Got milk?

When push comes to shove, what separates one milk from the other?

WORDS Madeline Woolway

WANDERING DOWN THE milk aisle in a grocery store, it’s easy to see there’s a plethora of options. A memorable ad once asked, ‘low fat, no fat, full cream, high calcium, high protein, soy, light, skim, omega 3, high calcium with vitamin D and folate, or extra dollop?’ As it turns out, there’s much more to it than that — especially when it comes to choosing the best option for foodservice.

“For milk to be called milk, you need to have a minimum of 3.5 per cent fat, but you can put permeates, powders or add things to it,” says Pierre Issa, owner of Pepe Saya. “For cream to be called cream, there has to be a minimum fat content of 35 per cent, and they can load the rest up with permeates, powders, thickeners or whatever they want.”

Then there are the variations in cattle breed and feed, as well as processing methods such as pasteurisation and homogenisation to consider. Changes to any or all of these things will result in a different end product, and not just when it comes to the milk itself. Expectedly, the attributes of milk will affect derivatives including cream, butter, buttermilk and crème frâiche to name a few.

“With natural cream, the colour of the butter will change according to what the cows are eating,” says Issa. “When they have more dry matter in their diet, the butter is usually paler. When they have a lot of green grass, the butter is more yellow.”

The fat and protein content can also fluctuate, with processing playing an important role. “If you’re buying a super homogenised product, you expect it to be the same all year round,” says Issa. “If you buy unhomogenised milk, sometimes you have a higher or lower fat content; it depends on how much dry matter the cows eat.”

Coffee roasters Market Lane source their milk from local producer Schulz Organic Dairy, which is located three hours by car from Melbourne. “Some of the things Simon Schulz does, like pasteurising at very low temperatures and not homogenising the milk, really contribute to the taste,” says co-founder Jason Scheltus. “He also has a generous mix of Jersey cows in his herd, whereas commercial dairies will have more Holstein Friesian. Jersey cows tend to have more fat and sweetness in the milk, so it has a richer taste.”

Market Lane

Photography by Amelia Habib

Just as homogenisation can iron out variations, so too can the size of the producer. “The smaller the producer, the greater the fluctuations,” says Sam Crowl of Sydney-based gelateria and café Cow and the Moon. “If you’re using Sungold [milk], a fantastic product that has seasonal changes, you change your recipes. Bigger producers have access to more farms and they can do the work on their end.”

There’s no wrong or right, just preference, at least when it comes to making coffee. The two key things to consider are fat and protein content. “The fat in milk tends to make the coffee taste a bit weaker,” says Scheltus. “If you have skim milk or lowfat milk, they’re a bit more watery so the coffee tends to cut through and stand out.”

Protein is important when it comes to texturing milk through steaming. “The higher the protein, the silkier the froth,” says Crowl. “That’s why Sungold and Country Valley make fantastic steamed milk.”

High fat and protein content may be a plus for mouthfeel, but achieving the right flavour is a balancing act. “If you have an acidic coffee [high fat and protein], it probably won’t work,” says Crowl. “You could get sour flavours coming through.”

So, what’s a barista to do? “When we first tested, we had eight different milks on the table: high protein, high fat, really expensive milks, less expensive, bigger companies,” says Crowl. “We ended up falling in the middle because it matched the coffee we were using and how we like the flavour profiles.”

For the Market Lane team, the process was reversed, choosing their beans and ratios to suit the milk. “We started by approaching Simon,” says Scheltus. “We did taste other milks, but we preferred Schulz.”

When it comes to choosing milk, the practice of comparing multiple options against others should be as common as coffee cupping.

“I think a lot of people don’t take it seriously enough,” says Crowl. “If you have a 220ml [coffee] beverage, 200ml is milk — that’s a big percentage.”

Considering milk coffees still make up the majority of orders — Scheltus estimates it to be around the 80 per cent mark — it’s well worth the effort. “We sell a lot of milk coffee, so it’s important to make sure it’s right for the customer,” he says. Ultimately, after sourcing the right beans and getting the water quality right, milk should be the priority.

While milk and cream are major components of gelato, dairy flavours should not dominate. “With gelato, we’re after a neutral taste and we adjust our recipes around it,” says Crowl. “We don’t want anything too overpowering on the dairy front, we just want the flavours to shine through.”

When it comes to texture, Crowl says fattier milks might create a great mouthfeel but the stronger flavour that comes with a higher fat content is hard to work with when making subtle gelato flavours such as panna cotta or vanilla.

For Pepe Saya’s catalogue of products, milk is everything. Issa says there’s no limitation on who he’ll source from, as long as it’s Australian milk that hasn’t been altered. That means no supermarket creams loaded up with permeates, powders and thickeners. “We’re looking for the good stuff: minimum fat content of 42 per cent with nothing else added,” he says. The higher fat content means a better yield, while milk solids in powdered form and other additives will show up in the end product.

Rather than shy away from the variations present in dairy from small producers, Issa welcomes them. “As an artisan butter-maker, the imperfections are the perfections,” he says. “The colour of our butter changes and we get phone calls when the seasons change, but we can explain why. They’re things we need to celebrate.” ■