I got halfway through my local java joint’s morning coffee before I noticed it had an awful lot of little white floaters in it. I’ve also had cream do this sometimes when I make my own coffee. When that happens, is that an indication that the cream has gone bad? I used to think bad cream got chunky, but there’s been several times I’ve poured smooth-looking cream into coffee and it instantly became like a brown snow-globe.
It sounds as if the cream is coagulating when it hits the coffee. That may be because the fats don’t want to dissolve into water, not because the cream is bad.
I have the impression that milk and cream taste and smell horrible long before they actually become toxic. In other words, they go bad when they smell or taste bad, and usually aren’t harmful before that.
You can get chunks from cream long before it starts to taste bad. I figure if it tastes OK, it’s OK. Cream lasts a lot longer than milk. I wouldn’t except slightly old cream from a cafe though.