Has anyone here used raw milk in there coffee to make lattes etc.

Also does the taste/texturing differ ??

Taste differs essentially (to the best). To shake up difficultly if you have no skills.

An interesting question of which I also would like an answer because it is difficult to get raw milk in the U.S.A. I drank mostly raw milk as a child which was delicious and made thick yellow cream and butter. The milk was from Jersey and Gurnsey cows that produce milk with a very high butterfat content. And by interesting coincidence it was milked on a family farm outside of Melbourne!

There are so many variables with milk: mainly the type of cows, what they have eaten, and the blending from the different cow types. I would suspect that high butterfat content milk would be more difficult to foam because it probably has less proteins and a lot of fat but I could be wrong.

AdianC maybe you can get some from King Island? They have fantastic milk products. Good luck in you pursuit and keep us less fortunates posted.

Geoffrey

I personally really like using raw milk in my shot. (I don't use conventional milk anyway - it's too nasty). I grew up drinking raw milk so I prefer the flavor. The only problem is the lack of microfoam due to the high fat content but considering that I already have microfoam blues with my MCal I don't worry so much about that aspect. The flavor is off the chain and that's what I go for.
Raw milk is much easier to find these day. Pretty much any health food store of natural food co-op will carry it. The only reason I don't use it all the time is it costs more than the organic half 'n half. It's more of a treat for me.

Milk is technically a colloid, a mixture of fat and protein, and not a liquid. The cream and fat rise to the top in raw milk, and more difficult to froth, not due to the intrinsic "rawness" or increased fat, but due to lack of homogenization.

Raw milk and whole homogenized milk therefore will have same fat and protein content. The raw milk can be homogenized, but not pasteurized, and it will be easy to froth. Some supermarkets in California, for example, sell pasteurized, but not homogenized, "cream top" milk.

Raw milk however contains significantly increased bacteria, to include Salmonella, Listeria, and the dreaded E coli O157:H7, the organism responsible for the romaine lettuce E coli outbreak not too long ago. E coli O157:H7, even though pathological and detrimental in humans to cause hemorrhagic colitis and sometimes death, has a symbiotic relationship with the cow, and therefore will always be around. In the US, from 2000-2005, there were at least 473 raw milk related illness, with 7 reported deaths, mostly children. In addition to these confirmed illness cases, there were also outbreaks of rabies exposure as result of raw milk consumption.

Due to these reasons, in most states, raw milk is not readily available for sale directly to consumers, but thru certain legal exemptions thru co-op's.

Most food borne illness in the US are preventable. It is currently costing us about 150 billion yearly in health care cost, about $2000 per worker when someone gets sick.

Steaming will essentially pasteurize the milk though anyway, right?* In the context of hot espresso drinks, it doesn't sound like there's any reason to worry about any of that. I've only gotten raw a couple of times, but I don't worry about it either way.

Intelligentsia doesn't use raw milk, but I find it interesting that they appear to use cream-top milk from Strauss at their Venice CA location. I'm only basing that on this picture and images of the bottles from Strauss' website.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tonx/4391012941/ (Look at the bottles near the bottom of the picture)
http://www.strausfamilycreamery.com/?id=20

Obviously, they are able to get some nice microfoam with milk that isn't homogenized, if I'm right about what they use. Personally, I've only steamed raw milk once. It was interesting and I got pretty good foam, but I didn't think it tasted any better than the grass-fed homogenized and conventionally pasteurized stuff I normally get. It did leave a different type of residue on the steaming pitcher walls though...I need to try it again sometime and pay more attention to the differences.

*Edit:
Okay, I suppose most of us don't steam long enough or hot enough to equal the effects of even HTST pasteurization. I'll stay out of any health debates in this topic, as I'm mainly interested in discussion of taste and texture.

This cup cappuccino is made of boiled fresh milk (after boiling milk has been cooled).
Henry, you are right. Crude milk is unsafe. He can be bought only from the checked up owners who carefully look after cow. To boil necessarily.

Did some searching here in Australia its actually illegal to be sold for consumption. But you can buy the milk as a "cosmetic" product for having milk baths.
So I'll have to check it out at the health food store. I have been lately using unhomogonised biodynamic milk. Seems to taste real nice but have to shake the bottle, which I'm used too now.

Wow! from a simple coffee question evolves a very informative and important health discussion. One of the reasons why I like HB.

Thanks to all
Geoffrey

The taste issues can be easily resolved with a randomized double blind test. Obtain several good quality pasteurized whole milk and raw milk. Have someone else randomize and froth the milk, then taste. If the taster prefers the taste of raw milk blindly, and can identify which is raw milk, then raw milk may offer certain taste advantage. Otherwise, the additional health risk may not be worthwhile.

If frothing is to be used as "pasteurization", each and every molecule in milk will have to be heated to 161F for a minimum of 15 seconds; generally by then the milk will be scorched.