[jakobegger]

Are you sure you mean UHT milk and not ESL milk?

In Austria, all supermarkets used to sell pasteurized fresh milk (last about a week). In the last few years, they started moving to ESL milk (lasts 3 weeks). UHT milk (lasts 6 months) is also available, but people usually don't buy that.

Really fresh unpasteurized milk is available only in some stores or directly from farmers (it's still somewhat common for people on the countryside to buy milk directly from farmers).

[barrkel]

Here's my context: my girlfriend is German; I'm Irish, but currently live in the UK. So I've spent a fair amount of time in Germany (typically north of Hamburg, in Schleswig-Holstein) with my GF's family, and the typical milk bought was much closer to UHT than pasteurized in terms of flavour. But I don't know exactly what process it went through - looking at a translation of the exact carton description isn't enough.

I do know that to get pasteurized milk that tasted like I understand pasteurized milk to taste I had to look fairly hard in the supermarkets, and it was clearly a niche product. Unfortunately I don't speak German and my GF is currently in Germany, or I'd give you the key words of exactly what I had to look for.

I've had unpasteurized raw milk in Ireland when I've stayed with people with farms. But I prefer homogenized full-fat milk; with normal raw milk fresh from the cow, the cream rises to the top. I prefer it in the milk, giving it body.

PS: check out the table in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-temperature_processi... - it indicates 66% of milk consumed in Germany is UHT, vs 20% in Austria. Possibly there is regional variation too.