Raw Milk

[pax]

I have found a resource for organic raw milk. I'm buying it in half gallon mason jars. It comes cream topped.

I want to figure out what proportions of milk I need to create half-n-half for coffee and something approximating 2% for the rest of the milk. It doesn't have to be exact, I'm just wondering about how to go about it. Put all the cream in another jar and then use milk from the bottom of the jar so it's even weight? Or even measurement?

They do butter in a machine so I'm buying the butter ready made.

Before anyone gets all worried about our health, this farmer is certified organic, and has a permit to sell raw milk, and has been in business a long time. I've done the research and I'm not worried.

[Jenni]

Lucky you, wish I could find raw milk where I live! I can get non-homogenised milk, but raw.

Not sure how to solve your problem, but if I remember rightly, 2% milk is what we in the UK called semi-skimmed milk. In that case, I wouldn't remove all the cream, as surely that would make it skimmed milk.

[Alex]

If you want to be more or less exact about this, you could ask your cow person the actual percentage of milk fat (typically at least 4%), then calculate from there. The percentage may vary according to the season or the cows' feed. (If your cows are grass-fed during warmer weather, you also may notice a grassy undertaste, which some people [e.g., Ms. Alex] may find objectionable in their coffee.) Sorry I can't offer more help than that, as we skim off almost all the cream for our coffee (and cooking, sometimes). The rest we drink or is turned into yogurt.

[Blether]

Your procedure needs to be: separate the cream from the rest; add cream back to the milk (if necessary) till it reaches 2%; then dilute the remaining cream till it's half-and-half, using enough of the "now 2%" milk to get there.

If you want to do this, I suggest you either buy some commercial 2% milk for comparison, or remember what 2% milk's like, then as a first attempt, compare the taste & richness of the 2% milk with your separated raw milk. Add cream as needed to reach the same richness as the comparison 2% milk. That gives you a baseline for how much of your particular source's raw separated-cream needs added back, and you're fixed for the milk side of the split (caveat: you might find that the raw, separated milk is richer than 2%). You could do a half-and-half taste comparison for mixing milk back in to the cream to dilute it.

In my experience from the days of milk-delivered-in-glass-bottles-in-the-morning in the 70's, the cream settles out of the milk gradually. When it arrives on the doorstep, there's a discernible layer of cream on top. After a day in the fridge, the cream is thicker, yellower, and the milk thinner & paler. After two days the contrast is greater, and at some point (after two days ? more ?) becomes stark.

So the fat %age in the milk and in the separated cream changes over time. Your milk may fall from, say, a fully-mixed 5% to maybe 2% or 1%, and your cream rise from nothing when the milk's fully mixed, up through 20% and 30% and on to 45%, 50% or beyond. The half-and-half side of the deal gives the same problem as the 2% milk side - it's easy to mix equal quantities of skimmed-off cream with cream-adjusted milk to get 'half and half' by volume, but even if the milk is accurately at 2%, what was the richness of the cream to begin with ?

In your situation, even if you know the overall fat concentration of the raw milk, unless you measure fat level in the cream and milk portions - using whatever lab process is appropriate - at the specific time you're preparing to adjust them, you'll never be able to calculate a solution in terms of measured volumes. I don't think the scientific-calculated approach will be your friend.

So, I say, do the taste test. That, after all, is the point, isn't it ? Start by either (1) making sure you work with milk that has been sitting to separate for a consistent amount of time, and getting used to what measures you need to use, or (2) teaching yourself to judge by taste and appearance, each time.

I kind of envy you the raw milk, having myself holidayed as a teenager at a place where we walked a mile or two across the fields to pick up milk directly from the farm. It's a nice memory, but I found the flavour too overpowering. Tolerable and interestingly tangy in tea or coffee - something i could get used to - but not very pleasant over breakfast cereal. Where I am now, I make the effort to seek out pasteurised milk in preference to the market-standard '120C/130C for 2 or 3 minutes' UHT long-life type.

Edited November 7, 2009 by Blether (log)

[Sean]

My advice would be to skim the cream and taste the remaing milk. Most likely it is between 1/2% and 1% depending on the time it has sat and the percentage of butterfat you started with from the cow.

If you like the mouth-feel and body of the milk I would not try to determine how close it is to 2% because that is irrelevant. If it is too thin than you can either drink it anyways and eventually you may come to like it or add some fat back as said before (many people switch to lower fat milks because of health concerns and don't like it at first but then become accustomed to it think the higher fats are too rich).

Half and Half is officially between 10.6% and 18% but almost all commercially sold half and half will be as close as possible to the 10.6% so what most people are accustomed to is roughly 11%. I would mix the skimmed cream at 1 part cream to 5 parts milk and taste.