If you are over a certain age *cough* you will remember when all milk came in glass bottles that went back to the milkman to be reused, and the cream rose to the top.
Sometime over the last twenty years or so, the supermarkets and processors decided that having a cream line on the bottle was a bit inconvenient. It meant customers could see which bottles had more cream in, and choose accordingly. About the same time, the narrative that cream was bad for you arose. So the processors standardised the milk and homogenised the cream so that it was evenly distributed in the milk and no longer rose to the top.
Along the way, the taste of real milk seems to have disappeared. One of the most commonly repeated remarks we get, when offering customers a taste of our milk is 'oh, it tastes like milk used to taste!' or 'it tastes like milk when I was at school'.
That's because we do the minimal amount of processing necessary. We just pasteurise the milk, and that's all. We don't skim off any cream, and we don't homogenise it. So when you have a bottle of Proper Good Dairy in your fridge, you will see the cream rise to the top. If you shake it, you will disperse the cream and it will mix into the milk. If you like it on your porridge, or in your cereal, just pour it straight off the top... Unlike the old bottles from the milkman though, ours have a screw top so you can shake the bottle with confidence!
Milk from the cows at Proper Good Dairy is really creamy. That's because our cows are a mix of Friesian and Jersey, and they graze grass. As a natural product, the cream content fluctuates a bit through the year, being at it's highest in the autumn and winter when the cows diet also contains silage, and at it's lowest in the spring when the spring grass is at it's lushest.
So if you want to drink milk which tastes like it should, pick up a bottle of Proper Good Dairy next time you are out and about. A map of stockists can be found here. When you have used your milk, you can wash it and refill it at one of our vending machines, or return to a bottle stockist and exchange it for another bottle, at a discount.
So, just like years ago, milk is in reusable glass bottles and the cream rises to the top!
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