Talking Pasteurized Milk
If we're talking pasteurized milk, Krk and I will probably mention one of three brands: Twin Brook, Fresh Breeze, or Silver Springs. All three are up in Lynden, WA, and produce vat-pasteurized, non-homogenized milk. (For the uninitiated, that means the milk is pasteurized at the lowest temp/time combination to do the germ-killing deed, and the fat content isn't equally distributed across the volume of milk, so you'll often get a tasty sample of buttery cream under the cap.)
Which do we choose? If possible, we head out to the Ballard farmers' market to see "our Jersey guy" or his wife from Silver Springs creamery. (We use that name so much that I had to track down a photo of their bottles to find the real business name.) They get their milk from a small herd of Jersey cows, and produce yummy goat milk as well. The color and flavors of the milk change from time to time, largely reflecting cattle diet and the season, but the milk is rich and tastes a bit more like it recently came out of a cow. That's a good thing. Trust me.
Twin Brook milk is a bit more easily available at QFC, Met Market, and Madison Market, as is Fresh Breeze at Whole Foods. You'll notice them as the milk brands in the glass bottles with the steep deposit. Once you get in the bottle-return cycle, though, it's not a big deal. Other than location, the difference between the two is the cows -- Twin Brook is all Jersey, while Fresh Breeze is mostly Holstein -- and the resulting fat-content of the milk. Both make a tasty cheese...they just make slightly different cheeses, just as fat content contributes to how different sheep and goat milk cheeses set up and taste.
Raw Information (or other snappy use of "raw" in a heading)
Ours is a home of bacteria, enzymes, and fungi doing work for us, so it should come as no surprise that we're fans of raw milk. We're not the sort opposed to modern medicine, mechanization, sanitation, or other standards and regulations for public health...just not fans of mandated pasteurization for everyone.
OOH! There's a fun topic for a post soon: Public Health, Sanitation, and Regulation. Public health data and regulation is part of my work and my data-nerd joy. As is appropriate and informed regulation. Until then, just remember it's an option, and if you're not comfortable working with it or consuming it, that's a respectable choice.
Raw milk can be expensive -- $7-9 per half gallon. It can take some extra travel. It can't be sold to you in Washington State in any processed form (cheese, yogurt, etc.) unless it's aged at least 60 days. That only works for some types of cheese.
Raw milk also just BEGS to be processed! Working with raw milk in a cheese kitchen (or raw cream in butter-making) is a breeze, because the bacteria and enzymes want to do the work for you. The mixture in the milk doesn't want to spoil, so much as it wants to sour and condense its fats. Its natural inclination is to curdle like any milk will with temperature and acidity (or in a young animal's stomach) into digestible solids and liquid whey, rather than go rancid and poisonous right away. It also just tastes like it's straight from the cow, but VIBRANTLY so. It tastes rich and green (with a hint of fresh grass in the summer) like nothing else.
When we're working with raw milk, we tend to use what's out there: Sea Breeze Jersey, Milking Shorthorns, Brown Swiss, Swedish Red, Montbeliarde, and Holstein milk from Vashon, Dungeness Valley Jersey milk from Sequim, and Pride & Joy Jersey, Holstein, Ayrshire, Swedish Red, and Normandy milk from Granger. We pick them up at Madison Market, unless we want to take a field trip to the farmers' market or Vashon for Sea Breeze. We've also been to the tiny, family-run raw-milk cowshare at Meadowwood Farm in Enumclaw, where Krk got his first lick from a calf. This calf.
She was nice to share her mum's milk with us.
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