[Retric]

Raw milk isn’t inherently more flavorful than pasteurized. It’s by necessity consumed sooner which enhances the flavor profile vs milk that’s spent weeks going through the typical logistics chain before you buy it. But, the safety concerns are significant and you could also get pasteurized milk that isn’t particularly old.

[rmosolgo]

I've been drinking raw milk almost exclusively for about 5 years (and milking my own cows for the last 1.5 years). Whenever I get store-bought milk, I'm hit by the "cooked" flavor of it. I assume it's the pasteurization that makes the difference because I've also scalded milk on the stove -- same taste.

[Retric]

You’re likely noticing several other factors. Scalded milk is much larger impact via higher temperature for far longer.

The real test is to blind taste milk immediately before and after pasteurization and I couldn’t tell the difference with High-temperature short-time which only hits 71.5C for 15 seconds.

At home you can try a blind taste test after heating to 60C for 20 minutes, but we use HTST because it’s basically undetectable. UHT has a longer shelf life, but there’s just a hint of a taste difference.