Zaycon Milk {a review}

A fellow blogger (thanks, Tauna!) hooked me up with Zaycon Foods. I’d never heard of them before, but after visiting their website, I was definitely interested in their company. Their goal is to provide fresh meat, fruit, and milk to families all over the country, and all local to your location. The milk side of the company is new, so I was given 4 gallons for free in return for my honest review.

The milk was free, but I was not compensated in any other way for my time or pressured to write a positive review. All words are my own, unless otherwise noted. 

Here are the pertinent details on the milk (I received the information from Arah, the Zaycon rep I’m working with, but I’m retyping it in my own words).

First, it comes from a small, family-owned farm in Spokane, Washington. They produce a completely natural milk for their customers – no added hormones, GMOs, or vitamins (there are plenty of vitamins, but they all come straight from the cow, nothing added later). The milk comes from a Holstein herd as opposed to the traditional Jersey of “factory farms.” Holsteins have a better cream balance in their milk, providing a creamier product for us, the consumers – with less processing. The milk from Spokane Family Farms is pasteurized, but never homogenized. Before doing this review, I’d heard of homogenization, but had no idea what it actually meant. Basically, homogenization is what most commercial dairies do to the milk in order to assure consistency from batch to batch. So, you’re going to get the same product no matter which gallon you grab from the cooler, but it’s not milk in its natural form. The non-homogenized milk from Zaycon is as close to raw milk as you can get while still meeting state guidelines for the sale of milk commercially.

What did my family think of this “newfangled” milk? We loved it. It was so much creamier than what you get from the store, even the “red cap” (whole) milk. When we first picked up our gallons, I had grand ideas of making yogurt (which I’ve never done!) and other crazy things with the milk. But that didn’t happen. We just used it the same way we always use milk: in a glass, in recipes (normal ones, not yogurt, lol), or on cereal. My favorite recipe I made was a soup I invented – a cross between chicken noodle and Olive Garden’s Zuppa Tuscana. I’ll have to remember to share the recipe sometime soon. When our sample was nearly gone, I bought a gallon of whole milk from the store so that I would have something to compare against the Zaycon (usually we buy non-fat or 2%). But honestly, there was no comparison. There was a visible difference in the glasses between the two milks. You know how when you’re used to drinking 2% or whole and you switch to non-fat, the NF looks almost blue? Well, the whole milk from the grocery store looked like non-fat compared to the Zaycon milk. No joke. The taste difference can be compared using the same analogy. Even whole milk felt thin and lifeless compared to the milk I got from Zaycon.

So, how do you get your hands on some of this awesome milk? First, go to Zaycon’s website. Sign up for a free account, and from there you can place an order. Once you’ve placed your order, you just go to whichever pickup location you’ve selected and the driver loads your car for you. You don’t even have to unload your kids or get out of the car at all. Talk about convenient! And the driver at the pickup location we went to was super nice and very helpful. My hubby had questions about the product, and Brandon was awesome at answering them and putting his mind at ease. Oh, and Zaycon doesn’t just offer milk. Like I mentioned in the introduction, they have lots of different meats, too. I haven’t tried the meat, but I’ve heard that it’s much tastier than the grocery store stuff. Way cheaper, too – they have chicken breasts for $1.89/pound right now. The only catch is that you have to buy 40 pounds at a time.

Let me be up front at the cost of the milk. If you’re used to buying your milk from the grocery store, it’ll probably be a bit of a sticker shock at first. The base price for Zaycon milk is $5.99 a gallon and there’s a 2-gallon minimum order. But like many things, the more you buy, the more you save. For example, if you buy 12 gallons (picked up two at a time, six times), you save 25 cents a gallon. If you buy 48 gallons (picked up four at a time, twelve times), you save a dollar a gallon. And there are several different options between.

The bottom line is this: If you can afford the higher price, I totally recommend switching to the milk from Spokane Family Farms and Zaycon Foods. The quality is unlike anything I’ve experienced. At least try the 2-gallon, one time pickup and make an informed decision. And if you do, let me know what you think!

Blessings,

Wendy