If one is willing to accept the risk, where's the best place to try unpasteurized milk for a taste evaluation? I tried it once before, obtained from a small regional grocery chain that sold it with lots of warning signs. I expected it to be a sort of forbidden culinary delight, based on online anecdotes and the fact that people are willing to pay more and risk harm to drink it. But it just tasted like any other milk to me. (By way of contrast, fresh orange juice tastes notably better than the pasteurized kind.)
Most people don't make a difference between raw and pasteurized milk when drinking it. I tasted raw milk and I don't think I can. Obviously, you need to compare the same quality of milk, full fat is going to taste different than skimmed.
Raw milk cheese is different. Most people can taste the difference between raw milk cheese and pasteurized. It doesn't mean that they prefer the raw milk version though. Raw milk cheese usually have more diverse and intense flavors, but it can also mean more off-flavors and inconsistencies. For me that's what makes it interesting, so, raw milk cheese all the way!
Of course, raw milk and raw milk products are more expensive, and food safety has a lot to do with it. With raw milk, you have to work quickly and with stricter quality control.
It's almost surely because of where you sourced it rather than its rawness. I have a friend who is a cheese
monger, which like what a cool
job, and they source fresh high fat content milk from a local dairy farm. He brought some home to us to try since he talked it up so much—apparently it's what they use in their coffee while working—and oh boy it's the best milk I've ever had.
My guess is some wires get crossed where someone tries a raw milk and it's the first not grocery store milk they've had and so clearly the difference must be that it's raw. Can't really blame anyone for the confusion, until my friend talked my ear off about cows I thought milk was milk.
Feed stock for the cattle matters a lot, it's not for marketing reasons that varieties of cheddar range from white to yellow to cartoonish orange. Certain types of cheese (particularly Friesland in the Netherlands) end up with a lot more butterfat than other types of milk.
Almost certainly just the fat percentage. It's common for cows to produce milk at notably higher fat percentage (often more than 5%) than the mandatory minimum standard for "whole milk" (3.25% in the US) that large commercial producers centrifuge and re-blend down to to maximize profit.
Most consumers are unaware that "whole milk" is a specific commercial regulation that does not mean "all the original milkfat", and this gets in the way of educating people about the danger of drinking milk raw. Add a bit of pasteurized cream back into your pasteurized milk and see that it tastes much better.
My dad used to buy raw milk and I attest the same. Meh. We have good local dairy farms and the pasteurized milk is great. I never saw the benefit of raw.
My house! But seriously, I'd say that "raw" makes less of a difference than freshness and the cow's diet. (After all, milk is made out of what the cows eat, and several notable compounds can only be synthesized with a grass-based diet.) Herd health, breed, cleanliness, and milking frequency all make a difference too.
If you can find a local-ish place that rotationally grazes the cows and milks once per day, I'd say go for it.
