Evaporated/condensed milk is a kind of milk product, which is made of fresh milk or goat milk after disinfection and concentration. Its characteristic is that it can be stored for a long time.

Fresh milk is usually concentrated by vacuum or other methods to remove most of the moisture, concentrated to about 25%-40% of the original volume of dairy products, and then added 40% sucrose canned. The condensed milk is too sweet and must be diluted with 5-8 times more water. But when the sweetness meets the requirement, the concentration of protein and fat is often reduced by half as much as that of fresh milk. If water is added to condensed milk, the concentration of protein and fat is close to that of fresh milk, then the sugar content will be higher.

Because of the different raw materials and supplementary materials, the refined milk can be divided into sweetened refined milk, light refined milk, defatted refined milk, semi-defatted refined milk, color refined milk, fortified refined milk and processed milk. China used to produce sweetened whole milk and mild milk. In recent years, with the development of China's dairy industry, refined milk has withdrawn from the mass consumption market of dairy products. However, in order to meet the special requirements of different consumers on the concentration, flavor and nutrition of fresh milk, there will still be a certain market for concentrated milk produced by appropriate concentrating technology.

There are many classifications of refined milk, the main ones are as follows:

According to whether sugar is added or not, it can be divided into sugar-added milk (sweet milk) and sugar-free milk (light milk).

According to whether raw milk is degreased or not, it can be divided into: whole milk, degreased milk and semi-degreased milk.

According to the types of additives, it can be divided into: condensed milk, coffee condensed milk, vitamin fortified condensed milk and infant formula condensed milk which simulates human milk.