It really makes you wonder... just what is in that conventional milk that foams so well? Here's a photo of my experiment with the organic milk on the left. In the name of science I'd be interested to see if anyone else out there has replicated my results or has a working theory on this important matter of concern to latte drinkers everywhere.
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Ask, and ye shall receive.
http://coffeegeek.com/guides/frothingguide/milk
In short, fat content, temperature, and even the feed of the cow can contribute to differences in foamability.
Sorry to double comment.
Anyway, the most likely culprit is a difference in fat/protein content. Reasons of this difference could vary:
-- machinery to skim the milk.
-- cow species/feed.
-- age of milk
-- storage (transparent containers contribute to breakdown of chemicals in milk via exposure to light)
The point is, there are many variables at play, and it may not be organic vs. conventional. Interesting if it is, though.
I got another one for you: pasteurization. There are various ways to do it; it's essentially a certain length of time at a certain temperature. Usually to save money, companies use shorter times @ higher temperatures. Obviously, changes in pasteurization method might affect the proteins and fats that contribute to foaming.
"Helen" is a spammer. She hit my blog too. I deleted her comments.
What really made me wonder is that I've tried this with two different brands of organic milk.
In the name of science, someone should try this with some other random brand of organic 2%. That said, Greg, you're probably right that all kinds of factors probably come into play. I also found that it didn't happen with organic whole milk, just the 2%.
Nonetheless it was kind of amazing the two milks were so different when steamed. It reminds me of the eggs at the hopital cafeteria, which peel really well, and how I heard that fresh eggs don't peel as easily...
I think you should define the terms of the experiment so other people can participate. Some ground rules:
- Use milk in opaque containers only.
- Set "starting" milk temperature at 40 degrees F.
- If possible, define frothing hardware. Failing that, try to set steam pressure/temperature. Also define operating procedures. I'm sure, given some hardware, repeated use may introduce small variabilities into the experiment.
Freshness is one factor that's really hard to account for. At least require date of expirement vs date of expiration on container. Also require pasteurization (ultra-, regular, raw) as a datapoint.
If you do *all* of that, we may be able to constrain enough variables to make a decision on organic vs. conventional milk frothing, given a large enough sample size. We can use a students t test, or a p-test perhaps, with the culled data.
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