Clover Organic Farms Milk – It’s Shelf Stable!

Product: Clover Organic Farms Milk
Purchased at: Grocery Outlet (Tacoma/6th Ave.)
Price: $1.25/4 pack

Ben’s Take: Being denizens of the United States, namely, The Great Pacific Northwest, we’re used to fresh pasteurized milk that’s sourced from local farms and kept in cold cases. Generally our milk is high quality reasonably priced, so the last thing I expected to see sitting on an  unrefrigerated shelf next to the flats of Wired Berry energy drink was a four-pack of milk. I just could not comprehend this kind of shelf-stable-yet-organic-dairy magic so I decided that we had to buy it. I mean there was still a month to the expiration date at the time of purchase, so what could possibly go wrong?

After our purchase I headed off to Wikipedia to attempt to understand the science behind shelf stable preservative free milk. Though I insisted there was some sort of voodoo witchcraft behind the production of this dairy product the reality is far cooler. Ultra-pasteurized, or UTH, milk products are similar to the pasteurized milk products we purchase on a daily basis except the milk is heated to a much higher temperature. This kills the majority of colony forming spores that are present even in traditional pasteurized milks. In fact, the bacteria spores present in milk are so predictable, food scientists use their division rates at refrigerated temperatures to give us the sell by, or expiration dates. With traditional pasteurized milk, these spores mostly survive, while their mature, unsporulated compatriots kick the bucket leaving the bacterial levels of the milk below a critical threshold that would lead to colonization of our guts and their related gastrointestinal discomfort. Really the whole process is rather fascinating and if you really want to learn more,  you should check out episode four of This Week in Microbiology. For the rest of you, I’ll spare you the nerdery and we’ll move on to the milk.

As a shelf stable dairy product, Clover Organic Farms UTH milk is really good. I totally expected a strange chemically or burnt protein flavor that would cause me to hurl the milk carton out of my window. Instead, it was rich and creamy though some of the milk fat had separated which turned into gross flavorless fat chunks. I’ve actually had this happen in regular milk products, especially if it’s been pushed too far into the back of the refrigerator and allowed to freeze so I can’t really hold that against Clover Organic Farms. Compared to Darigold or old school Wilcox Farms pasteurized milk, it’s still not quite as awesome, but I would not feel bad packing one of these up in my lunch with some cookies or a granola bar.

Marisa’s Take: I wouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t a single perishable food product that can’t preserved by ways of canning, pickling, heat sealing, chemicals or other modern food wizardry. If anything, archaeologists will find the brittle remains of modern day humans preserved inside ruins of 7-11s alongside immaculate packages of Slim Jims and YooHoo. Before this Clover Organic Milk, I’d only seen soy milk, almond milk, rice milk, hemp milk and other milks in paper boxes, but I had always assumed that a regular diary milk would go bad. Through the magic of science, as Ben mentioned above, we now can have a handy box of moo juice any time without a refrigerator.

Honestly, I really don’t drink much milk anymore, maybe because I was forced to buy cartons for lunch throughout my middle school career. I was never lucky enough to get beat up for my milk money, but I grew to dislike the stuff for the most part. Even as such, while a neat concept, the thought of room temperature milk sitting on a shelf made me a but uneasy.

While it didn’t taste terrible (and I imagine chilled, it would be more enjoyable), I don’t edrink milk enough that I would purchase this on a regular basis (even though was a great price). I don’t eschew dairy at all, but I’ll just stick to almond or soy milk if I’m drinking something from a box (or wine for that matter).

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 13th, 2011 at 9:00 am and is filed under Drinks. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.