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I'm in the process of setting up my overland vehicle so that it has "essentials" in it at all times. I've got a kettle and ways to boil the kettle etc.

I am interested in having the basics in my vehicle such as water, tea, coffee as well as military-style dehydrated food.

I was wondering if there is an option for keeping milk on a long term basis? I understand that I would need to keep it cool but even then surely it would only have a short shelf life. What other options are there in regards to milk?

I know that the obvious option would be to just buy milk when I need it but I want to be able to stop somewhere and have a cup of tea or coffee and not have to think about supplies.

fooot
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JackU
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5 Answers5

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Couple of ways to do this,

  • Powdered milk, has a shelf life of over a year and just needs water added to it.
  • Evaporated milk, milk with over 60% of the water removed before being canned.
  • Sweetened condensed milk, basically the same as the above just with lots of sugar added.

Powdered milk is the lightest and can be made in small batches while the others would start to spoil as soon as the can is opened.

Charlie Brumbaugh
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    Definitely powdered. This is closest (of your options) to real milk and if resealed properly keeps on keeping indefinitely. The only downside is its doesn't dissolve well in hot water. Condensed milk in drinks is an acquired taste but if you get on with it the squeezy tubes keep for a few days once opened at room temperature. – Chris H Aug 29 '19 at 21:07
  • In (parts of) Vietnam, condensed milk is a standard addition to very strong iced coffee. Comes in cans that last pretty much forever. – jhch Aug 29 '19 at 21:32
  • I will look into powdered milk some more. Ready some other answers it seems almost as if using powdered milk is a skill! – JackU Aug 30 '19 at 04:55
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    Just a note that the majority of powdered milk is skimmed, so don't expect it to taste or cook like normal milk (unless your "normal milk" at home is skimmed). In particular, it makes very poor porridge. I find it tolerable in hot drinks, as per the question. – Toby Speight Aug 30 '19 at 07:23
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    Doesn't have to be a can. At least where I live, you can buy sweetened condensed milk in plastic squeezy bottles, which would be more convenient than cans and probably last slightly longer because there's less surface area exposed. – Peter Taylor Aug 30 '19 at 08:56
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    Note that the majority of the white powder people add to tea/coffee for drinking is labled "creamer" and has no word "milk" anywhere in the packaging. If you read the list of ingredients you will find that it is made from vegetable oil/fats - usually palm oil. Slightly upmarket "creamer" has a tiny bit of milk in them for taste but to be honest there is very little difference in taste between 100% oil and oil + milk. Real powdered milk are more often sold as baby formula – slebetman Aug 30 '19 at 09:07
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    @TobySpeight: whole / full-fat powdered milk due to the fat content it has a much shorter shelf-life than powdered skimmed milk. It's not much harder to get than the skimmed variety over here (Germany), though: you'll have to look for both as powdered milk is a tiny niche product besides UHT milk. Wrt. taste I find the secret is to really take as much (or a bit more, :-P) powder as supposed - which looks incredibly much. – cbeleites unhappy with SX Aug 30 '19 at 12:57
  • @slebetman baby formula at least contains powdered milk, but it isn't just powdered milk. Actual powdered milk is common in home baking recipes – Chris H Aug 30 '19 at 18:05
  • UHT milk is packaged in smaller portions, but has the trade-off of weight and bulk. There is a wide variation between brands of powdered milk. Some actually taste pretty close to fresh milk when served cold, and others make you think twice about how badly you actually want to survive. Using it in recipes for puddings, pancakes, etc., can mask some of the flavor. – spuck Aug 30 '19 at 23:27
  • One general way of making a powder mix into a beverage is to add less water first to make a thin paste then add more liquid. This way you can stir with a spoon or similar to physically cause all of the powder to be wetted by the liquid. After the power is all wet, diluting is easier and more likely to be clump free. Similar to the way you make a cornstarch slurry to get it to go into solution without clumping. – T. M. Sep 01 '19 at 13:41
  • @T.M. in my experience milk powder is very benign in terms of clumping if you're not in a hurry and the water is cool: just stir or shake it to have small lumps and then let sit and they'll dissolve on their own. Stir again and that's it. Adding milk powder in hot beverages (coffee, tea) will cause disastrous lumps which will not dissolve because the whey-part of the protein is prone to heat coagulation. – cbeleites unhappy with SX Sep 02 '19 at 17:30
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One solution to your problem is UHT (ultra-high-temperature) milk. UHT milk has been treated at a high temperature to kill all bacteria, making it shelf-stable for at least 6 months. Once opened, however, UHT milk needs to be refrigerated just like normal milk.

If you're used to the taste of pasteurized/homogenized milk, UHT milk tastes a little different -- the heat treatment leaves it with a slightly sweet, almost caramel-like flavor. If you're mixing the milk with something else, like coffee or cereal, though, you're unlikely to notice the difference.

UHT milk is readily available at supermarkets in much of Europe -- one common brand is Parmalat -- but is less common in the US. One brand which might fit your needs nicely is Horizon Organic, which is distributed in 8 oz "juice boxes".

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    We have something similar (if not the same) in USA, but I don’t detect any difference in taste. It allegedly “keeps” unrefrigerated as long as never opened. – WGroleau Aug 30 '19 at 14:38
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    I don't think I ever noticed the difference in taste in UHT from the UK. UHT is totally commonplace there, nothing special about it. We always kept some at home just for convenience when we ran out of fresh milk. I never understood why it hasn't caught on more in the US. – StayOnTarget Aug 30 '19 at 14:40
  • Years ago, when we lived in a place where it was available, we consumed UHT milk exclusively. I don't think it's that easy to feel a taste difference. – Martin Argerami Aug 31 '19 at 02:37
  • AFAIK the sweetness is not due to the UHT treatment itself, but related to preprocessing of the lactose. Unprocessed, it would turn brownish. The lactose can either be converted to glucose (giving sweeter taste) or removed entirely (keeping the taste, but reducing energy content). – jpa Aug 31 '19 at 09:00
  • UHT milk in the UK certainly used to taste different, but UHT skimmed milk doesn't, because it doesn't have enough fat to affect the taste when it's treated. It tastes exactly like normal pasteurised milk. It's also slightly thicker than normal skimmed milk. – Andrew Leach Aug 31 '19 at 21:23
  • @WGroleau They do sell this in the US, even Horizon Organic. I didn't realize how they did it until now, though. – ReinstateMonica3167040 Sep 01 '19 at 00:51
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Condensed milk tastes better with coffee than with tea.

Powdered milk, although it keeps once opened, isn't as easy to use as it should be. It goes lumpy very easily when you put it in a hot drink. One way to help is to let the drink cool a little, or add a little cold water (as milk might be) and sprinkle the powder into the surface, letting it dissolve before stirring. The trouble is though, steam from the drink can condense onto the spoon, so that the powder sticks to it. Another way is to mix it up first in a little cold water and then add the coffee or the teabag and hot water, but it can still go lumpy.

Another way is to use UHT milk in one-shot 10ml catering portions, buying a pack of say 120. They don't need refrigerating. But you have to dispose of the pot somehow, which might not be a problem if you have other waste to dispose of regularly.

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Weather Vane
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  • I'll look into UHT milk, I always assumed milk in that style would need refrigerating, powder milk definitely sounds like a challenge to start with – JackU Aug 30 '19 at 04:56
  • @JackU, UHT needs refrigerating after you open it, but not before. – Peter Taylor Aug 30 '19 at 08:58
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    Plastic hell these though :( – Aravona Aug 30 '19 at 11:29
  • It's not entirely your fault for thinking that UHT products need to be refrigerated before opening; vendors often refrigerate the unopened boxes, from a belief that they sell better that way. Maybe they do. – Roger Aug 30 '19 at 17:18
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    @Roger, they are also sold chilled my area in the cooler right next to the sodas, beer, and other drinks for the same reason: so they can be consumed immediately. – spuck Aug 30 '19 at 23:23
  • wondering how much oil is required to make a 10ml milk container... – njzk2 Sep 02 '19 at 00:53
  • @njzk2 I wonder how much methane a cow releases producing 10 ml of milk. The pots are recyclable. Apparantly real milk is good, soya "milk" is bad. – Weather Vane Sep 02 '19 at 07:45
  • @WeatherVane recycling is only a delay to landfil not a true solution though (happy to talk about this in the chat!) – Aravona Sep 02 '19 at 10:44
  • @WeatherVane taking ballpark figures, a cow produces 10L of milk a day, and about 150L of methane a day, so about 150ml of methane. (which is about 0.1 grams under normal conditions of temperature and pressure) – njzk2 Sep 03 '19 at 03:01
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Dry/powdered milk used to be much cheaper than liquid whole milk, since our family of 7 (5 kids, me in the middle) grew up on it, mixing it with liquid milk. I have used it sometimes since, and it is not hard to use, though in taste it is not as good as whole milk. But if you want to use it in hot drinks you need to reconstitute it first, though I find powered coffee creamer (mainly corn syrup solids) better for taste.

I used to work in a dairy and even though we had about 350 Holstein cows (which produce about 8 gals at day), we used lowheat dry milk, along with sugar and corn syrup solids to make delicious (fattening) 16% butterfat, 42% solids ice cream mix.

Some explanation of types and uses of dry milk.

This is about the best price online I have seen ($0.30/Ounce), but at about a buck a quart it it should be cheaper at brick and mortar stores.

PeaceByJesus
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    UHT vs. powdered milk price depends on where you are. Over here (central Europe) UHT milk is a mass product and powdered milk in retail a slightly more expensive niche product. – cbeleites unhappy with SX Aug 30 '19 at 13:11
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I was wondering if there is an option for keeping milk on a long term basis?

  • Good: UHT milk

  • Better: UHT milk PLUS special handling.

UHT milk has been mentioned in a number of answers. It is an excellent solution but some extra precautions will produce even better results.

When sealed UHT milk has a very long 'shelf life'.
Once opened, if access to bacteria and other contaminants occurs, as will usually be the case, you have something close to 'ordinary milk and 'the clock starts to tick'.
If you are opening either small one-use sachets or using up a larger container in a day or two at most in unrefrigerated conditions, or can refigerate the opened product, then no special handling may be needed.

If you want to be able to extend the life of a say 1 litre container of UHT milk then keeping the interior sterile is essential. If environmental contaminants get into the container then lifetime will not be vastly better than for "ordinary" milk.

If you can obtain UHT packages with a well defined spigot/tap assembly this may be an adequate starting point. If not then it will be "relatively easy" to provide a tap system that you can attach to your UHT containers of choice. This may require piercing a box or bag or similar. Worst case you may need a custom tap assembly with box-piercer and a surface adhesion system plus sterile insertion procedure (see below). That may sound "a bit OTT"* - and whether it is depends on your circumstances.
That's the first step.

Once you have a resealable hard barrier from inside to 'world' you need a procedure that ensures that product flow is always outwards and that contaminated material cannot enter at the moment a tap is opened. A tap with a short exit tube is probably as good as you can achieve without substantial effort. Before opening, clean the exit tube interior (water good, very dilute sodium hypochlorite solution (bleach) better). A relatively diluet Sodium Hypochlorite solution (N drops of bleach per known volume of water) can be weak enough to not upset the taste but do a good job of discouraging contaminants.

Once cleaned, point the tube downwards, and dispense enough UHT milk for say the next day or so of use.
Then turn off the tap, wash and/or sterlise the exit tube, perhaps place a cap on the end and return to storage.

How effective this is depends very much on how one-way your tap barrier is and what greeblies are waiting at the tap to go against the flow when you open the tap. Whether the effort is worthwhile depends greatly on journey duration, access to new supplies
and, OF COURSE, how much you like to have milk in your tea :-).

Russell McMahon
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