I’m a little hesitant to start this thread because I may or may not be able to answer the questions and I don’t know any differently (I’m over 40 and barely remember buying milk in plastic jugs when I was very young.). However, there has been interest in a thread about milk in bags in this thread (Ha!, thanks Malacandra!), which took a tangent on this subject.
So, ask away, and I’ll see what I can do. Or maybe someone will come along and be able to answer the “why” questions better than I can.
I am in Southern Ontario. This is how we buy our milk if we want more than 2 L. You can purchase 250 mL, 500 mL, 1 L, and 2 L containers of milk in a waxed cardboard carton, but since there are four of us drinking milk every day, we buy it in “bulk.” There is one chain of convenience stores in the area that does sell milk in 4 L plastic jugs but convenience stores tend to be more expensive. Milk is a loss leader around here, and the grocery stores are able to afford to sell it less expensively.
How does that work when the bag is only 1/8 full and floppy? Never having used one, I can’t imagine how that works easily.
Do some people open the bag and pour it into the pitcher? I suppose that would mean you’d have to scrub the pitcher between bags, thus lessening anyone’s inclination to replace the milk.
You put the bag in the pitcher when it is full and unopened. Then you cut the corner off so that you can pour the milk out. The bag collapses slightly in use, but generally stays in the pitcher until it is empty, whereupon you pull it out. I’ve never seen one actually fall out.
Do bags get punctured a lot? Are they thick enough to resist puncturing? Is that a standard pitcher, especially for milk? Or, do you just use whatever you have in the house?
That’s been making me laugh for years, although I agree with you on not knowing how to feel
Then again, maybe you’re supposed to eat it with this, which is labelled on the tag as “cock-flavoured” where I happen to work :smack:
I wish someone had told me that when I bought my first “bag of milk” in Berlin ages ago. I got it home and looked at it and could not figure out how to store the milk after I opened the bag. In frustration, I filled every glass I could grab and had my (small) Berlin fridge filled with open glasses of milk.
My German friends got a good chuckle out of that when I told them my story the next day - and that is where I heard about putting the bag in a little plastic pitcher FIRST.
Other than that, it is a practical method of milk packaging.
By the way - do you also have “H” milk there? In Germany there was milk that came in a sealed container (like a big juice box) and the milk was not even stored cold, and could safely be put in your pantry for months before chilling and drinking. It had a weird after-taste and I never really bought it much, but it was OK for cooking and using in recipes.
I’ve never met anyone who pours the milk directly into the pitcher. It would much more be exposed to the refrigerator smells and absorb them, I would think. There is, sometimes, a bit of milk that dribbles down the bag after it has been poured and you do need to rinse out the pitcher once in a while.
Sorry for the consecutive posts, I’ve never done a multiple quote one before. I’m sure I’ll learn a lot about how these boards work before I’m done…
There are rare occasions where there will be a small puncture in one of the bags (it always seems to be the middle one, interestingly). You can usually tell before you purchase the 4L bag because there will be a pool of milk in the corners at the bottom of the outer bag.
There is a standard-ish size for pitchers, but you can buy them just about anywhere. When we went from quarts to liters however long ago, it took a while for the pitchers to catch up. Also, different milk producers’ inner bags are slightly different in shape, so fit better or worse in the pitchers. But, they all do the job.
Oddly enough, you cannot get bagged milk here in Alberta. So the bag pitcher we brought with us when we moved from Ontario is now used as a scoop for cat kibble. The pitcher is perfect for getting a scoopful of kibble from the sack, and pouring the kibble into the cats’ food bowls.
Years ago, when tetra packages first came out (please tell me THOSE are universal… Like a juice box for lunches.) they did have milk in 1 L boxes. I happened to notice those because they were new, and haven’t looked for it since. They do sell chocolate milk in juice-box-sized tetra packs.
^ You can see my reading comprehension is not all it’s cracked up to be, when you specifically mentioned juice boxes!
When one of our neighbours moved to Winnipeg about 15 years ago, she lamented that she could not wash and re-use the inner milk bags as storage (she would slice the top open). She was thrifty and would not purchase, say, a box of Ziploc bags, and would put things in these, sealing them with an elastic.
Pitcher? that’s disappointing. I have never seen bagged milk but for some reason I had always assumed it came with a spigot in the corner and a hole for a hook to hang it up.
Yes, they are universal (I believe they are actually based out of Sweden). A few years ago, I saw the women who owned the company on a TV show about “The top 10 (50?) richest people you’ve never heard of.”
This is how the choco milk comes at Costco, and we buy a ton of that stuff for the 2 kids… but I’ve been feeling badly about it lately and trying to use powder mix instead, as I’ve heard that packaging is essentially non-recyclable, being a thin layer of foil laminated into several layers of paper and plastic… boo.
I miss the bagged-milk days. Pull out a new bag, put it in the pitcher and do that little move where you sort of lift your knee up to smack the pitcher against, so the bag smooshes down to the bottom properly… holding the opposite corner of the bag when pouring, so you don’t get a collapse…
