G'Day from Sydney, Australia

[boothrf]

Crystal,

Aldi milk in Sydney will come from either Pauls or Pura, they just get them to contract pack. Same as Woolies and Coles.

Dave, Aldi is a large, privately owned German supermarket chain. They base their business on carrying virtually 100% "home brand" products, rather than the market leaders. They source their products form both large and small manufacturers, all contract packed. However, they do need to carry some branded products where those products have significant market share. eg Nescafe coffee or Vegimite here in Aus. They operate on a low cost system, reduced store hours, minimal media advertising etc. Very successful in Europe and now spreading internationally.

Aussie milk is generally very good quality, from pasture fed cows. But, it is all HTST and homogenised, which is not so good for cheesemaking.

[Crystal]

Oh, i dint mean to disrespect our milk, just meant its never going to be great for cheese! Lol

[boothrf]

No worries Crystal, I just wish there was more un homogenised milk available for Aussie cheesemakers who can't get fresh, raw milk. 

[Crystal]

Me to bob! Its such a shame our govt wont let us have unhomoginised milk, from what ive heard tho, the homoginisation came about when we started feeding our babies bottled cows milk and needed it to be digestable! Since raw cows milk was causing so many deaths in young babies as the fat isnt digestable for then... so its good in a way... but atleast give us a choice!

[Gürkan Yeniçeri]

Me to bob! Its such a shame our govt wont let us have unhomoginised milk, from what ive heard tho, the homoginisation came about when we started feeding our babies bottled cows milk and needed it to be digestable! Since raw cows milk was causing so many deaths in young babies as the fat isnt digestable for then... so its good in a way... but atleast give us a choice!

Just to set to record straight: It is not homogenization, it is pasteurisation that is a must have on bottled milk. Here in Canberra, Canberra Milk's Gold Top is unhomogenized and is the best milk for buying to drink as well as cheesemaking. Other brands have also unhomogenised milk I think Pura has one.

[boothrf]

Hi Gurkan,

Agree. Unfortunately, there are not many brands of unhomogenized milk left now. The Canberra Gold is one, made by a Bega/Pura joint venture.  Pura no longer make one for the major markets. Pauls Organic have an unhomogenised, but being organic it is quite expensive. Dairy Farmers no longer make an unhomogenised, at least not in their major markets.  Some manufactures have played with a "farmers best" style of milk, but these are usually just homogenised with added free cream!

There are some small regional dairies that do unhomogenised milks, but you have to be in their local area to get them.

[Crystal]

Homoginisation alters the structure of the fat molecules right? ALso the sugar. Pasturising kills bacteria. K, so, new babies cannot have cows milk as they cannot breakdown the fat or sugar to get energy, thats what the problem was. They were basically starving to death because there was no substitute for breast milk. So along comes homoginisation, and healthier babies because the fat was more digestible for bubs! But its still not good enough for them under 12 months. Cos cows milk is meant for cow babies, not people babies :-)

[Crystal]

Oh, gurkan, i know all ours is pasturised, but i cant get unhomoginised here either, just the $3.50L organic one, which makes extremly expensive cheese. I just mean that it would be nice to have different milks to choose from!

[iratherfly]

Homoginisation alters the structure of the fat molecules right? ALso the sugar. Pasturising kills bacteria. K, so, new babies cannot have cows milk as they cannot breakdown the fat or sugar to get energy, thats what the problem was. They were basically starving to death because there was no substitute for breast milk. So along comes homoginisation, and healthier babies because the fat was more digestible for bubs! But its still not good enough for them under 12 months. Cos cows milk is meant for cow babies, not people babies :-)

What??? Who told you that?

Babies have been living on Goat's milk for at least 8,000 years and cow's milk for 5,000 years. These milks have lots in common with human milk and babies can digest them and benefit from them tremendously. In fact, it has been in the human food chain as a main component for so many generations that the human body has developed, inherited and improved everything it needs to deal with milk long ago.
The larger fat globules in human just go through their system and come out the other way ( * if you know what I mean * ). This is actually exactly the problem with the small globules of homogenized milk: humans digest them because they are small enough and we are not supposed to do that.
The energy comes from proteins and not just sugar.  Boiling or pasteurizing the milk makes it sweeter for a myriad of reasons, including killing the lactic bacteria that produces the acid, denaturing the proteins and evaporating water.  Lactose intolerance is a modern problem that wasn't really an issue until industrial pasteurization and homogenization came along.

Homogenization is done purely for aesthetic reasons, to give consumers predictable uniform consistent milk and to not have them freak out when they see butterfat floating on their milk to think that the milk has gone bad. Babies with lactose intolerance or casein allergies, asthma and many other conditions are usually relieved when they are switched to raw milk where legal to do so. Cow's raw milk is an incredibly complex substance that has lost of self-protecting properties and essential bacterium, minerals, amino acids, enzymes, sugars, vitamins, proteins and fats that do miracles for human development.  Sadly when it is pasteurized the balance of that substance is gone and these important things are lost or deactivated in an improportional manner giving you an entirely different substance that is no longer able to do the job of real milk.

This human intervention is favorite of the big dairy industry not because they care for our health but because they want cows that are worked like machines and milked 3 times a day, living in close quarters because space and control over large areas is expensive. They also want to feed them cheaply and pastures are not good business sense. Then they want them to produce milk against the intention of nature so they load them up with rBST. For the poor disease lovjng consition of these sickly cows they mix antibiotics in their food regardless of their health condition - just to prevent disease which may require them to care for the sick animal and time is money when a cow is a machine and not a living creature. Finally, they want an abnormal super long shelf life so that's where the ultra pasteurization comes into place. In the words of Michael Pollan: "if the bacteria doesn't want to eat it, you definitely shouldn't".  By the way both the rBST and the antibiotics go straight to your kid's body. This is why they now hit puberty at 10 years old. This is also why there is now an epidemic of super bugs - infectious bacteria types that we can no longer be immune to because it had mutated to avoid these antibiotics. Other benefits of pasteurized milk is that your calcium absorption goes, well... to the toilet (pun intended).  They add calcium to the milk just to keep it from separating -because so much is lost in pasteurization and the violent homogenization, then they stick a label on the milk "Calcium Added!" as if this is something they do for your health.
The whole thing is nuts but the dairy industry's response it to make everyone confused with misleading facts, listeria hysteria and fear mongering (as oppose to cheese mongering) and lots of lobbying to lawmakers to allow them to make more of these practices and drive small family farms out of business. I find it infuriating!

Through homogenization, fat molecules in milk become smaller and become 'capsules' for substances that bypass digestion. Proteins that would normally be digested in the stomach or gut are not broken down, and are absorbed into the bloodstream...
Homogenized milk, with its added hormones, is rocket fuel for cancer."

Robert Cohen, Executive Director of the Dairy Education Board

"Homogenisation of milk may make coronary heart disease more common and more serious. Fat globules in cows' milk are surrounded by membranes. Some people make antibodies to these membranes. The antibodies cause human platelets to clump together, at least in the laboratory. It is thought that this occurs in real life, encouraging clotting in patients who have the antibodies. The antibodies also bind to natural killer cells, one of whose functions is to reduce inflammation. When the antibodies are bound to them, the action of these cells is suppressed, increasing inflammation. We know that inflammation plays a part in coronary heart disease. Homogenisation breaks up milk fat globules, increasing the surface area of the membrane, which is likely to increase the antibody response. Xanthine oxidase has been suggested as the part of the milk fat globule membrane that causes the formation of antibodies, but other components may be involved."

Margaret Moss, MA, Director of the Nutrition and Allergy Clinic, Manchester UK

"So what's the harm in homogenization? Cow's milk contains an enzyme of large molecular size called xanthine oxidase (XO). XO is normally attached to the fat globules in milk. However, when these fat globules are in their natural large-sized state prior to homogenization, they are not easily absorbed by the gut wall. After homogenization, the milk fat is easily absorbed, and the attached XO gains much greater access to the bloodstream.
Some researchers [such as Dr. Kurt Oster and Dr. Donald Ross] have asserted that XO, after getting into the bloodstream, directly promotes hardening of the arteries by replacing a substance called plasmalogen that is normally found there. The research supporting this connection between XO and hardening of the arteries is not clear-cut, but whether or not there is a definite cause-and-effect relationship between the two should not be a critical factor in deciding whether you should drink milk. This possible XO link to heart disease is but one more potential connection of milk to disease and premature death."

Thomas E. Levy, MD, JD, Associate Professor at Capital University of Integrative Medicine

http://www.onearth.org/blog/still-in-superbug-denial-the-fda-denies-petitions-to-stop-feeding-antibiotics-to-livestock

I have more of these if you want...

[Crystal]

I feel sorry for your american cows, but i can promise you our cows arent treated like that. I know we dont usually feed antibiotics as we have had plenty of preventable diseases strike our dairy industry.

And im quite sure that cows milk is designed for cow babies, not people babies, lol.

What i learned of milk at college is limited to australia, not the world. Plus what i know from growing up in a dairy. But as far as milk and babies goes, its been a few months since i last breastfed my bubs, and i struggled to do it as i have a condition that causes toxins in my bloodstream from undigested protien to be passed on through my milk. After various hospital visits trying to work out why my twins werent gaining weight i was tested and profiled. Now, yes there are antibodies in raw cows milk, but they wont help our babies as they are cows antibodies, to conditions that we dont have as humans ;-)
And human milk changes by the hour, weather, moon, and hormones to what our babies need. Cows milk changes to what baby cows need... it isnt designed for babies, raw or otherwise... anyway, i didnt mean to start a debate, but i dont believe that cows milk is 'good' for babies. The World Health Organisation tends to agree with me...

[iratherfly]

I am sure that Australian milk is better than the US in terms of feed and sprawling spaces for the animal. Still, it is not antibiotic or growth hormone free and its sterilization (high temp pasteurization) robs it out of its nutritional value and active health benefits.

As for your other comment, of course nature created cow's milk for cows and human milk for humans. I have not implied that breastfeeding should be replaced with cow's milk (I agree with you and think this is a bad idea). My comment was about what you said in respect to homogenization making better milk for babies.  My response was about homogenization destroys milk for everyone, not just babies but adults too.

Milk has been an interchangeable between mammals throughout history. While cow's milk is obviously designed for cows, that doesn't mean it won't work for humans. It is very common in nature to find animals that are of unrelated species breastfeed other animals and nurse them to health after they have been lost, orphaned or abandoned or don't recognize their mom. I am not even talking about two bovines such as Buffalo and Cow; I am talking entirely different specie family Cats (feline) feeding dogs (canine), horse mares (equine) nursing calves (bovine) Etc.

In developing nations it is common to find HUMANS nursing goats, pigs and monkeys. (This is even more extreme because human milk is omnivore and goats are herbivores). In other words, drinking another animal's milk is not a human invention and not a foreign concept in nature at all.

After a thousand generations of having it in our digestive system, (in both fresh, acidified and preserved forms) humans also are very well equipped to digest it and break it down properly.  It is wired deep into our own makeup.  Historians actually believe that one of the first reasons humans have domesticated goats some 8-10,000 years ago was to give milk to their babies. Cows would not be domesticated for another 3-4,000 years.  The main difference between these milks is that human milk is more watery and less when compared to cow's milk. Human milk has the same amount of fat and about 2/3rd more lactose, but about 1/3rd the protein of cow. Out of this small protein portion, about 65% is whey protein that belongs in the water phase of the milk (vs. 20% in cow) and the remaining 35% is casein (vs 80% in cow) so for babies it would be more difficult to digest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kambf8mfKLg#
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADuSnt6PFn8#
Dog Adopts Lion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Moz-LvMI62w#
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOy3E5V33q0#
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IjT0IvUJ2k#

There is a million more of these out there. I would have put the ones of women breastfeeding pigs and monkeys but you can find them off this site I am sure...

[Crystal]

Too true, i didnt think u were bad mouthing breastfeeding lol, i just get a but touchy. Considrring i spent months trying to feed babies toxic milk ;-)

Also, i didint mean that all our cows arent fed crap, im sure some of them are, but that the situation here is much more... 'nice' than in other countries. Anyway, theres no point in me complaining, i have no real choice in what milk i use! It is what it is, my kids drink it no matter what... except the babies for now ;-)

I love milk and dont really want to get turned off it just yet so ill keep going and pretend i never heard about he odd relationships between a woman and a pig Rotfl!!!!

Sorry to stir things up guys, wasnt my intention.

So, on to the next question... lol
Can anyone recommend an online supply of cheese cultures and such? An a book? Remember im not making artisian cheese with raw milk...

[dthelmers]

I'm on the wrong side of the world for helping with suppliers, but as for a book, I have been using "200 Easy Home Made Cheese Recipes" by Debra Amrein-Boyes. It has its faults, but I annotate it with information and pH targets I garner here. Before I start a new cheese type, I search the forum for that cheese and add notes to my copy.

[iratherfly]

Cheeselinks in Australia is good I think
As for the book - I am with Dave. Excellent book indeed. Choose based on what you are interested in doing though. What kind of cheese do you want to make?

[margaretsmall]

Cheeselinks are good people to deal with. You can buy their book 'Home cheesemaking' by Neil and Carole Willman, which I would recommend along with '200 Easy Homemade Cheeses'.  www.cheeselinks.com.au   I've also bought stuff from Green Living www.greenlivingaustralia.com.au and they are also very good to deal with. Both are helpful with advice, and they post stuff by express post with a little frozen baggie inside so the cultures don't warm up in the post. Which rather amuses me as I wouldn't think that when they receive stuff from overseas that it comes refrigerated. There's a cheesemaker in Wagga who is going to stock supplies, and Mad Millie www.madmillie.com who I haven't used but I've seen her kit in a kitchenware shop. It's a NZ company but they have an Australian branch. If you can scrape up the $$ to do a cheesemaking course (a good idea if you can possibly manage it) I've been to one run by Lyndall Dykes who is based near Coffs Harbour but has an associate in Sydney (where are you?) who runs courses. www.cheesemakingworkshop.com.au. I can recommend their courses - the basic one day covers feta, ricotta, camembert, quark, yogurt, mascapone, the advanced one day covers cheddar, blue vein, halloumi, havarti, 30 minute mozzarella and edam. But there are plenty of others.

Re the milk - there's an organic unhomogenized milk (sorry I can't remember the brand, yellow container) in Coles for $2.75 a litre, and sometimes on special (but of course when it's close to its use by date). I have been mostly using standard PH milk (Coles own brand) but I take on board the discussion here about the quality of milk determining the quality of the cheese. For the last cheese I made (an Edam) I used a mixture of Coles milk and organic and I was astonished at the much better curd quality, so I'll be going that way in future. As has been noted in this discussion better to make a smaller, delicious cheese than a larger ordinary one.

While Australian dairy herds are run much more free range than many US and European ones, they typically receive a considerable percentage of their food intake from grain and hay these days, so the comments about the quality of US/European milk do apply here to some degree.  I guess our advantage is that the cows can go out to pasture all year round, unlike the colder climates where they need to be stall housed and fed over winter.

Love the utube clips - that poor dog!