Question re: powdered milk

I think Milkman is awful. Personal preference. Nido is light years above flavor wise.

I stopped using Nido and started using Medellion Milk powder. It is 100% milk and nothing else.

I buy the whole milk powder then add extra water to make something like 1-2%

In my coffee the fat from the whole milk collects together.  Doesn’t happen with the skim milk powder but I like the whole milk better so I put up with the white pcs.

https://www.medallionmilk.com/

Here are two facts that are somewhere in each of your brains:

1) “hard” water is hard to wash in, hard to dissolve soap into.  You never really feel completely rinsed off because of that.
2) milk has some fat in it.  It’s even called “milk fat”.

You may not know:
3) soap molecules have a fatty end to them.

Combining all of that, I’m liking the conclusion that “hard water doesn’t dissolve (soap or) milk powder very well”.

So if you were an area of marble, limestone or dolomite, you’d expect hard water.  And if you have hard water, you can expect it not to dissolve fats or soap nearly as well as soft water that doesn’t have 2+ cations (Ca and Mg) in it.

Even in such an area, if you could source rainwater instead of groundwater, it would be softer and dissolve fats much better.

A quick check would be to try some CampSuds or other soap for how easily you can rinse it off at home and at your hiking location.

I’m guessing you could test David’s this hypothesis at home by intentionally making your water hard? Additional of salt substitute (CaCl) and then see if it clumps?

#edit: whoops salt substitute is KCl… darn. What do you add? Tums?

Some chalk dissolved in water acidified with vinegar?  Versus the acidified water without the chalk.

Or, yeah, Tums.  Which is colored, flavored chalk in convenient tablet form.

Another option for getting stuff to dissolve or mix: use one of those tiny whisks – I spin that sucker between my palms and froth my milk, frothed coffee, and to clean the dorky thing off. Luxury item. Can’t be  used to replace your spoon or fork.