In my local supermarket a glass bottle of milk with a layer of cream on top. I cant remember the last time I saw milk with cream on the top but I can remember how delicious it was over cornflakes, if you were lucky enough to be the first to use a freshly opened bottle of milk for your breakfast. Not forgetting it on those frozen bottles of milk at school and the horrible warm ones at school in summer. I was almost tempted to buy a bottle.
Some wonderful boutique dairies down on the Illawarra that supply that beautiful drop. Premium price for the best.
I find it interesting that you do this in Britain and Australia as in Canada it is illegal to sell unpasteurized milk. When we had our own dairy farm we drank our own fresh from the cow milk which is apparently a no-no now as well, but all farm folk do it..my mom liked the cream on top, but not the milk!!
We only drank raw milk as kids, it was only in 1993 when we moved to town that we started drinking pasteurised milk. Must admit I didn't like the taste of the raw milk in the winter when the dairy cattle were being fed silage. Us kids used to take a bottle of skimmed milk with us when we went out to play. The skimmed milk came out of the bottom of the sep's (separators) leaving the cream to make butter. Separator dish.
Just because the cream had separated to the top, doesn't mean it was unpasteurised (raw). When I was a kid the milk was definitely pasteurised but it still had cream on top. Perhaps you are thinking of homogenised milk, which doesn't separate. They all had different coloured foil tops. Ours was silver. What was gold top? And I remember blue and red, too. And "sterry", (sterilised) in a narrow-necked bottle with a crimped beer-bottle top. That was horrid!
Ours was alway pasteurised but always had the cream on top. The birds used to tap holes in the top if we didn’t get there early to collect it. Finding the cream was just coincidental as I think they were just interested in the foil top. You can get raw milk but only from small private dairies.
When I was a child we had holidays on the south coast and we put the billycan out and the local dairyman would just fill that up with raw milk.
The brand was I think called "Golden Tops" and the Variety "Cream On Top", they had a couple or so of other varieties of Golden Tops milk. That use to happen at my parents place in Essex, the main offenders were Blue Tits, from memory I think it happened mainly in the winter months, probably because food was in short supply, I can't ever recall seeing a Blue Tit around the houses in Spring and Summer.
I recall one year when our kids were young and the local RSL Youth Club laid on a few days trip to the Snowies, my wife and I went along to help look after the kids. At the Snowies the milk was delivered by a local source in Milk Churns,it was not watered down and beautiful, kids who would not normally drink milk kept coming back for more. The club had to order more milk than it had planned, it was that much in demand.
My dad used to milk the cows twice a day, take the milk to the dairy and srain it, put it through the chiller, and pour it into the sep's. One of the perks was that we had a big can of fresh milk every day.
I think it was Jersey milk, extra creamy and more expensive. We only had silver (and washed the top foils for the church, who collected silver paper) Some enterprising company made plastic caps to put on the bottle tops to stop the birds - you left them on the empties and the milkman obligingly put them on the ones he delivered. My aunt was widowed with 4 children, the oldest went to work at 14, so he always got the 'top of the milk' (and the cabbage water to drink after it was cooked) as he was the 'provider'. His younger brother got a job with the milkman and with his first pay bought a bottle of gold top and drunk the lot, he still says nothing has ever beaten the taste of that one! Dad only drunk sterilised milk when I was a child, it took years for him to accept pasturised milk instead (forced on him when they stopped delivering the sterilised). What memories this post has evoked
The crates of free milk used to be put in front of the heaters at primary school. It then tasted 'orrible and I have not drunk milk since.
I can remember being a 'milk monitor' which brought with it the 'perk' of being able to have an extra bottle (1/3 pint) of milk should there be any over. We took turns to be said monitor and wear the badge .......
1972 - South Bank, London There I was (a student) shouting "Thatcher, Thatcher-Milk Snatcher" Sorry Daft Bat-I was trying to get free school milk reinstated!
They were rattling in my road at some unGodly hour this morning! The first covid lockdown saw demand for old fashioned milk deliveries soar - you couldn't get onto a milkman's round for love nor money. I hope those customers keep them afloat now (no pun intended). Yes, it was blue-tits that always got to our top of the milk. Silver-top. Gold-top, @Barley, was 'posh' milk. It had a higher cream content (possibly from Jersey/Guernsey herds - I can't remember.) We have raw milk sold in our road - straight from the cow. You fill the bottle yourself in the dairy (from a machine, not the cow). It's meant to have all kinds of health benefits and I believe is very popular.
Jersey...the brown ones with those long eye lashes Always known over here as the richer milk. A2 milk I think comes from a Jersey cow. Not sure but as long as it’s not horrid skim stuff.
