This was a tasting that didn't involve grapes with fancy French names. No crystal glasses, cheese or white tablecloths.

In a pavilion in Independence Park in Beaver County, about 30 people stared at paper place mats bearing seven circles. Two women traveled among picnic tables, placing in the circles medicine cups of white liquid.

The first six were no big deal; the participants tossed them back like weathered alcoholics. The last, on the other hand, inspired a brief pause and a sniff. This drink's name alone evokes a cringe from many.

Raw milk filled the tiny paper cup, and the people holding it to their lips were participants in a farm tour and milk tasting titled "The Suprising Story of Milk."

Sponsored by Slow Food Pittsburgh and others, Saturday's tasting featured milk from seven local dairy farms that use different kinds of pasturization or none at all. It gave participants a chance to judge for themselves if method defines taste, and if raw milk is really much different from its pasturized counterpart.

The day began nearby at Brunton Dairy farm in Independence, Beaver County, where the Brunton family produces milk from more than 100 Holstein cows.

Work begins at 4 a.m. with the first of two milkings. The Bruntons pasturize, bottle and deliver the milk themselves -- an average 8 gallons a day from each cow.

As the tour group filed past the animals, Mary Jane Brunton held up a contraption spouting plastic tubes -- a milking machine -- and explained how her daughter, Stacy, milks each cow individually.

From the tubes in the machine, the milk travels directly into pipes connected to the milk plant, where her brother-in-law pasteurizes it, homogenizes it and separates it from the cream.

Herb Brunton, who runs the milk plant, controls the fat content with a machine that separates the cream from the milk with centrifugal force. When it begins to spin, the heavier milk goes to the outside while the lighter cream migrates to the center. Each goes through a separate pipe, but they meet again when he adds the cream, otherwise known as milk fat, back into the milk.

Then it's on the move again. The Bruntons separate it into vats, some with strawberry and chocolate powder, and after mixing, it goes to the bottling machine, which fills and labels the reused glass containers.

Each bottle needs only a cap, and the finished product is ready for the delivery truck.

After tasting strawberry and chocolate milk from Brunton's, the group drove down the road to learn about milk in its pure -- or raw -- state. Both young and old tasted milk from seven dairies using different methods of pasteurization, as well as a sample from one that does not pasteurize at all.

In its simplest form, pasteurization involves heating milk to a set temperature for a set amount of time to kill bacteria and increase shelf life.

But a growing number of organizations are advocating raw milk, which, according to most participants who tasted it, does not vary much in taste from pasteurized. It also retains enzymes that pasteurization can kill.

"The enzymes come from good bacteria in raw milk," said Carrie Hahn, local chapter leader of the Washington, D.C.-based Weston A. Price Foundation, an event co-sponsor that promotes the consumption of whole foods.

"A lack of these [enzymes] causes lactose intolerance because our bodies can't digest the milk without [them]."

So a cure for many who are lactose-intolerant may not be abstaining from milk but switching to raw, she said.

But getting milk in its purest form in Pennsylvania requires some Internet research. Local farms have a hard time producing it because Pennsylvania law states that raw milk must be bottled by a mechanical bottler -- an expensive process that many small farms cannot afford, Ms. Hahn said.

Farms in the area with raw milk permits include Pasture Maid Creamery near New Castle and White's Farm in Monongahela, which sells its milk at the East End Food Coop.

Most milk in the U.S., including Brunton Dairy's, is pasteurized using the high temperature, short time method, in which the milk is heated to 161 degrees for 15 seconds, then quickly cooled to 39 degrees.

Other options include ultra pasteurization, or heating the milk to 191 degrees for one second, and batch pasteurization, a slower heating process that involves heating milk for 30 minutes at 145 degrees.

"If you can't get raw milk, batch pasteurization is the next best thing because it has been heated slowly so the proteins and enzymes in the milk adjust to the temperature."

Raw milk from local farms is generally a few dollars more than pasteurized milk from a grocery store, Ms. Hahn said. And shelf life does not vary much between the two; both average about two weeks.

Although not all participants were ready to jump on the raw milk boat, most were on board with the idea of drinking local.

Russ Warren, who uses Brunton milk in his Mt. Lebanon coffee shop, went on the tour to find out exactly what he is adding to his coffee.

"We try to do everything we can ourselves to control what goes in our food," he said. "I'm very much comforted that the farm was not industrial, and I'm glad they don't use growth hormones."