Eli5: If the milk of each cow is unique, how come all milk bottles of a brand taste the same?

Question

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?

In: 462

Answer 1

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.