-- do you shake your milk?

[Kev Williams]

Just curious if anyone else shakes their milk?

Not too long ago the wife heard about this somewhere, so...

Every time I'm in the fridge, I grab the gallon jug of milk, and shake the daylights out of it...

When I do this, the milk will go as much as 12 days past the expiration date before it 'turns'.
When I don't, most times it'll turn within 2 days either way of the expy...

Weird, but I'm convinced it works!

[Mel Fulks]

Are you sure ‘fridge is cold enough? Thermostat could be inaccurate . We buy “half and half” in half gallon size and mainly just use it
for coffee and tea. Only once did one go bad, since we use the stuff at a pretty consistent rate we did wonder why one “didn’t make it”.

[Rich Engelhardt]

Whole milk? Buttermilk? 2%? Skim?

What kind?

We buy 2% all the time.

[Ronald Blue]

So you are really just having a milkshake. Seriously though the only milk I shake is chocolate milk because real or imagined it seems sometimes some settles to the bottom. When I was a kid and into the 90's possibly we had milk that needed stirred. Because the cream rises to the top on "home squeezed" milk. Nothing better on cereal though.

[Kev Williams]

we generally buy whole milk, store brands. Not sure about 1% or 2% or skim, but don't see why that would matter.

Fridges (2 of them) are definitely cold enough...

[Maurice Mcmurry]

We had a machine for that but it stirred rather than shook. It held 1000 gallons and was cooled by 10 tons of refrigeration. I advocate for the Go Mad diet and never have a problem with freshness so no need to shake at our house.

[Bruce Wrenn]

Sometimes I shake my milk before opening, especially if there is a "cream ring" around the top. I only buy whole milk. If it should start to sour, I add vinegar and turn it into whole milk buttermilk. Whole milk buttermilk makes better biscuits due to extra butterfat. Local store ( Food Lion) carries three brands of milk, national one, and two different store brands. Milk on lower shelf in cooler is forty cents cheaper than middle shelf. Top shelf is national brand. All three come from the same processing plant, based upon code on jugs. There is a web site "Where Does My Milk Come From," that shows what the codes means. As an example, our milk comes from 37-387, which is a processing plant in High Point NC. Was owned by Harris Teeter stores, but recently sold to Maryland - Delaware Dairyman's Assoc. Same code on store brand of ice cream, which means their competition made their ice cream.

[Jim Koepke]

Most of the time my milk is poured into a tall glass then the glass is set in the freezer while preparing my dinner.

Milk is great with a thin layer of ice.

jtk

[Jim Becker]

I honestly don't because I don't worry too much about it. The milk only gets used for our morning latté and maybe a little for some granola that Professor Dr. SWMBO often has for lunch so a half-gallon lasts about a week which is at least a week shorter than the expiration date on the container. (whole milk, BTW)

But it does sound like a good tip for anyone who uses their milk slowly or keeps a lot of it on hand.

[Zachary Hoyt]

We use a gallon a week or more, so haven't had trouble with it souring. It's an interesting idea, though.

[John Goodin]

I am a shaker if it to be drunk from a glass but not if it is for a recipe. This is from my childhood. My mother bought groceries from the naval commissary across town about every six weeks. She would by about a dozen half gallons of milk and freeze it. Thawed it seemed watery, even though it was homogeneous, unless it was shaken so my dad and I always shook our milk.

[Maurice Mcmurry]

Cooling combined with agitation = Homogenization, that is why folks shake milk. Getting whole milk into the separator quickly was a big deal before quick cooling was an option. Grandpa fed the skimmed milk to the pigs and sold the cream. Mom and Dad sold homogenized whole milk. Homogenization occurred in the bulk tank when the whole milk was quick cooled and agitated simultaneously.

[Rich Engelhardt]

we generally buy whole milk, store brands. Not sure about 1% or 2% or skim, but don't see why that would matter.

It makes a difference in the amount of fat in the milk.
The lower the fat - the quicker the milk will go bad.

[Maurice Mcmurry]

The type of container plays a big role in taste. It is more noticeable with whole milk. My Mom (bless her heart) consistently had the lowest SCC of any Dairy in the Mid-Am Co-Op which includes several states.

[derek labian]

I shake the milk because I like it a bit aerated, it somehow seems fresher to me. My wife hates it though.