Comment by jhawk28 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jhawk28 | Hacker News Reader

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There is no taste difference between raw and pasteurized milk. The taste comes from the container. If you have both in glass, there is no discernible difference. My father is a dairy farmer and bet his professor (many years ago) that he could taste the difference. The professor setup a blind taste test where he gave my father pasteurized and raw milk in glass cups. There was no difference.

"Nutritional value" is a very ambiguous. It's only in what you measured. Raw milk advocates are going to value things like bacteria and if proteins were changed. Pasteurization by definition is going to kill the bacteria and change the protein structure. The main benefit for pasteurization is that it makes milk a commodity. You can have unsanitary farms with high bacteria counts that don't make people sick. This is both good and bad. Good because it means more milk available with less disease. Bad because our bodies are complex and some bacteria is healthy.

My recommendation is that if someone wants to consume raw milk, they should have a personal relationship with the dairy.

Depends on the pasteurization method. UHT will change the taste 100%, normal pasteurization might not. My grandmother used to pasterize her milk at a slightly higher than needed temperature, to separate the cream, and eat it on the side. Raw milk/pasterized milk with cream have the same taste, when you remove the cream though, it changes.

Honestly that's the best way to consume milk, pasterize it yourself, that will allow you to control the taste and the fat % you tolerate in your milk.

It may depend on the milk quality and the dairy. There's definitely a taste difference between our raw milk and our pasteurized milk, and neither one is bottled.

You can even sniff the pasteurizer and smell if it's the raw milk or if it's been pasteurized.

Also when making cheese, the naturally occurring bacteria and enzymes in raw milk make quite a large flavor difference (from a cheesemaker's perspective anyways).

I find this hard to believe because there is a massive difference in tastes just between two dairies. You can also get low-pasteurization milk from the same dairy and the taste difference is also remarkable.

If neither sample is your usual brand you can get two different flavors, but still not be able to tell which was pasteurized. You could try to guess that the one you liked best was raw and be wrong.

Yes, different feed, cow breeds, etc are all going to influence taste. You also need to identify the path that the low-pasteurization milk goes through to see if it has anything that will adjust the taste. My father's professor was able to control the variables such that it was the same milk, no contaminates, etc.

I used to dabble in raw milk and I can confirm the taste is the same, surprisingly.

the difference in taste comes from the amount of fat. raw milk tends to have more fat

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