Brooks: Kwest for Kwik Trip’s bagged milk ends with moo-ving realization

Kwik Trip is discontinuing bagged milk.

Which is unfair, because some of us just learned that milk in a bag is a thing. Now we’ll never know whether we were supposed to drink it or play cornhole with it.

Milk in a bag was beloved by a large swath of Canada, Wisconsin and select Minnesotans. By May, it will vanish from the milk crates in the bottom of the refrigerated cases in the gas stations. But after four decades of production, Kwik Trip says it no longer makes fiscal sense to keep bagging milk in a milk carton world.

Which left me very little time to grab a bag of milk. The thing I never knew I wanted until I couldn’t have it.

My kwest for a Kwik bag o’ milk led me to the Kwik Trip just off the interstate in Plymouth. Honestly, is there anything Plymouth doesn’t have?

Since there’s no use crying over bagged milk, let’s celebrate what we had. It was cheap, it was convenient, it used less plastic than a jug and it was jiggly and fun. You will be missed, milk bag.

Why bag the milk? According to a deep dive the CBC took on the topic, the practice began half a century ago, when plastic was pricier and Canada was transitioning to the metric system. It was a lot easier to change a one-quart bag of milk to 1.3-liters than to retrofit an entire assembly line for resized milk jugs or cartons.

All you needed with a milk bag was a milk jug. Some Kwik Trips may still have them in stock. Do not just stab the bag of milk with a straw like a giant Capri-Sun. The Canadians have posted helpful how-to instructions online. Thank you kindly, Canada.

And in conclusion, would anyone like a bag of milk? I forgot to pick up a jug and now it’s just rolling around my refrigerator like a Shmoo.