What makes our fresh, unhomogenised low-temperature pasteurised whole milk so special? We’re glad you asked..!
1. We don’t skim the milk, at all. It is naturally rich and creamy, about 4.2% butterfat. Normal “Blue Top” milk is standardised to 3.5% butterfat. They remove all the butterfat first, then inject back in precisely the percent they want to add back. By contrast, we don’t remove the butterfat in the first place. We leave it in the milk..!
2. Our milk is heated to between 63˚C & 64˚C, and then held in the tank at that temperature for 30 minutes. Fifty years ago, this was how all milk in Scotland was pasteurised. Then along came the supermarkets, demanding cheaper and cheaper milk. The old slow method of pasteurising was driven out by quick high-temperature methods, whereby the milk is heated to 73˚C for 15 seconds. That has a major negative impact on the flavour. We tried it ourselves one time. Never again.
3. We don’t homogenise the milk. We don’t push the milk through a tiny nozzle at very high pressure to break the butterfat down into nano-particle size. Many people view that process as a key reason so many people report allergies to milk these days. We leave the milk as it comes from our cows, so the cream floats to the top of the bottle.
4. We use glass bottles, never plastic. Glass doesn’t taint the milk, and keeps it fresh for longer. As we live on a small island ourselves, we hate seeing plastic milk bottles washed up on the beach. So from the outset of our bottling, we have only used glass bottles. These are best returned rinsed and without the cap, to the shop where you bought the milk, so the bottles can come back to us and be re-used.
5. Our cows graze on lush fields of grass beside the sea. We care deeply for our cows, and they lead a good life here on the Isle of Gigha.