Why does my frozen ebm smell and taste funny?

[MrsMar]

I'm really careful about how I treat my expressed milk, pump into sterilised containers, keep it in the fridge and then I freeze it in Medela milk bags. My freezer is an upright one, the bottom bit of my fridge, the bags are in the bottom drawer and none of it is more than a month old, but when I defrost it (in a cup of warm water) it smells and tastes metallic. Am I doing something wrong or does defrosted ebm always taste different to the fresh stuff?

[MrsMar]

Oh, forgot to say, I hadn't tasted the first batch I gave my ds until after he'd had quite a bit, but it didn't seem to affect him. He'd drunk about 3oz of it before I realised it had a funny taste.

[SleighlyMadSanta]

Is it just this batch or all of them? If it is all of them I think some people have too much of an enzyme which makes EBM go a bit funny.

I think you can "scold" your milk before storing to stop it happpening.

I am sure someone more knowledgable will be along soon...

[SleighlyMadSanta]

here is a previous thread that may help.

[MrsMar]

This is the fourth batch that has this wierd smell and taste.

[MerryLittleCarrotmas]

"scold" your milk?

as in

"bad milk, naughty milk, don't you go off again, please"

sorry. tickled me, that did.

[PaulaYatesbiggestfan]

some of mine ALWAYS does this
tbh i always still feed it and the babies have taken it fine
never suffered any ill effects from it

[MrsMar]

Thanks sleighly, that's really helpful. The other posters in that thread said their milk smelt cheesy. Perhaps smells are a bit subjective (one person's cheesy smell is another person's metallic smell) but it smells quite metallic to me, maybe my nose is a bit weird too! Anyway, it's not right. It doesn't smell like that normally.

My supply has diminished a bit of late cos my ds has a cold, but if i manage to build it up a bit, I might try the scalding thing and then freeze that batch and defrost it to see if it fixes the problem.

It's good to hear the smelly stuff won't harm my ds though, he drank it fine though, today I mixed 2oz of the smelly defrosted stuff with 2oz I'd expressed this morning and he was completely fine with it, took the whole 4oz, and this was after 45 mins on the boob!

[MrsMar]

That's good to hear paulayatesbiggestfan. I once gave my ds some ebm that had been at room temperature for a few hours after I'd read that it was fine to do so, and it was most definitely off. He'd had a few gulps before I realised it looked odd so I tasted it and it was absolutely disgusting! I couldn't believe ds was taking it without any complaints! The defrosted stuff tastes nothing like the off milk, that was so revolting I had to eat a ton of chocolate biscuits to get rid of the taste!! hehehe!

[beckmo]

My milk started to do this. Smelt like carbolic soap...awful. I had a freezer full of it. Read somewhere that it was to do with enzymes and was fine to drink but DD flatly refused it and I can't blame her. It all ended up in the bin...