Australian supermarket full cream cow’s milk taste test: ‘My...

I live in a house of voracious milk consumers – tea drinkers, coffee addicts, milk chuggers and cereal eaters. Between the four of us, I’d guess we down around a litre a day. No one in the house is more opinionated on the subject than my partner, an enthusiastic and compulsive tea drinker. Her take is that Farmhouse Gold is the best milk, while other brands, which will remain unnamed, are completely inappropriate for a household with such colossal demand. Her opinion has received a mixed reception.

So, it didn’t matter that she’d been unofficially banned from taste tests due to accusations, exclusively from me, of giving up halfway through every taste test. She had to attend – it’s the only way she could transform her opinion into fact. Was she Aristotle preaching a round earth to fourth-century flat earthers, or a modern flat earther preaching rubbish? We would find out.

The taste test consisted of 26 milks, all full cream and produced by cows. They were tasted blind by a panel of nine reviewers. We scored for aroma, viscosity and taste, with aroma and taste making up the final score (taste was weighted at a 2:1 ratio).

When I checked the results, I went straight to find out how Farmers Gold had fared. It was the first milk we tried, an easy one to remember. At least two people, almost laughing as they spoke, had said, earnestly: “Wow, milk is such a great drink.” Not something they were saying after 20 more samples. At the end of the taste test, the reviewers requested to have the first sample brought out for another taste. We needed to check: was the freshness and novelty of the first sip wooing us or was it truly a delicious milk? No one wavered. It turns out it was not milk they loved, but that milk specifically (there was one more high scorer, more on that below). My partner had given it an 8.5 (her equal high score on the day) and wrote: “Perfect for tea.” She had won.

The other winner was the Australian milk industry, who, over 26 rounds, pretty much never managed to disgust, outrage or betray our idea of milk. Quite the opposite, despite working with a seasonal, volatile product, the industry is delivering an incredibly consistent standard. Besides three standout winners and losers, every other product sat within an enjoyable middle range, with just 1.7 points separating the fourth and 23rd-ranked milk. That also means, as boring as this is to write, a lot of milks just taste like milk, differentiated only by small variations in sweetness and fat. But not all of them. At the high end of the shelves, there is a wild range of flavours, textures and production styles, some of which vividly (and divisively) evoke the pastures that bore them.

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The good news is if you want a classic milk experience, the best option is likely not very different from the cheapest one available. But if you want something more distinct, bold or unusual, you need to pay for it.

Note: milk is a far more volatile product than most of our taste tests. Different seasons or conditions will produce varying quality and quantity of pastures – affecting the fat content, protein, lactose and micronutrients in any milk – which is why milk is often sweeter in spring and creamier in winter. This is particularly the case for organic and small-batch producers.

We chose to do the milk taste test in spring, when milk is usually of a more consistent quality and availability but it may not reflect what the milks taste like year-round. It also won’t account for any changes in quality that come from poor handling and other chain logistics issues.

The best

Barambah Organics Dairy East Coast full cream organic milk, 2L, $6.90 ($3.50 a litre), available at major supermarkets

Score: 8.5/10

Why is Farmhouse Gold the lead in a story when it wasn’t the winner? Simply, I don’t think this one from Barambah Organics Dairy is for everyone. While Farmhouse Gold is sweet, pearly white and uncomplicated, this is the closest you can get to drinking from the teat in the middle of the city. It smells like fresh cheese and hay, and tastes like sweet cream infused with the essence of grass. It makes a rich and special drink but it also makes unusually rich coffees, teas with islands of creamy milk fat and rather odd bowls of cereal. If it’s the Cannes Palme d’Or of milks, it would also be a 60% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s the milk for orange wine drinkers, middle-class op-shoppers, people who have mushroom powder in their coffee, and anyone with enough hobby time to turn a milk with the shelf life of an avocado into a baked good, cheese or particularly funky yoghurt.

Farmhouse Gold full cream milk, 1.5L, $4.70 ($3.1 a litre), available at major supermarkets

Score: 8/10

My only worry in recommending this is that I might unfairly raise your expectations of milk. To be clear, this isn’t extraordinary. It’s unlikely to inspire a merch line or change your opinion on what good milk is. It will just feel right in the way a comfy sock does – after you have that first enjoyable experience, you probably won’t notice it again. This is also as rare as a comfy sock fit for every shoe and activity. Whether you use it for tea, flat whites, muesli, milkshakes or chugging, it will work. It’s the Goldilocks porridge experience: it can’t create surprises but it will never let you down. Regardless, my household won’t be allowed to buy any other milk for the foreseeable future.

The best value

Devondale full cream milk, 2L, $4.20 ($2.10 a litre), available at major supermarkets

Score: 7/10

When I wrote “a lot of milks taste like milk”, what I meant was that many are generically milky and this is one of them. That’s what routine pasteurisation and homogenisation gets you. If you’re in need of further detail, here is the enlightening commentary found on the scoresheets: “classic”, “classic milk”, “classic milk lol”, “another classic one”, and “another absolutely delightfully mild and classic milk”. When there are 10 other brands that taste the same, why not buy the cheapest?

Other notable milks

The Little Big Dairy Co full cream milk, 2L, $6.40 ($3.20 a litre), available at major supermarkets

Score: 7.5/10

If I were to do this taste test again, I would include a metric to measure either character or depth of flavour, something to differentiate good classic milks from good unusual milks and bad classic milks from bad unusual milks. This, alongside Farmhouse Gold, is in the first category. It was the only other milk to score significantly above the 20-milk-long mid-range. It’s silky, has a big dairy flavour without any barnyard hints, and has a good balance of fat and sweetness. “Tasty but not special,” one reviewer wrote.

Norco Our Finest non-homogenised milk, 1.5L, $4.40 ($2.90 a litre), available at major supermarkets

Score: 6.5/10

I wanted to single out this brand for two reasons: first, because it’s a provider that sells distinct, bolder milks at a lower price point, and second, because my partner has a fit whenever anyone in our house buys either this or Norco’s homogenised milk. She insists they’re unsuitable for tea. This was another test. The scores for Norco’s unhomogenised milk varied among the reviewers. Many described it as having a beef tallow aroma – not an uncommon characteristic – and a sweet, creamy flavour, a bit like eating custard and cereal in a barn. Meanwhile, Norco’s regular milk drew light praise for enjoyable mildness. Literally every reviewer scored it 7/10 for taste, besides one person, my partner, who wrote: “Tastes like the kind of milk I don’t want in my tea.” Is that another victory? Who knows. But my fridge will never again house a bottle of Norco.

Macro organic full cream milk, 1L, $2.50, available at Woolworths

Score: 4.5/10

None of the three outliers at the bottom of the 26-milk table had consistently bad scores. Instead, they were all divisive, none more so than this. The most common criticism was that it tastes sweet and stale, like it’s been cooked – the disagreement was whether that’s a bad thing. Farmdale also raised this suspicion, but while Farmdale tastes oddly like toasted coconut, this tastes like reconstituted milk powder, cardboard (other cartoned milks did not receive this criticism) and animal funk. My scorecard read: “Wtf. Weird one. Unusual, not gross.”

A2 full cream milk, 2L, $6.90 ($3.40 a litre), available at major supermarkets

Score: 4.5/10

You know those restaurants who say their pork tastes like pineapple or their lamb like salt bush, because that’s what the animals have eaten their whole lives? This is the milk version of that but, sadly for us, the only thing cows eat is grass. Some reviewers described it as a generic leafy greenness, others as being distinctly like wasabi but without the heat. I don’t mind either of those, others obviously did. Either way, I suspect this would taste different, specifically less grassy and more fatty, at other times of the year.

Made by Cow cold pressed raw Jersey milk, 1.5L, $9 ($6 a litre), available at select grocers

Score: 4.5/10

The opinions and descriptions of this milk were so different I don’t really know how to summarise them. The smell was described as like paint, chemicals and cheese, the flavour like play-dough, earth or as if it had been cooked. One reviewer said it was minerally, tasting like rocks, as if the milk had been stirred with a pestle. Another wrote the milk had a “mean flavour”. The only consistent comment was that it was somehow simultaneously thin and fatty (the nutrition panel lists the highest fat content of any milk we tasted). I’m open to being confused. I think it’s a virtuous state to seek out. But there are some domains where I would like clarity – loving relationships, A-League refereeing decisions and milk drinking are chief among them.

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