Whey Whey don't tell me.

[bernardsmith]

Here's an experimental recipe that uses the whey from a batch of squeaky curd cheese in place of water. What I am looking for is a mead version of a lactic sour beer. Whey has some lactose (milk sugars) to which some folk have an intolerance but some of the lactose will have been converted into lactic acid because of the ripening of the milk through the use of cultures added to acidify the liquid before adding any coagulant (vegetable rennet). pH of the whey is about 5.9 (fresh milk has a pH of about 6.6). But your whey may be different (I culture with home made kefir)

About 7 pints of whey (residual from 1 gallon of whole milk)
1 T each of mugwort, sweet gale, yarrow, heather tips, crushed coriander
2 lbs Eucalyptus honey
Belle Saison yeast
1/2 t nutrients
1 t tannin
4 oz roasted cracked/crushed cocoa beans
(possibly 1 oz of chocolate malt)

Method:
Allow whey to stand overnight to further acidify
Boil whey (likely to foam so a large kettle is needed)
Tie gruit herbs in a muslin bag and toss in kettle for 15 minutes.
Allow whey to cool to room temperature.
Remove bag of herbs
Rehydrate yeast according to instructions
Mix honey with whey (I use a blender to aerate the mix) and add to fermenter
Add a small measure of must to yeast to align temperature of must and yeast to within 10F of each other
Pitch yeast solution
Add nutrients
Add tannin
I like Belle Saison fermenting at higher temperatures so I add a heating belt to my carboy and cover the whole shebang with a heavy towel.
Allow to ferment "dry" (dryness will depend on the amount of lactose remaining) - probably two weeks (+/-)
Fill sanitized secondary with 4 oz cocoa beans
Rack mead onto beans
Check taste after two weeks ; repeat until flavor is as desired.
Rack off beans
Allow to clear bright
Taste: if sweet enough prime with 20 g sugar and bottle; if too dry bench test with added lactose; prime with 20 g sugar and bottle

 

[Kent88]

I've been meaning to make a lactomel, but I was just going to use whey from homemade Mozzarella that I hadn't tried to acidify. My theory is that the whey proteins and maybe some lipids would act as a yeast nutrient. Nothing to do with acidity.

Do you have the means to take pH measurements before and after you let the whey sit overnight? I would think that letting it sit so long would drop the pH a little, but I don't know if it would make a huge difference.

 

[passedpawn]

Thread title is a spin on the NPR show, right?

Regarding the recipe and stuff, so far out there I don't know how to comment.

 

[RPh_Guy]

I love sours. Have you guys tried anything like this?
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/lambic-sour-and-funky-mead-making-pt-1.html

Or are you going for more of a clean sour? Your recipe looks really interesting!

 

[bernardsmith]

@Kent88 - I do have the means to take a pH readings but I use cultures to ripen the cheeses I make and those cultures acidify the milk. I took a pH reading of a batch of whey I used for the gruit lactomel and the pH was 5.9 and this was whey from a squeaky (cheddared) curd I made with the ripening lasting about 1 hour and the whey being used for the mead about 20 hours later. (you want squeaky curds to have a pH of about 6.1)

But Moz needs to be acidified (It MUST be between 5.2 and 5.4 - Fresh milk is between 6.5 and 6.7) and If you use lemon juice or vinegar that is what you are doing. I use cultures (from kefir) for all my cheeses and the cultures acidify the milk by converting some of the lactose to lactic acid.

 

[Kent88]

My wife uses rennet and the appropriate cultures. Where does the lemon juice or vinegar come into play?

You only use kefir cultures? You aren't aging your cheese, are you?

 

[bernardsmith]

I don't know that Mozzarella uses rennet. You need to acidify the milk to enable it to stretch. If the acidity is too little or too much the cheese does not stretch. Many folk who make the "30 minute" Moz use acidifiers such as lemon juice or vinegar. Those who are looking for a more complex flavor use cultures.
Kefir (home made using grains) contains dozens of cultures some are thermophilic others are mesophilic (high temp , low temp respectively) including all kinds of cultures that you look for in cheeses with surface cultures. (see David Asher's excellent book on making cheese The Art of Natural Cheesemaking)

 

[Kent88]

Just double checked here; citric acid, lemon juice, for some reason it didn't click in my brain.

I forgot, although in my defense I did ask my wife (and she is the one who actually makes cheese) and she seemed puzzled by why you'd add vinegar or lemon juice, but in her defense she was almost asleep. Also, she has pretty much been trained as a grader so she might have a very good reason for why vinegar and lemon juice aren't good things to add to your cheese, there might be some odd flavor that they contribute or something that you don't get from citric acid.

We don't use cultures for 30-minute mozz. I think I've heard that some will add cultures to mozzarella, but I'm not entirely sure. We use mesophilic cultures when we make cheddar. We like Janet Hurst's book Homemade Cheese.

So have you made this lactomel yet? I am very curious to see how this turns out.

 

[bernardsmith]

Citric acid is also an acid that folk add (I forgot about that because I don't add acids - I allow the milk to acidify through the work of bacterial cultures - It's the same thing as using cultures to pickle vegetables vs adding vinegars and the like). You cannot use cultures IF your approach to Moz is quick and dirty. It takes about 24 hours or more to acidify the milk sufficiently to produce a Moz when you add bacterial cultures).
As to the lactomel: I am in the middle of making this. Started one batch on 5/13 and a second 5/16. The 5/13 batch was from whey from a blue cheese I began and the second batch was from a squeaky curd cheese I made. My plan is to taste the batches tonight to see how they are doing. I am also very curious - it would be wonderful if these batches met my expectations...I've made lactomels before using milk rather than whey and those have taken more than a year to be drinkable -BUT none of my earlier batches were back sweetened. These batches (made with whey, not milk) I intend to back sweeten AND add fruit or cocoa etc.

 

[bernardsmith]

Just tasted this and it has a unique flavor profile. There is something quite delicious about this - there is a sharp flavor that lingers with the perceived sweetness that comes with the honey. Don't see this being for everyone but IMO it suggests that this will be very drinkable.