Wine made from milk

[Tracy Poe]

I make a very successful milk wine. The ingredients are 1 gallon fat free milk--(Whole milk makes a lot of farmers cheese) 7 cups sugar--(you can't correctly read a hydrometer in milk but 7 cups of sugar per gallon works fine), 1 can lime aid frozen concentrate--(milk wine has good body but the lime aid adds needed acid), 1 Camden tablet--3 pounds mashed jalapenos in cheese cloth. Ferment 6 days in a bucket, six weeks in carboys then six months in carboys then bottle and age six months. I designed this as a cooking wine but many of my friends like to drink it. I have successfully made it for years now. You can basically make milk wine with any sugar wine recipe just replace the water with skim milk.

 

[cmason1957]

What is the benefit of using milk at $3 or more / gallon to using water that is almost free or, if I have to buy it at the store is $0.89 / gallon?

 

[Tracy Poe]

In my experience, the milk gives the wine body so that you do not need as much fruit. As long as you compensate for the lack of acid you are good to go. It should be noted that my end product was designed as a cooking wine and new bottles for bottling cost more than the wine inside. Many of my friends and family like to drink it and it has a very good flavor if you don't mind jalapeno. I used Red Star Champagne yeast and the only fruit in mine is 3 pounds ground up jalapenos and a can of lime aid per gallon. My best results came from using 7 cups of sugar per gallon.

I have seen in other forums where people played with making wine with milk but nothing serious. I have been successfully making jalapeno milk wine since the early 1990s and wanted to post about it here because it is no big mystery and milk makes a lovely wine as long as you add an acid.

It is not for everybody but it is easy to do successfully and is surprisingly quite good.

 

[BernardSmith]

Hi Tracy Poe and welcome. I have been experimenting making wine using the whey left over from my cheese making and the pH of this whey suggests that the whey is quite acidic... (I make hard cheese and so add cultures to the milk which acidify the whey but that whey is known as sweet whey, but you can add say, lemon juice to make soft cheese and that produces what is called an acidic whey). But here's the thing: normal wine making yeast cannot ferment lactose (milk sugars) so none of the lactose is going to be fermented (I have been experimenting with the use of yeasts that are in the "consortium" known as kefir grains and that scoby does contain K-marxianus and K-marxianus is a yeast that can ferment lactose... Whey has a gravity of about 20 points (1.020) so in principle one COULD simply add enough lactose to water to raise the gravity by 20 points and then add the rest of your ingredients.

 

[Tracy Poe]

Thank you for your reply Mr. Smith. It is refreshing to see someone who has seriously made wine from dairy. I have seen only one other blog post where a guy made wine from milk. It is not a popular pastime. I would love to make wine from whey like you describe. I believe that this is how people make it in Mongolia (mare's milk) and Tibet (yak's milk), two of the places I found that make a wine from milk. I never even thought about fermenting the milk fat with special yeast like you describe because by my second try I opted for fat free milk to avoid making a byproduct of curds. I find your expertise on the subject very impressive and I thank you for sharing this knowledge with me. I believe milk as a wine medium is grossly underappreciated as most wine makers are put off by the inevitable ick-factor generated by the unusual ingredient and rarely take it past halfhearted experimentation. In my experience milk wine works fine and it the least expensive wine recipe I have ever crafted. I believe my last batch was right at $1.33 a bottle making the bottles and zork closures more expensive at about $1.50 per unit.

 

[BernardSmith]

Not sure that I consider myself an "expert" on milk wine, but there is one thing that I would disagree with in your reference to milk fat. The fat in milk is great for cheese but what you are doing when you make cheese - or wine FROM milk - as opposed to making wine ON milk is you are converting sugars - not the fat - in the milk - to alcohol. Wine, beer, and bread yeast for the most part all belong to the same strain: c. Saccharomyces ,and C. Sacc cannot ferment lactose. Kumis - the Mongolian horse milk wine is a wine made from lactose, as is an old Scottish wine known as blaand. I am not certain how either was made but I am certain that both the Mongolians and the Scots used yeast strains that were capable of fermenting lactose (brewers use lactose in milk stouts because the lactose adds mouthfeel, sweetness and cannot be fermented by ale yeast. I suspect that the Mongolians used pouches that had been inoculated with k.Marxianus cells and the Scots likely used wooden kegs as their fermenters that had been inoculated with strains of Brettanomyces some of which can ferment lactose and which also love the sugars found in wood.

All that said, there is a pleasant "brightness" to wines made from whey perhaps because of the presence of lactic acid (lactic bacteria will compete with yeast to convert lactose to lactic acid, so sweet whey from cheese making has a large colony of lactic bacteria (we ripen the milk with bacterial cultures before we add rennet) and unless the whey is pasteurized these cultures will continue to acidify the whey. Those who make soft cheese typically add acids (citric?) rather than cultures and that whey called acidic whey will not continue to acidify (so whatever the pH of the soft cheese is, will be the pH of the whey even days or weeks later.

But here's the rub: if you make wine using full fat milk the yeast, as it ferments any added fermentable sugars, will acidify the milk enough to cause the milk to clabber and the curds that that clabbering produce are deliciously sweet and so can be used for a delightful soft cheese dessert. So if you are interested in experimenting with full fat milk I would use a bucket as your primary fermenter and not a carboy: you want to have a good method of removing those curds and leaving the whey behind..

 

[Peggy Billingsley]

Not sure that I consider myself an "expert" on milk wine, but there is one thing that I would disagree with in your reference to milk fat. The fat in milk is great for cheese but what you are doing when you make cheese - or wine FROM milk - as opposed to making wine ON milk is you are converting sugars - not the fat - in the milk - to alcohol. Wine, beer, and bread yeast for the most part all belong to the same strain: c. Saccharomyces ,and C. Sacc cannot ferment lactose. Kumis - the Mongolian horse milk wine is a wine made from lactose, as is an old Scottish wine known as blaand. I am not certain how either was made but I am certain that both the Mongolians and the Scots used yeast strains that were capable of fermenting lactose (brewers use lactose in milk stouts because the lactose adds mouthfeel, sweetness and cannot be fermented by ale yeast. I suspect that the Mongolians used pouches that had been inoculated with k.Marxianus cells and the Scots likely used wooden kegs as their fermenters that had been inoculated with strains of Brettanomyces some of which can ferment lactose and which also love the sugars found in wood.

All that said, there is a pleasant "brightness" to wines made from whey perhaps because of the presence of lactic acid (lactic bacteria will compete with yeast to convert lactose to lactic acid, so sweet whey from cheese making has a large colony of lactic bacteria (we ripen the milk with bacterial cultures before we add rennet) and unless the whey is pasteurized these cultures will continue to acidify the whey. Those who make soft cheese typically add acids (citric?) rather than cultures and that whey called acidic whey will not continue to acidify (so whatever the pH of the soft cheese is, will be the pH of the whey even days or weeks later.

But here's the rub: if you make wine using full fat milk the yeast, as it ferments any added fermentable sugars, will acidify the milk enough to cause the milk to clabber and the curds that that clabbering produce are deliciously sweet and so can be used for a delightful soft cheese dessert. So if you are interested in experimenting with full fat milk I would use a bucket as your primary fermenter and not a carboy: you want to have a good method of removing those curds and leaving the whey behind..

Have you ever made a whey wine with a fruit addition? I would like to try to make blaand, but add some berries to create a kind of berry cream wine flavor.

 

[Rice_Guy]

@Peggy Billingsley whey has had the casein removed (typically via acid) therefore it should survive the addition of acidic fruit. , , , go for it.
Lactose (milk sugar) is not fermentable by the cultures which are sold for producing fruit based wines. In my younger days I would call Marshall Labs which sells dairy cultures, (currently owned by Dow?) to see what they have that metabolizes lactose. A second approach would be add beta glucosidase (Lactaid active ingredient) to break down the lactose into a fermentable sugar.
Wine typically contains alcohol. The proteins which are in whey should survive 12 or 20% alcohol. Wine is typically produced at pH 3 to 3.5. Cheese whey is about 2 so the proteins should survive, wine yeast don't like below 2.8 so plan on some pH adjustment.
I am trying to conceive how this would taste. ,,, and I don’t come up with creamy. Th build creamy the first way would be to emulsify a fat into the beverage as with a homoginizer. Option two would be to use a bipolar like lecithin to mix the fat in. Next we move toward weight reduction creaming agents like dextrose.
. . . I am still trying to conceive how this would taste, , , a lot of the berries and cream taste is sugar, , , how would it taste with sugar fermented out? , , , At work we would make a test system as whey powder and grain alcohol and a test fruit before we schedule plant time to make actual product. Interesting project.

 

[Raptor99]

Th build creamy the first way would be to emulsify a fat into the beverage as with a homoginizer. Option two would be to use a bipolar like lecithin to mix the fat in.

I am interested in this idea. I am experimenting with chocolate wine, and I was wondering if I could give it a "creamy" finish reminiscent of hot chocolate. Of course I would need to back sweeten it as well, probably to be a dessert wine. I had wondered if it would work to add some powdered milk + lecithin. Lactose would make it sweet, but I don't know if it would give a creamy feel.

What sort of homogenizer would you use, and how would you do it?

Adding whey is an interesting idea. I may need to experiment with that.

 

[Rice_Guy]

NFDM (milk powder) has casein. When/ if you acidify it you will make cheese curd.
A homogenized is basically a piston pump that pushes milk through a valve that adjusted to about 5000psig. You can’t do this at home. The fat content in milk is what provides the creamy feel. ,,, You are looking for a slippery mouth feel. Would have to check the literature but some gums can give smooth mouth feel and waxy starches (ex waxy rice from the oriental grocery store) will and dextrins from waxy starch.

 

[Raptor99]

I had to look this up. I learned that casein is one of two types of proteins in milk. I found a useful comparison here: Whey vs Milk - In-Depth Nutrition Comparison Whey has a lot less protein then milk, and about 1/3 of the fat. The carbs are nearly the same, so maybe the whey contains as much lactose as milk.

So it seems that adding a certain amount of whey to wine would (1) add some fat, and (2) add some lactose. If I got the amounts right, it might improve the mount feel and eliminate the need for back sweetening. It seems like it is worth experimenting with this!

 

[Raptor99]

I just found these instructions for making Blaand: Make Blaand - Scottish Fermented Whey Wine

This article outlines a plan to make cranberry whey wine: Making Wine with Whey In the comments, the author says that he made two attempts, but neither one was drinkable. So there are some challenges.

There are some good ideas here: UTILIZATION OF CHEESE WHEY FOR WINE PRODUCTION | Science Inventory | US EPA

There are also a few yeasts that can convert lactose into ethanol: Kluyveromyces marxianus - Wikipedia

 

[Rice_Guy]

There are some good ideas here: UTILIZATION OF CHEESE WHEY FOR WINE PRODUCTION | Science Inventory | US EPA

Whey is defined as the liquid which is left after removing easily coagulated proteins but not soluble proteins. (as coagulated with acid). I like the observation about whey acting as a yeast nutrient.

 

[Peggy Billingsley]

@Peggy Billingsley whey has had the casein removed (typically via acid) therefore it should survive the addition of acidic fruit. , , , go for it.
Lactose (milk sugar) is not fermentable by the cultures which are sold for producing fruit based wines. In my younger days I would call Marshall Labs which sells dairy cultures, (currently owned by Dow?) to see what they have that metabolizes lactose. A second approach would be add beta glucosidase (Lactaid active ingredient) to break down the lactose into a fermentable sugar.
Wine typically contains alcohol. The proteins which are in whey should survive 12 or 20% alcohol. Wine is typically produced at pH 3 to 3.5. Cheese whey is about 2 so the proteins should survive, wine yeast don't like below 2.8 so plan on some pH adjustment.
I am trying to conceive how this would taste. ,,, and I don’t come up with creamy. Th build creamy the first way would be to emulsify a fat into the beverage as with a homoginizer. Option two would be to use a bipolar like lecithin to mix the fat in. Next we move toward weight reduction creaming agents like dextrose.
. . . I am still trying to conceive how this would taste, , , a lot of the berries and cream taste is sugar, , , how would it taste with sugar fermented out? , , , At work we would make a test system as whey powder and grain alcohol and a test fruit before we schedule plant time to make actual product. Interesting project.

Do you think you could stabilize and backsweeten so that you retain the slightly sweet blueberry flavor? Or could you make the milk wine with added sugar and not break down the lactose and retain some sweetness from that?

If you wanted to break down the lactose to fermentable sugars could you add a lactaid tablet? How many to what volume of whey do you think?

 

[Rice_Guy]

* Using table sugar or invert sugar as the fermentation energy for Saccharomyces would work. The yeast would use the sugar they can metabolize and leave the rest. You may have bacteria which start alongside the yeast and try fermenting the lactose. They should die off/ stop when you get above 5% ABV. Anyway I would use a sugar calculator to target the original gravity and not add sugar against the hydrometer reading. ,,, (when thinking on this I think I will try this with a cold brew coffee wine) ,,,
* Yes any fruit flavors should react like they would in a water based system.
* Lactade does contain the lactose enzyme. I have not looked at this product to see what they suggest. You are pushing me decades back to remember how many IU of enzyme activity per gram I had from the supplier. General enzymes are potent and over time can react a lot of mass. Enzyme activity is based on having the proper conformation, I expect that as alcohol is produced their IU of activity decreases. The assumption is that for every ten degree C increase in temperature the reaction rate doubles. ,,, At least up to the temperature where denaturation occurs. Liquid milk has been pasteurized and should have a two week shelf life with storage at thirty five F or less.

Note; I do not expect much creamy mouth feel with whey. I would build that back in at bottling. The only thickener I have used in wine was gum arabic, so that is what I would start with. Zanthan gum is available in the organic foods section, therefore I would try it also (note high levels of zanthan produce a long texture (snot like)).

 

[Peggy Billingsley]

* Using table sugar or invert sugar as the fermentation energy for Saccharomyces would work. The yeast would use the sugar they can metabolize and leave the rest. You may have bacteria which start alongside the yeast and try fermenting the lactose. They should die off/ stop when you get above 5% ABV. Anyway I would use a sugar calculator to target the original gravity and not add sugar against the hydrometer reading. ,,, (when thinking on this I think I will try this with a cold brew coffee wine) ,,,
* Yes any fruit flavors should react like they would in a water based system.
* Lactade does contain the lactose enzyme. I have not looked at this product to see what they suggest. You are pushing me decades back to remember how many IU of enzyme activity per gram I had from the supplier. General enzymes are potent and over time can react a lot of mass. Enzyme activity is based on having the proper conformation, I expect that as alcohol is produced their IU of activity decreases. The assumption is that for every ten degree C increase in temperature the reaction rate doubles. ,,, At least up to the temperature where denaturation occurs. Liquid milk has been pasteurized and should have a two week shelf life with storage at thirty five F or less.

Note; I do not expect much creamy mouth feel with whey. I would build that back in at bottling. The only thickener I have used in wine was gum arabic, so that is what I would start with. Zanthan gum is available in the organic foods section, therefore I would try it also (note high levels of zanthan produce a long texture (snot like)).

When using xantham gum do you need to add it to a hot liquid to get it to dissolve without being snotty. How much would you add to start? Do you think it would change over time during bottle aging? Asking because I actually have it.

 

[Rice_Guy]

* zanthan is soluble cold, ex some formulations are designed to mix into geriatric beverages to improve swallowing efficiency
* how much? I would need to do bench trials. As a comparison Pembachi suggested 2.5 to 7.5 grams of gum Arabic per five gallon. At 5 gm Arabic I couldn’t detect a viscosity difference in red wine. but one of the advantages on gum Arabic is that you don’t get weird textures even at high usage rates. ,,, med supplies probably give a higher starting point on how many grams zanthan is dosed into a drink.
* the viscosity should be stable. Zanthan mainly shows temperature related thinning.

 

[Peggy Billingsley]

* zanthan is soluble cold, ex some formulations are designed to mix into geriatric beverages to improve swallowing efficiency
* how much? I would need to do bench trials. As a comparison Pembachi suggested 2.5 to 7.5 grams of gum Arabic per five gallon. At 5 gm Arabic I couldn’t detect a viscosity difference in red wine. but one of the advantages on gum Arabic is that you don’t get weird textures even at high usage rates. ,,, med supplies probably give a higher starting point on how many grams zanthan is dosed into a drink.
* the viscosity should be stable. Zanthan mainly shows temperature related thinning.

thanks

 

[BernardSmith]

I just found these instructions for making Blaand: Make Blaand - Scottish Fermented Whey Wine

This article outlines a plan to make cranberry whey wine: Making Wine with Whey In the comments, the author says that he made two attempts, but neither one was drinkable. So there are some challenges.

There are some good ideas here: UTILIZATION OF CHEESE WHEY FOR WINE PRODUCTION | Science Inventory | US EPA

There are also a few yeasts that can convert lactose into ethanol: Kluyveromyces marxianus - Wikipedia

Not sure that K. marxianus is sold to home wine makers. It is found in Kefir grains and I use kefir from my grains to inoculate my milk when I make cheese. (see for example, David Asher's The Art of Natural Cheesemaking (Chelsea Green 2015). but I have no lab skills and no tools to isolate K. marx and grow a large enough colony. What I do is add a few (6 tabs) of lactase to the whey after I pasteurize it - because I use bacterial and yeast cultures to acidify the milk and not an acid the cultures will continue to convert some of the lactose in the whey to lactic acid and so they will be competing with the lactase for the fermentable sugars. I typically add about 2 lbs of sugar to the whey and so have a must at about 1.100 or higher.

 

[BernardSmith]

thanks

I gotta think - and I am speaking for myself - apart from Advocaat (a Dutch egg based brandy,) I find it hard to imagine enjoying a wine whose viscosity is similar to whole milk., but yeast that produce glucoside, (DV 10, for example) or a sweeter wine will have more viscosity - but I wonder if adding egg yolks might create the viscosity that those looking for a thicker drink might want?