Yeah, it’s fine to drink but it has a slightly funny taste. Over here in the Netherlands, it’s fairly common though fresh milk seems to be much more popular.
I can stand UHT milk in coffee if I have to, but I don’t like to drink it straight.
ETA: Haven’t drunk raw milk in ages. We used to get it when we lived across the road from a farm, but even then my mother boiled it before allowing us to drink it. Unhomogonized boiled milk tastes different from standard “fresh” pasteurized milk, though looking back I think the main difference is that it’s pretty high in fat even compared to “full fat” milk.
Didn’t care for it the only time I bought it. Which was during a week long power outage, and it was the only milk available in the grocery store. I thought we could put it on cereal, but it tasted funny. That was one long week…
Well, to be honest, from what I remember of it, plain UHT milk is compareble in its “off” taste and consistency to soy milk, in my opinion. It’s not that great for straight up drinking but for cereal and coffee and as an ingredient it is acceptable.
As to your question, I think it is mostly wrapped up in the economics of refrigeration. “Fresh” pasteurized is great, but it requires costly refrigeration from the dairy to the store to the home. When I was in Europe, there always seemed to be a premium on refrigeration of any type, fridges were tiny, they had smaller grocery stores and less frozen and refrigerated storage apparatus, even ice for drinks was rare and air conditioning nearly as pecuniary.
Pretty strange for me as a Cold, Fresh Milk, cornfed, American Midwesterner to go to the cupboard every morning for my milk- My exchange family didn’t even bother to refrigerate it after opening and kept it in the cupboard. They didn’t drink much milk, but used it in their coffee, tea, and cereal.
To the Europeans, is the warm cupboard milk thing peculiar to my experience or pretty common in much of the land? I am not worried about the safety issue of unrefrigerated opened UHT, I am sure it was safe, but I think it was also a preference in the temperature that some Europeans prefer to take their milk- room temperature vs. ice cold…
I think this also might relate to the “warm” German Beer meme misconception.I sometimes drank “Kellared and Lagered” bottled or canned beer from the dirt cellar of the 600 year old house I lived in. It wasn’t “ice” cold, but it was cold.
The first time I had UHT milk was at least twenty, probably thirty years ago. It was weird and gross, and bore no relation to anything obtained from a cow. I had it again maybe three or four years ago and it was actually not too bad. Either my memory is faulty, or UHT technology has gotten better.
I was about to write I never leave the milk outside once opened, but I’ve been doing it lately, although for short periods. Temperature in my kitchen (there is no outlet for the heat pump there), measured last night at 9pm, was 7ºC - since I’m heating the milk anyway, when I open a new box I’m not putting it in the fridge until I stop drinking milk for the night.
I only like my milk cold (and never as cold as Americans like it) when it’s damn hot outside - not when outside is seeing min temps of 3-effing-degrees-Ce. At the temps you guys like it, I find even whole-fat tasteless (I guess my mouth’s signals just get mixed when something is unexpectedly the “wrong” temperature).
You Americans with your huge refrigerators. All milk you buy in European supermarkets is UHT, and it’s perfectly safe to keep unrefrigerated until you’ve opened the carton.