Unhomogenised goat's milk in London?

[Kaeridwyn]

Hey everyone,

Does anyone know where I might source some unhomogenised goat's milk in London? Cow seems to be in abundance, even raw, but as far as goat's milk I've only found P&H. I work on a few farmers' markets so I've been asking around but no luck so far so just wondering if anyone else on here might point me in the right direction.

Thanks!

[Bantams]

Goat milk is naturally homogenized so I believe even the commercial/large scale producers should be selling pasteurized but not homogenized goat milk.
If you can't find goat milk through the normal routes, maybe try a Google search for breeders of the various dairy breeds like Saanen, Nubian, Alpine, Guernsey, etc?

[Kaeridwyn]

Hmmm, that's interesting... All the ones I find in the shops are labelled both pasteurised and homogenised so I don't know what's up with that.

Yeah I've been looking up city farms that have goats to see if I might be able to get some that way but I wonder if I'm a bit early in the year. Also hoping once we get a bit more freedom to move that I can go WWOOFing to get some other goat-y contacts!

[pickles]

I can't give you an answer myself but I've found the people in the company I mention below very helpful. I have bought from them on occasions. Perhaps you should contact them and ask their advice?

The company is English and is called Goat Nutrition Limited. They have a good range of cheese and yoghurt making equipment also have supplies for goat rearing. They fulfill orders for amateur and professional alike.

Their website with details is at:

https://gnltd.co.uk 

You could also try here, it maps suppliers in the uk for buffalo, goats, sheep, cow, etc:

http://rawmilk.simkin.co.uk/index.html

[mikekchar]

My understanding is that it's not exactly true that goat's milk is naturally homogenised.  However, it's really kind of a technical nitpick.  Milk fat is contained in "globules" (that's the technical term, believe it or not).  The globule has a membrane that keeps it intact.  Homogenisation breaks that membrane as part of breaking apart the globule.  Goat's milk have very small globules, which is why the cream doesn't rise (it's not prone to sticking together into large structures and rising to the top).  Some manufacturer's do, indeed, homogenise goat's milk even though it is meaningless from any practical standpoint.  Why?  Sigh... because the milk industry sucks (as far as I can tell).

Some places actually have rules that milk must be homogenised.  This is not from any consumer protection perspective -- it's 100% a play by large milk pools to economically force smaller producers to pool their milk.  It increases the capital cost of producing milk and prices it out of the range of small producers.  It's scummy and awful.  Ontario, Canada actually had a law (that I think has now been relaxed, but I haven't checked for several decades so I'm not sure) saying that non-homogenised milk could not be sold in quantities less than 25 liters.  The 25 liters was so that commercial cheese producers could buy non-homogenised milk, but that the public would be unable to do so (and hence farm gate milk sales would be all but impossible).  Interestingly, the legal definition of milk was so precise that when "organic milk" was starting to become a thing it turned out that it could be sold as something other than "milk".  So for a while, you could buy non-homogenised milk if it was from an organic producer.  The milk lobby got to work and closed that loophole pretty hard -- the forced all organic milked to be pooled into an organic milk pool "for the safety of the consumers".

I hate the Ontario milk industry with a passion, if you can't tell.  They were the worst -- of course it's been a long time, so I'm not sure what the situation is now.  But this is almost certainly why you are having trouble finding non-homogenised goat's milk.  Bloody business people and their need to grab a share of everything.

What we really need is a movement similar to the "Real Ale" movement in the UK.  "Real Milk" -- pasteurised, non-homogenised milk should be the minimum a consumer can expect.  If you *want* homogenised, fine (some people like Euro lagers with 40% corn too -- I'm not going to stop them).  I'm sure there are dairy farmers who would come on board.

[Kaeridwyn]

Thanks for those links Pickles! The second one is quite useful for seeing who closer to London is selling raw goat's milk, just a matter of delivery (not a driver) or if any of them sell at Sunday farmers' markets in London, since I work markets on Saturday already!

mikekchar, I'm originally from Canada (but BC, though I lived in Toronto for a few years once upon a time) and the main thing I remember was the total frustration at not being able to get proper Italian fontina because of raw milk laws! At the time I was going back and forth between Swizterland and Canada two or three times a year - I would hide whatever cheese wrapped in layers of plastic and in the middle of all my socks in the centre of my luggage on the way home, and declare the Swiss chocolate, a picture of innocence. Non-homogenised milk wasn't a problem from what I remember though, which was mostly when I was younger and we'd get Avalon milk in glass bottles in Vancouver. Here non-homogenised cow milk is easy enough to find too, and I can get raw or pasteurised from Hook & Son on the markets where I work, so it's just non-cow unhomogenised milk that seems to be elusive.

[mikekchar]

Interesting.  There are quite a few people here who live on Vancouver Island (my brother and parents live there too!)  I also lived in the UK for a few years.  I definitely miss being able to get good milk at a reasonable price (I live in Japan now).  I can get very, very good Jersey milk, but it costs a whopping $7 for 900 ml.  I've discovered recently that raw milk is *legal* in Japan and so I've been trying to find a farmer, but there are very few dairy farmers in southern Shizuoka where I live.  50 years ago it was common to have the odd person who would have 1 or 2 cows, but big milk business drove them out (as usual :-P ).  Still, I keep my eyes open in hopes of finding someone...

Somewhat related, I've lived in the UK twice: once in the early 90s and once around 2012.  In the 90s you would have had a hard time buying homogized milk.  My flat mates all wanted skimmed milk (for whatever reason), so they let my drink the first half of the bottle and they would drink the second half :-)  I find it sad that society seems to be walking down this road towards homogenised, factory built, crap.  It seems like we throw away culture in exchange for mediocre, cheap, uniformity.