What’s coffee without a little milk?

We love our coffee—and for Caffeine Month, there are plenty of reasons to spend a little more time making your perfect cup! Milk is such an important part of our perfect cup of coffee, but do we ever really put much thought into the milk itself, or—let’s be honest—do we just grab whatever we have in the fridge?

When making your perfect cup, you might go out of your way to get freshly-ground high quality beans and clean filtered water. Both of these are important to good coffee, but the milk can make or break the drink, even if the coffee is a good quality!

How important is milk? Well, it makes up about two thirds (or more!) of the goodness in any espresso drink, and it gives our morning coffee that wonderful creamy je ne sais quoi. The coffee industry has become increasingly aware of what makes a quality coffee, from growing regions to the farming process, but what if that same attention was given to milk, too?

First of all, storage matters! Fresh milk can turn a good cup of coffee great, so the right storage techniques and temperatures are essential to having the freshest milk. Getting milk from the farm to your fridge is an involved process, and that, along with different pasteurization methods, can create different levels of quality in milk. Did you know that the cow’s diet can also affect the taste of the milk? In winter, when they eat hay and grains, the milk can taste different than in the summer when they eat grass.

While we may not have control over this whole process ourselves, it never hurts to think about how milk gets from the cow to your coffee and to try to get the freshest milk available. Visit a local dairy farm to learn more or taste the fresh milk they offer!