I remember tasting milk of many cows in my family farm. Each cow had a “signature” taste and part of the experience of drinking milk was enjoying the different tastes. The taste of milk of one single cow depends on many factors: age, diet, health, etc. Then, how do companies standardise the taste of their bottled milk? Best case scenario I can imagine is that producers blends the milk of many cows, but this is definitely no guarantee of a standardised taste. How is this achieved?
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When you buy a bottle of homogenized milk at the store, you’re not getting milk from a single cow. Homogenization is the process by which the milk from many cows is mixed together, and then bottled. Pasteurization also affects the taste, and is mandatory for every bottle of commercially available milk.
They don’t all taste the same. In my area I found I prefer Food Lion brand milk, as opposed to Costco and Publix. Then I read a post a while ago about how to read the label to find out [where the milk is from!](https://www.whereismymilkfrom.com)
Turns out the milk I like is from NC, and the others were from up north somewhere.
I think this old thread explains it, a bottle of milk likely combines the milk of thousands of cows, so all the signature tastes are blended.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/qjfsf/how_many_different_cows_contribute_milk_to_create/](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/qjfsf/how_many_different_cows_contribute_milk_to_create/)
It’s not the same thousands of cows in every bottle, but that much averaging will mean the milk will consistently taste very similar, to the point of tasting the same every time
Factories add all kind of fats, powdered milk, whey, flavours… untill they end up with about the same product everytime. Each brand of milk has its own recipe. The final product it’s not obtained just by homogenizing thousands of liters of milk at once. Some tunning is required for each batch.
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The other thing that happens as humans age is their taste dulls.
Every now and then my kids will tell me ‘the milk tastes funny/different/better’… VERY occasionally I can taste a difference too. We get the same brand every time.
Big dairy farms work very hard at having a consistent product, they get paid on how much much fat is in the milk etc, the grass the cows are eating is also kept really consistent which keeps the flavour ‘the same’.
The cows that make the fatty milk are getting theirs mixed in with the cows who have watery sweet milk… and alllllll the average cows just being average = regular milk
On our family farm the grass was just whatever was growing and different paddocks had different amount of weeds and in winter they were given extra things so the milk was always changing… goats milk is even more wild they could spend the day on some nasty (for humans, yum for goats) weed and their milk was disgusting and sometimes even a different colour!
TL:DR Dairy farms are aiming for consistency all the milk is mixed together so any standouts are unnoticeable.
Some people don’t develop their tastebuds, so they’re unable to differentiate flavor details.
There is nothing wrong with it. It’s just a skill you decided you didn’t need to develop.
They do not taste the same, not at all. Quality milk is delicious, majority milk is awful. Have you tasted more than one type of milk?
They’re processed in big vats and pasteurized etc. Plus all the cows eat the same exact feed etc.
In a nut shell it’s because of mixing milk from lots of cows plus homogenisation and pasteurisation.
You’ll find some brands of milk taste different, because they might be sourcing from a different region or something but on the whole, one bottle of milk will taste the same as another from the same company.
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