We’ve heard time and time again that our milk “tastes the way milk should”. Our milk maintains the farm fresh flavor that people remember from their childhood. So how is this possible, even though we tell you over and over that our milk is not raw, it is pasteurized? Our answer is the way we pasteurize: vat pasteurization.

There are many ways to pasteurize milk. Besides our traditional vat pasteurization method, there are several other more modern and commonly used methods for store bought milk including HTST or high temperature short time pasteurization as well as ultrapasteurization. In comparison, vat pasteurization brings milk to 145°F in a stainless steel vat and maintains that temperature for 30 minutes before rapidly cooling it, also within the vat, before bottling. HTST brings milk to 161°F and maintains that temperature for 15 seconds. HTST is generally the way your store-bought milk is pasteurized: allowing for a longer shelf-life and expected long-shipping days. Ultrapasteurization brings milk the whole way up to 280° for just two seconds! This high temperature basically destroys any bacteria or enzymes in the milk. This ultrapasteurization method is how you can see milk in cartons on the shelf in stores, not refrigerated. It basically sterilizes the milk, allowing it to maintain expiration dates up to 90 days: crazy!

So what’s the big deal? What does all this mean? Well, let’s go back to the flavor of milk. Traditional vat pasteurization gently heats the milk, while maintaining much of the milks natural enzymes and properties. The method takes a lot more time, and is completed on a much smaller scale. Vat pasteurization is not efficient in our large food, fast food industries. However, this lower temperature allows the milk to maintain a lot of it’s real, true milk flavors thanks to preserving good enzymes and even some good bacteria. This is why our milk requires refrigeration and has a shelf life of 3 weeks. This is also why our milk tastes like milk! 

We also believe this is why our customers come back again and again, telling us our milk tastes so much better than milk they buy in the store.

We believe less is more when it comes to our food: and the same goes for milk!