milk

Further to calls for an increase in the price of milk.

Reg writes:

Why does Irish milk bought in ireland go sour within a couple of days of purchase? If you buy milk in Germany, for instance, the milk will still be usable after five days in the fridge. Irish milk has bits in it before its sell by date. WHY?

Anyone?

Farmers call on Phil Hogan to increase milk price (RTÉ)

Sponsored Link

118 thoughts on “Why So Sour?

  1. Ms Piggy

    actually I think this might be a good thing. That it isn’t as chemically treated? Or am I being over-optimistic?

    1. Paul G

      @Ms Piggy – Chemically treated, seriously? Give it a rest will you.

      Also Reg, get a better fridge. I buy 1 2 litre carton a week and it’s always still usable 7 days later.

      1. Soundings

        + 8 (days, I agree with you, Tesco 2L 2% milk easily lasts a week and their full fat are marked with dates 8 days or so hence)

          1. ArtVanderlay

            I work for Vanderlay Industries. Importing stuff. Lets pretend we haven’t met, carry on as you were..

  2. Fran Green

    We use fresh milk, German mostly uses UHT milk.

    “but there’s no demand for that, cos its shite”

    1. NiallJames

      What this guy said.

      Our is (high temperature short time) pasteurised….but not to the “ultra” high temperature.

    1. Drogg

      I normally get at least two weeks before sell by date on all my milk but it rarely lasts a day in my house. Maybe the complainer needs to consume more milk also that dawn fresh stuff is s***e stick to avonmore and you will be grand.

      1. Don Pidgeoni

        This. Don’t buy the crappy watery milk that goes weird after 5 minutes of being open. Treat yourself to nice milk!

  3. Frosty

    Irish Milk is pastured at 72 °C for at least 16 seconds, then cooled and stored at 4 °C. UHT milk (which is what most of the world uses) effectively sterilizes the milk at 140 °C for four seconds, and changes the taste.

        1. smoothlikemurphys

          But you may find that the ‘use by’ date printed on the carton is maybe 6-7 days, the issue being that the milk almost never lasts that long

          1. Spaghetti Hoop

            Because it may not be chilled constantly. Any rise in temp will promptly affect its freshness. Which is why retail fridges are inspected for temp consistency, over-packing etc.

    1. Odis

      I buy mine from an Aldi Store. Decent fresh milk no UHT. I check the dates when I buy it. And its good for those dates. Usually a week. I think the OP must be buying milk from a crap store

  4. Eamonn Clancy

    Try frying some rashers bought in Italy, you won’t get any watery scum. Seems our’s are injected with water to bulk up the weight so they make more money.

    1. Drogg

      Only cheap brand ones are and its actually a saline solution they use but if you buy your rashers from a butchers which is generally cheaper or buy a quality brand they shouldn’t be injected with saline. Just no tesco own brand ones.

          1. Drogg

            Denny rashers dont do it but i prefer rashers from the butcher. Actually the biggest offender of this is store bought ham obviously not the already cooked stuff but if you ever buy a lump of ham to boil or roast from a supermarket expect them to be well plumped up with saline.

        1. Kin Kong Ovo

          Denny and Galtee are the worst offenders.

          Cookstown are the least crap filled I’ve come across.

          Have you ever seen what dribbles out of a galtee sausage?! Sweet mother of pigskin it’s horrific.
          Never buy sausages with a pork content below 70%, always read ingredients. Big brands do not equate to good quality.

  5. Just sayin'

    Milk in Dublin goes sour a few days faster than milk back home in Dublin. Originally I thought my fridge was dodgy but several fridges later I’m convinced of it!

    1. Rep

      This is why country people don’t like Dublin. We are renaming all towns and cities outside of Dublin as Dublin. Soon everywhere will be Dublin and you’ll all be jackeen bastards as well. Bahahahaha!

  6. Donal

    Next time you are on holiday in Spain have a look at the milk aisle in the supermarket – shelves full of milk and no fridge! People bring it home and store it in the cupboard – feckin freaky i tells ya

  7. andyourpointiswhatexactly

    Cappucinos etc in Spain taste really different: it’s coz they use UHT not fresh milk. You get used to it, but it’s kinda gak to drink it straight.

  8. Spaghetti Hoop

    It’s actually a good thing. There are ways to maintain freshness in your cow-juice;

    – store in the bottom of the main fridge compartment, NOT the door.
    – check your fridge temperature is correct
    – avoid breaking the so-called ‘chill chain’ by leaving milk in the car after purchasing or on the breakfast table in the mornings etc.
    – choose smaller volumes than the hefty 2 litre

  9. andyourpointiswhatexactly

    Is low fat milk just milk with water added to it (as I contend)? Or is there more “science” to it?

          1. jungleman

            Nonsense. Full fat milk is more fattening than low fat milk. Drinking 500 mls a day of full fat milk will result in more weight-gain than if it was low-fat milk.

          2. Don Pidgeoni

            I don’t know what kind of super-fat milk you are drinking but milk will not make you gain weight if you are eating a healthy balanced diet.

          3. jungleman

            If full fat milk has 4g per 100 mls fat in it, 500 mls a day adds up to 7.3kg of fat per year. Low fat milk is at least half that amount. If you have an otherwise healthy balanced diet, then you will most definitely lose weight by switching to low fat milk. I have done this myself and my body fat went down without changing any other variables. I drink about a litre of milk a day.

          4. Don Pidgeoni

            Diets are a waste of time in general. Eat healthy, cut out the sugar and sweets and do exercise.

          5. jungleman

            That article basically states that low fat milk may result in consumption of more fats to compensate. The article is also based on child studies. As I said, if you maintain a balanced diet and switch to low fat milk, your body fat will decrease. If you fail to maintain that balanced diet, as the article states, you may gain weight.

          6. jungleman

            Also Don, you refer to “diets” in the sense that the switch to low fat milk is some sort of fad diet. It should be a permanent switch.

          7. Don Pidgeoni

            Why should it be a permanent switch? I don’t see any good reason to change to skim milk and you have provided none beyond your anecdotal evidence

        1. NiallJames

          You seem to be working under the premise that fat makes you fat. There is increasing evidence that it does not….and that full fat milk would in fact help you lose weight.

          Unlike you though, I have no personal evidence of my own…I don’t drink the stuff either way.

          Where’s the nutritionist??

          1. jungleman

            http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/better-adults-whole-milk-two-percent-milk-1278.html

            Food for thought. There are of course plenty of links available that say whole milk is better but I think the consensus is generally that low fat milk is better for fat loss.

            Don, be as condescending and obnoxious as you like. I was simply quoting the exact words of NiallJames above. I think you’d argue black was white at this point. But if you are so sure that you are correct, why not prove this to yourself by switching to low fat milk for 2 months. I predict you’ll never go back. I used to have the same attitude as you about full fat milk. When I switched I realised I had been talking through my hoop, just as you are now :)

          2. Don Pidgeoni

            If I seriously wanted to lose weight, dropping out one food stuff would do very little. Also, life is too short and skim milk is shite. Just don’t have that extra pint at the weekend or use the stairs more often.

          3. Don Pidgeoni

            From that article you drop 29 calories, 3 gms of fat, 1.5 grams of sat fat and 4 mg of cholesterol. Well, colour me impressed, that changes everything!!! lol

            Enjoy your skimmed milk jungle, I’m off to my full-fat loveliness

          4. Don Pidgeoni

            No matter what rotide, Ill never be as fat as your head and that’s what comforts me at night

          5. jungleman

            If making that one switch in your diet won’t have any effect, then you need to review your overall diet. Definitely use the stairs also, and lay off the pints completely! Just to be clear, I’m endorsing low fat milk, not skimmed milk.

      1. Soundings

        No, no, low fat milk comes from unusually fit cattle that specially trained sheepdogs chase around the field all day.

        I don’t really like the taste of milk anyway, but added to cereal and in certain coffees, it’s tasty.

        I use 2% low fat and couldn’t tell the difference between it and full fat.

  10. jim bean

    yer man’s drinking it from the carton and getting his germs on it – that’s why it’s going off!

  11. j.k

    Why do German come to Ireland to bitch and moan so much? They’re always going on about ‘quality’ etc.,

  12. Annaliese

    The answer it is simple. :-) When weather below freezing like with us in Berlin no fridge needed. :-) :-) Xox

  13. Simon

    When I buy milk, usually Premier Dairies or Avonmore, it typically has about 7 days on the best before date. I’ve never had a problem with milk going off too soon and it is usually good for a few more days after that.
    UHT milk is ransid stuff.

  14. milkman

    Ahem. He’s probably talking about the ESL (extended shelf life) milk that’s common in Germany, and which is sold here as fresh milk. Irish stuff is HTST (high-temperature, short-time) pasteurised, and has a shorter shelf life than the ESL stuff – which is sold as ‘länger haltbar’ fresh milk here and tastes pretty much the same as the HTST stuff you get in Ireland, though it lasts longer in the fridge. It’s nothing like the UHT gack, which is labelled UHT. And tastes gack.

  15. ahjayzis

    The lower fat (not the slim) milk lasts WAY longer than full fat. I always wondered why people drank it.

  16. ollie

    milk quota abolished in 2015, price predicted to collapse. farmers call for more free money to compensate them.
    hilariously disgraceful.

  17. collynomial

    Reg’s comment is actually valid and has little to do with UHT. It’s clear he’s not talking about UHT because he mentions 5 days rather than 5 months.

    Refrigerated milk in Germany (i.e. non-UHT pasturised milk) does have a longer shelf life than that of its equivalent in Ireland.
    If I buy a litre of milk in a German shop in Germany taking it out of the fridge the best before date is longer into the future than if I buy the same in a shop in Ireland.
    Logical reasons for this could include the amount of time it takes to get the milk to the shop, the local laws on milk processing, teh expected temperature of the fridge the milk is to be stored in, laws on use-by date display, local tastes, the packaging used to store the milk and a myriad of other things.

    1. Soundings

      Collie, check the containers in Tesco and the dates are around nine days hence, and in my experience as long as it’s in a fridge within 30 mins of purchase, it does last that long and longer. And you can usually stick milk “on the turn” into the frother on your cappuccino machine.

      1. smoothlikemurphys

        “the frother on your cappuccino machine”

        Where d’ya think it is we’re living – Dynasty?

        1. Soundings

          Ye sound like the Republic of Telly’s take on a new landline in the 1980s (sorry, can’t find it on youtube, but you remember the 6-month wait and the sense you’d arrived)

          Seriously, panini press, breadmaker and coffee machine – €300 the lot and they’ll transform your life!

        2. rotide

          Cappucino machine AND A PANINI PRESS!?!?!?

          Do you have an extra large fridge to store all that leftover venison and quail as well?

    2. Gar

      Not quite Colly, the länger haltbar stuff might not be UHT, but it tastes just as manky if you ask me.
      If you want “normal” fresh milk you need to look for “traditional hergestellt”. In Bayern at least you can get Berchtesgadener milk in some places and the difference is huge. It tastes like real milk and it goes off just as fast as at home, but with the added feeling of culinary superiority.

  18. CousinJack

    More urban subsidies for rural dwellers, face facts Irish farmers are too small and the land is often too poor, move to towns and get proper jibs you wasters, this will makes services cheaper for everyone and you be able to get da internet

  19. Jay

    I actually clicked through on that rte article. From what I understood, there was a cap on milk production, farmers got stable prices but wanted to be able to produce as much as they could and sell to the common market. The caps were removed and predictably the prices went down. Now they want to sell all the milk to the Irish government at a price floor to profit from it. This http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intervention_prices being the relevant link. The gov would have to buy all the milk even if it has nothing to do with it.

    Farmers taking the piss again.

Comments are closed.

Sponsored Link
Broadsheet.ie