Milk!

Grain bills and instruction for all manner of alcoholic beverages.

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rtalbigr
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Re: Milk!

Post by rtalbigr »

After some more experimentation today I was successful in making some mozzarella/provolone style cheese from the curd developed during the ferment. It takes about 24 hrs after pitching the yeast for the curd to form. I believe it has to do with the pH drop as the ferment proceeds. Once the pH drops to around 5.4-5.6 the curd then coagulates.

At that point, using a slotted spoon, I scooped off the curd and put it in a SS bowl. At this point it is very light and foamy due to the yeast and still contains a considerable amount of whey. I floated the SS bowl in a stock pot full of water at 115-120F. The heat dries the curd and consolidates it and also kills the yeast. This took several hours. At intervals of about 30 minutes I'd flip the curd mass and squeeze out more whey.

When I finally reached the point where I couldn't extract any more whey I transferred to a Pyrex bowl, added 1 teaspoon non- iodized salt, and nuked the curd for 60 seconds. Now I kneaded and started stretching the stuff (like stretching taffy) until I got a good texture, dropped it into a bowl of ice water, and now I have fresh cheese. Tastes pretty good.

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Re: Milk!

Post by mystakilla »

Wow that's awesome, glad to see it turned out good for you.
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Re: Milk!

Post by Odin »

mystakilla wrote:He's talking about them chocolate covered malted milk balls. "Whoppers"
Okay, thanks for the explanation. "Chocolate covered malted milk balls"? Actually, come to think of it ... that makes even less sense than Burger King's Whoppers!

Just kidding. Love to see the experimentation taking off like a rocket.

Big R, thanks for the update. Very rewarding to read!

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Re: Milk!

Post by rad14701 »

Not to drift further off topic but the problem with malted milk balls is the wax the chocolate contains for the glossy non-stick less melty surface... Not a good choice for fermentation...

Now, back on topic, please...
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Re: Milk!

Post by Pa Shine »

Unlike the whopper sandwich, the Whopper candies do have the ingredients listed.... and are for the most part pronounceable. :eh: Im looking at the yeasts recommended by 'heartcut' : Safale us-05 and s-04, for a whopper(candies) and barley wash... $5 ..ouch :esurprised: . Plan on starting one up in the next week or so. I'll update on it under the "malted milk" thread.
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Re: Milk!

Post by bcboyz86 »

Has anyone read the Alaskan bootleggers bible? It has a TON of milk wine and boozy yougurts in it.... It's a good read and most of the recipes use lactaid drops or pills to change the milk Into fermentable sugars... Then after fermenting pour everything through cheese cloth to filter out the chunks. And the cottage cheese that's left over has quite a punch to it.
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Re: Milk!

Post by Odin »

Read it ... a long, long time ago. Remember the book wasn't really big on taking cuts.

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Re: Milk!

Post by S-Cackalacky »

I don't know diddly about this subject, but would it be possible to just use whey to begin with and avoid the curd problem all together? That is, unless you just enjoy making cheese. Can't you buy powdered whey in the health and beauty section at Wally World?

Just sayin',
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Re: Milk!

Post by bcboyz86 »

Yea...the book is a good read for ideas and starting ferments, but its a lot more of a rough idea than precision distilling. Very very low Tech, but great ideas on starters. They had a few milk wine recipes and one yogurt recipe that looked good. Maybe maybe make a Carmel and swirled chocolate yogurt at about 5% ABV or so, then freeze it. It would be like likker froyo. It also made me think of making some milk wine, then twisting it with a little mead... Maybe make a Milk and Honey booze. Then grow a beard and be biblical and call my garage the land of milk and honey :ebiggrin:
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Re: Milk!

Post by rtalbigr »

I finally got around to doing a spirit run a few days ago so now I have some Araka. It certainly isn't like anything I've had before, an odd taste but it leaves a little bitterness in the back of the mouth, and a subtle soured milk after taste. I'm going to chalk this one up as something I won't be doing again. I suspect I'll run this through the pot and thumper a few times to clean it up and make it into some pot still vodka.

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Re: Milk!

Post by Odin »

Hi Big R!

So the verdict is ... it is not good? I was hoping there would be some interesting taste there, but always feared it would be a "small" taste.

Something else I expected is that if we would have made this oud of mare's milk, it would have "big" taste, but maybe not so pleasent.

It now turns out (if I understand it correctly) that taste is not "big" and neither is it pleasent. Hmmm....

Reminds me of us (Dutch folk) trying to help out the poor people of Argentine like 50 years ago. In Holland we sorta "invented" milking cows. In Argentina they had cows for meat and not for milk. We tried to help them out by making a hybrid Argentine/Dutch cow. The Argentinian cow was weak in milk production, but could live in a harsh climate. The Dutch cow, contributing to the "hybrid", was only good in mild weather, but gave a lot of milk.

The aim of the project was to give the Argentinians a cow that could deal with the harsh climate AND give a lot of milk. The cow they got was a cow that would freeze it's ass of even at the mildest temperatures AND did not give any milk.

No problem. We investigated. We learned.

Djengis Khan told his people to be drunk for only 3 days per week. They thought he made a joke, milked a few more mares, distilled it in the crudest way, drank it, got drunk, raped some women (or horses), woke up with a head ache that made them forget everything, including telling us how to properly ferment milk.

Big R, thanks for your efforts. I learned a lot. For instance that there is a direction I may not have/want to investigate any further.

Which is ashame, because I would have loved to see us making some good vodka out of this, if nothing else. Or a new kinda Tenessee/Gouda cheese ...

Could it be that a milk wash is lacking vital nutrients? Producing a "forced" "off" ferment ... ?

Sorry, feel there is still some things to investigate ...

Odin.
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Re: Milk!

Post by rtalbigr »

Yes Odin, there is actually a lot of room here for further investigation, if one were so disposed. One area that would be significant, it would seem to me, would be the milk itself. The milk that is readily available here is pasteurized at higher temperatures and a lot of it is ultra pasteurized. This is done to extend shelf life to allow for extended shipping due primarily to the demise of local dairies. High temp pasteurization, while extending shelf life, also alters the structure of the milk such that it cannot be used in making cheese, so I would think that would also significantly affect what it does to the ferment.

So, ideally one would need raw milk to (and of course mare's milk would be best) actually get a product that would be more in line with the original drink of Araka. While raw milk is available here one needs to sort of go around the law (it is not legal to sell raw milk)to get it and it is rather expensive. So were I so disposed to get raw milk I would only do so for making cheese and not to ferment and distill.

As for my Araka, I don't find the taste overly objectionable, it is just something that didn't please the palate like my other drinks do. Others may certainly find it to their liking.

Big R
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Re: Milk!

Post by Dnderhead »

" While raw milk is available here one needs to sort of go around the law "
where im at raw milk is available but directly off the farm and in limited amount.
then it has to be at the right time as most farms use balk tanks .
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Re: Milk!

Post by BaconWizard »

Ok, very much a necro-post here, but I am considering using milk in a rum experiment and ran across this thread.

I just wanted to point-out that in yoghurt-making, one cooks the milk first (not to boiling, but above 85degC) which prevents it from forming curds...
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Re: Milk!

Post by Windy City »

There was a commercial producer of whey vodka on ADI forum recently but he would not share anything on the process.
I think using powdered whey would be much easier then starting with milk but I have no idea how you would ferment it.
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Re: Milk!

Post by The Baker »

Ordinary yeast ferments sugar.

You need a special yeast to ferment milk.

kluyveromyces marxianus

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Re: Milk!

Post by contrahead »

BaconWizard wrote: Sat Oct 16, 2021 11:33 pm Ok, very much a necro-post here, but I am considering using milk in a rum experiment and ran across this thread.
Well you stumbled upon an comical thread at least, if you go back and read from the beginning. It is funny in that Odin and rtalbigr “discover” by accident, how to make cheese. And then on the second page of comments “S-Cackalacky” ask; well why not just start with “whey” to begin with ?

Raw milk from the cow, comes with three basic components; cream, curds and whey.

Cream consist of butterfat modules suspended in solution, but buoyant. They float to the top, and are skimmed and saved to make butter and whip cream. But these fat globules will annoyingly continue to separate and float to the top for a week or more – unless you homogenize the milk.

Curds come from the white protein in milk, called casein. With the help of the enzymes in rennet, or with acids like lemon juice or vinegar or with artificial FPC (Fermentation Produced Chymosin) - you can force milk to separate into curds & whey. The gelatin like curdles are strained off and drained, then slowly and gently pressed to remove the remaining moisture; to make cheese. Acids are only used for making soft cheeses; cottage cheese and cream cheese are examples of “acid set cheeses”.

Whey is the clear, watery liquid left behind after the casein has been removed. In older days the whey was just tossed out, or fed to pigs and chickens. But whey is where all the lactose is; and there are some little proteins left behind in whey as well.. These days the massive and industrialized food processing industries covet whey protein, and use it in a thousand different products.
BaconWizard wrote: Sat Oct 16, 2021 11:33 pm I just wanted to point-out that in yoghurt-making, one cooks the milk first (not to boiling, but above 85degC) which prevents it from forming curds...
The high-fat creams do not curdle as easily as milk and so are preferable for use in hot soups and sauces.

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I now think I should name a new novel or new batch of whisky; “The Crabtree Effect”).
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Re: Milk!

Post by Saltbush Bill »

Its hardly a new thing , this blokes been making vodka from whey for years now, probably before this thread started , he bought his first still for experimental purposes from someone on another forum from memory.
Pretty sure there are a fair few people doing it these days.
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Re: Milk!

Post by The Baker »

Contrahead said, '(The Baker's remark, about 'kluyveromyces marxianus' led me off on a long, distracting goose-chase.
I now think I should name a new novel or new batch of whisky; “The Crabtree Effect”).

I was looking for a source of cheap or free stuff to distil.
There are a couple of craft cheesemakers near home who would have whey to dispose of...

But the difficulty was the availabity of a suitable yeast. The sugar eating yeasts (saccharomyces) are common.

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Re: Milk!

Post by Chur »

Bearded and Bored did a video on Scottish Milk Wine recently. Might be of some interest? Breast Milk!?

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Re: Milk!

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The Baker wrote: Sun Oct 17, 2021 4:13 pm But the difficulty was the availabity of a suitable yeast. The sugar eating yeasts (saccharomyces) are common.
I've never heard of “Kluyveromyces marxianus” before. Thankyou.

When I say “led me off on a long, distracting goose-chase”, that's a good thing not a derogatory statement. But me going off on a tangent, to read article after article of new subject matter is a toil and stressful to this little ole head o mine. I don't have the necessary biochemical background to digest some of the deeper literature, and that's frustrating – because it inevitably leads me to more and more damn reading...

But the solution to breaking down the lactose in whey into a form that could be fermented into ethanol seems to be a simple one (disregarding kluyveromyces marxianus - which after reading a bit, seems to work just fine for this purpose).

Isn't that what the enzyme lactase does; breaks lactose down into glucose and galactose? So right there, S. cerevisiae yeast should be able (with the help of lactase) to ferment at least the glucose half of lactose sugar from milk whey. The “galactose” half of lactose might need different enzymatic persuasion before it too is eventually converted into glucose. Possibly, one or two members of the Kluyveromyces family can already do that.

Lactase can be produced and commercially extracted from yeasts, fungus molds and bacteria. Kluyveromyces marxianus, kluyveromyces lactis, aspergillus niger, aspergillus oryzae and bacillus circulans, can all be used to get lactase.
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Re: Milk!

Post by The Baker »

Wikipedia says,

'Industrial use
Lactase produced commercially can be extracted both from yeasts such as Kluyveromyces fragilis and Kluyveromyces lactis and from molds, such as Aspergillus niger and Aspergillus oryzae.'

Note. I believe K fragilis is another name for K Marxianus. If I remember right.

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Re: Milk!

Post by The Baker »

You can buy a 30 kg package of concentrated Lactase powder for Dairy Processing for six hundred dollars.

PER KILOGRAM.

Anyway that's how I read it on the web.

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Re: Milk!

Post by NormandieStill »

He he. The recent methanol discussion had me looking to see if I could get my hands on some pectin lyase. For the perfectly reasonable sum of 302EUR (not sure if that includes taxes) you can buy a whopping 100mg of pectin lyase. Not sure how much you'd need per kg of fruit, but you're going to need to be able to accurately measure to at least 1mg in order to use it. Enzymes are fun, but a little on the pricey side.

Normally you can get lactase in a usable form for the lactose-intolerant. Not sure whether you need a prescription for that though. I think you're going to need reliable, free access to a very large quantity of milk before this gets very interesting.
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Re: Milk!

Post by Bee »

Clabber is just sour milk. When I was getting fresh milk, I'd put it in a jar in a cabinet for a week, then drink....eat it.
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Re: Milk!

Post by contrahead »

Bee wrote: Fri Oct 22, 2021 8:32 am Clabber is just sour milk. When I was getting fresh milk, I'd put it in a jar in a cabinet for a week, then drink....eat it.
When I was a young kid and living on my grandfather's ranch, he milked his pet milk cow and kept fresh milk, cream, butter and buttermilk in the kitchen. He always kept a pitcher of cold buttermilk in the refrigerator. He drank his buttermilk straight and as a kid of 7 or 8, I could do that too. Couldn't do that now though.

  (True) normal old fashioned buttermilk is the liquid left behind after cream is churned into butter.  This thin liquid (which is like whey is it not?) is allowed to sit and ferment (from bacteria already present in the cream) for a time.  Alternatively: faux or cultured buttermilk – which is the only kind you can buy in a store, is made from simple low-fat or non-fat milk and is then acidified by introducing selected bacteria.  Cultured buttermilk is usually a little heavier, a little more sour and more like yogurt than is true old fashioned buttermilk.

Without a cow, a person can still make cultured buttermilk or yogurt at home.  The general method is to heat milk up to denaturing temperature (180º F) and then add the appropriate starter culture of bacteria as the milk cools.  The “starter culture” can be acquired by online or specialty store purchase, or by using some purchased cultured buttermilk or yogurt themselves – so long as these are plain and pure and do not contain preservatives.
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Re: Milk!

Post by NZChris »

To make cultured butter and buttermilk I use yoghurt for a starter in the cream, culture it until the acidity tastes about right then churn it. I don't bother pasteurizing the milk or the cream. I'm not a fan of whey, or buttermilk, so give it to friends who like it.
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Re: Milk!

Post by Nanacooks »

I’m so glad I found this post. I had posted a question about a milk based liquor a little while back. I see no updates have been made recently, but has anyone gone any further with this? My question came about as I saw many milk beers. After reading further I discovered it was powdered lactose being added for the sugar and maybe some mouthfeel. I have no personal experience with most beers, as I have only found like 2 that I could tolerate. The consensus I’ve come to is that I don’t like hopps. I like my hard liquor though. So I bypassed beer brewing and went straight to distilling.
I’d like to make a whiskey that contains some milk, or at least some milk essences. I don’t have anything to base it off of, so I cannot describe what I am looking for exactly. I may start off with a milk wine and do some blending.
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Re: Milk!

Post by Ben »

Try adding a little lactose to your finished whiskey, or even a touch in a commercial whiskey. It may give you what you are after.
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Re: Milk!

Post by contrahead »

Nanacooks wrote: Wed Feb 08, 2023 10:03 am I’d like to make a whiskey that contains some milk, or at least some milk essences. I don’t have anything to base it off of, so I cannot describe what I am looking for exactly. I may start off with a milk wine and do some blending.
I assume you've tried a cream liqueur - like 'Bailey's Irish Cream' for instance? (My favorite wintertime "Après-ski" drink was- a Baileys, Brandy and Coffee, with a dollop of whipped cream on top. After a hard day I could gulp down about 4 before slowing down).

There are several links to recipes here for making your own cream liqueur.
* A common theme to the cream liqueur recipes in this forum is that most people can't keep their cream in suspension, during storage. However HBNB suggest using (Ultra High Temperature) cream in the 15% fat range, to keep ABV below 50%, and pH high (7.2 – 7.5) range. Of course it's called "cream" liqueur for a reason. Cream = Fat. Whole milk is only about 3.5 percent fat.

{Baileys probably uses an emulsifier; I would bet that sodium caseinate is the one they use. (However there are many other emulsifiers: calcium caseinate, sodium citrate, sodium and potassium phosphates or tartrates, lecithin, polyglycerol esters (PGE), polysorbates, stearoyl lactylates, propylene glycol esters (PGMS), sucrose esters and sunflower derived ammonium phosphatide (AMP)}.


If a liqueur is not what you are looking for then I have a couple of footnotes that might be helpful.

1) Beers are not fermented with milk; but are fermented from water and barley (mostly) and then lactose from milk plasma (whey) is added to sweeten the beer. Because normal beer yeast can not ferment lactose, this modest sweeter remains behind. It is doubtful that lactose contributes any “mouthfeel”; that might be better accomplished by adding whey protein powder.

2) Alcoholic drinks made from milk are better classified as wines rather than as beers (because of the lack of grain).
Kefir is a SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria and Yeast); a low wine made from fermented milk.
SCOBYs or kefirs like the Mongol or Turkic “Kumis” or “Ayrag” were fermented from horses milk. Horse, donkey and camel milks lack kappa casein, which means that they do not clot or curdle and won't make cheese. But these milks are high in lactose sugar – so they make wine. These people (primitive Turkic tribes) may have been the first distillers in history.
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