My question is if raw milk clabbers and taste wonderful that does mean the milk is of high quality and uncontaminated?
Thanks in advance,
There's no way to tell if it's contaminated or not without testing. But generally, a good clabber set and taste/smell are positive indicators and you can make aged cheese from the milk.
I know that milk that comes from a cow with mastitis will taste flat and salty. I can't imagine that making good tasting clabber.
I wouldn't rely on the clabber taste test as an infallible test of the quality of the milk, though. If you aren't sure of your supplier's practices, I'd pasturize everything for cheesemaking, which rules out clabber. Or ask them to have their milk tested.
Sorry!
Fresh tasting clabber doesn't rule out everything but it will go off for sure if the milk isn't clean enough.
You can do a simple lactic test with the milk at home. Warm the milk to about 70F /20C and put it in a sterilized test tube. Store this at room temperature until it is coagulated (about 1 to 2 days). The coagulum gives you an indication how clean the milk is. The more homogenize the curd, that is undisturbed curd; no cavities, no breaks, no gas formation etc means the milk is clean. The more disturbances in the curd, the dirtier the milk.