# Why is my raw milk cream turning to oil in my coffee?



## PricklyPearHill

I've been using raw milk and cream for years now and I've noticed this happening a few times. I'm just curious if anyone knows what causes it. The milk is a week old and the cream is heavy. It still smells fresh and unspoiled, but when I put it in my coffee, it melts into beads of oil floating on top. It doesn't cream the coffee much at all. A big scoop of cream will hardly change the tint of the coffee at all, it just puts a layer of oil on top. Any ideas what could be causing this?


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## SilverVista

The longer the cream is allowed to rise, the more solidly the fat particles condense at the top. If you let the cream rise for a day and then skim, there is still quite a bit of milk in it. The next day it's a bit denser, and so on. After a week I would imagine there's not much milk at all, just condensed fat -- so when you put some in your coffee, it's like putting butter in it, no milk solids to provide the "light" part!


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## Azriel

I don't have my milk cow yet, hope to this summer, but this was very interesting. So if you would skim as much of the cream off as you can in 24 hours and save it in a jar for the coffee cream would it be better than skimming more each day?


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## haunted

I buy commercial cream occasionally and sometimes it does the same thing. I don't know why either, but the theory about it separating more as time goes by may be the answer.


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## PricklyPearHill

Azriel said:


> I don't have my milk cow yet, hope to this summer, but this was very interesting. So if you would skim as much of the cream off as you can in 24 hours and save it in a jar for the coffee cream would it be better than skimming more each day?



In my experience this wouldn't change anything. The cream you skim after a day would still contain a lot of milk that would continue to separate and fall toward the bottom of the container. This would still make the cream on top continue to condense and become more dense in the fat particles. I usually, actually almost never have had this problem before, so I wouldn't worry about it. Most likely this happened because this was a first time freshening Jersey cow and she had over 3 cups of cream per half gallon of milk!


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## Westwood

The molecules condense. STIR the coffee, lol. Better yet, put the week old cream on hot cereal. When it's cold, it won't separate.


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