small tanks and distributes it over the area of the chamber, equalising the temperature. On each side of the chamber are three sections of brine pipes, and the temperature of the brine is so regulated as to bring the temperature of the chamber to 28 degrees Fahrenheit, which is the temperature necessary to chill the meat. Dr Shiel’s patent thermostal which, in the case of the Gothic chamber, contains no less than 1000 feet tf piping filled with spirits, acts upon the brine pump and controls the circulation of the brine so as to ensure equality of temperature. The thermostal acts as a governor to the brine pump and regulates it automatically so as to control the temperature to half a degree in any part of the chamber. The hermetically sealed chamber will contain some 1100 hindquarters of beef, and some 150 to 200 carcases of sheep and lambs. The syndicate, which includes Lord Kelvin, the celebrated scientist, and several well-known and very shrewd commercial magnates of Glasgow, are confident that the system, if given a fair and careful trial by the Gothic’s engineers, will prove a complete success, and that the meat when sold in London will bring a price which will amply repay the extra expense in freight which the system entails. Instead of having to bo sub- . jected, as in frozen meat to a complicated, expensive and doubtfully satisfactory thawing process, the chilled meat will arrive in London in a soft and natural condition, its color unimpaired, its juciness fully retained, and practically ready for immediate sale and use. Whether, of coarse, the experiment will prove so fully successful as the originators of the new departure appear so confident it will, remains to be seen, but if success be attained, there can be no doubt that the present experiment on the Gothic wdll initiate an entirely new condition of affairs in the meat export trade.