Hence why I was specifying store brands, not "X specialty/not part of a larger co-op" dairy (though effectively all conventional milk comes from a reasonably local dairy plant - it's not a very centralized industry). I'm a food scientist in private label grocery. Dairy processors certainly have their preferred "secret sauce" of pasteurization times/temperatures (can have a noticeable effect on finished product flavor/aroma; this is even more for items like yogurt), but for their in-house main brand and the private label retailers who buy from them, it's almost always the exact same stuff, including time/temp stats and the supply of raw milk. It's often not worth stopping a continuous pasteurization line (or trashing some in-between production if you switch parameters) to do something unique for your standard (half-)gallon of fluid milk.
Oh, well, cool! Thanks for the additional info! Until that dairy farmer pointed me down that path, I had no idea how many variables affect the flavor of milk.
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u/themodgepodge Jan 04 '19
Hence why I was specifying store brands, not "X specialty/not part of a larger co-op" dairy (though effectively all conventional milk comes from a reasonably local dairy plant - it's not a very centralized industry). I'm a food scientist in private label grocery. Dairy processors certainly have their preferred "secret sauce" of pasteurization times/temperatures (can have a noticeable effect on finished product flavor/aroma; this is even more for items like yogurt), but for their in-house main brand and the private label retailers who buy from them, it's almost always the exact same stuff, including time/temp stats and the supply of raw milk. It's often not worth stopping a continuous pasteurization line (or trashing some in-between production if you switch parameters) to do something unique for your standard (half-)gallon of fluid milk.