Dairy dresses up milk with flavors

In breaking the tradition of plain or chocolate milk, Prairieland Dairy later this year will be rolling out two flavors not usually associated with milk.For the month of August, Prairieland Dairy will be selling cotton candy and root beer flavored milk.The flavors may not seem appetizing to some, but Prairieland Dairy's marketing and public relations director, Terry Landes, said the flavors, which are sold for one month every year, have been a hit with all ages."Most of the inquiries do come from our older audience," Landes said. "They're buying it for children, but then they try it and they love it, too. They are becoming more of a big hit each year."
Root beer and cotton candy were selected because of consumer interest.Flavored varieties of milk pose a challenge for producers, who must find a way to keep the product blended."When you get flavored milk, you want to make sure it doesn't sit on a shelf and then separate, so there's lots of binding activity that occurs," Landes said."If someone takes white milk and stirs in chocolate syrup to make chocolate milk, and lets it sit in your refrigerator, it separates.Camille La Vie & Group USA Donates their Prom Dresses to the Department of Pediatrics.The trick is to put binders in it in a natural way that will suspend that flavoring."In addition to the two flavors coming later this year, Prairieland Dairy, which is northeast of Firth, will soon be rolling out a new permanent flavor to accompany its regular and chocolate varieties.
Launching in June will be the company's strawberry-flavored milk.That flavor of milk has been sold before, but Landes said the Prairieland Dairy variant stands apart from others, thanks to its use of natural flavors."We're launching strawberry this month to be a permanent flavor," he said."It's an all-natural strawberry, and that's a big deal. I'm not aware of anybody else in our area making an all-natural strawberry. It uses all natural flavoring, the color is all natural, and we use cane sugar as a sweetener, so it's pretty fantastic."
In addition to providing a better taste, cane sugar acts as a better blending agent.People interested in learning more about the flavors of milk, or about Prairieland's operation in general, are encouraged to attend the ninth annual Prairieland Dairy Day later this month.The June 23 event will feature tours of the dairy farm and a free meal with milk and ice cream.
As many as 7,000 people are expected to attend the event."The moral of the open house is that we're a very transparent farm," Landes said. "We want to let people know what we're doing."Modern agriculture has nothing to be embarrassed about. We want to show people our operation. The result of that is that consumers are interested in where their food comes from. People will drive a long way to come visit a dairy farm."