How Store-Bought Chocolate Milk Is Actually Made

For lots of people, a cold glass of chocolate milk might bring back fond memories of after-school snacks or childhood brunches. You might have even been told that it's milked from brown cows, which is a funny myth that a surprising number of people carry to adulthood. The reality behind the branded chocolate milk you find at grocery stores is far simpler, though perhaps less magical depending on how you look at it.

Chocolate milk starts as regular, white milk taken from ordinary dairy cows. After it's undergone the routine processing steps (separation, pasteurization, and homogenization), the milk would then be taken away for flavoring. But dairies don't add cocoa powder one tablespoon at a time like us at home. They need to pump out thousands of gallons of chocolate milk a day, so they need something a bit more efficient. The solution, as it turns out, is chocolate syrup.

First, they "bloom" cocoa powder in hot water to make what's called chocolate liquor, which is then sweetened and reduced into a thick, concentrated syrup. Next, chocolate milk producers combine processed milk with chocolate syrup in huge industrial mixers until nice and smooth, and, after bottling, you've got your ready-to-drink beverage!

Try mixing a spoonful of cocoa powder in water at room temperature. You'll find that instead of dissolving, they simply float in the water as teeny solid particles, then sink to the bottom as a thick sludge. The same thing will happen when you mix cocoa powder with milk. This is one of the biggest problems that dairies (and anyone making chocolate milk) will have to deal with — a mouthful of gritty cocoa powder is obviously not conducive to a satisfying drink.

Besides the familiar instruction to "shake well before drinking", dairies have another trick up their sleeves in the form of stabilizing agents like carrageenan. When added, they suspend the cocoa powder in the milk and keep it from sinking to the bottom.

More than just a fun fact, you can bring this trick home from the dairy, too. If sedimentation was a problem in the last batch of homemade chocolate milk, add a very small amount of carrageenan (about 0.02 ounces for every 0.2 gallon of chocolate milk) — it should square away the problem stat. Carrageenan is a bit of a controversial ingredient, however, so if it's a problem for you, you can use agar-agar. Done right, and your next batch should be super smooth tasting with zero the grit!