Wine made from milk

[Peggy Billingsley]

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.

6 tablets or 6 Tablespoons? I am unsure of what form your lactase is in. 6 for what volume of pasteurized whey? If you pasteurize the whey to get rid of the bacteria/yeast from the milk acidification and you add a fermentable sugar (such as honey or cane sugar) but don’t break down the lactose, would you end up with a sweeter wine at the end of fermentation? If the fermentable sugar is all used up, how do you think the lactose would affect the hydrometer reading at the end?

 

[Peggy Billingsley]

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?

I am really just looking for a good wine mouthfeel, not a particularly thick liquid.

 

[Raptor99]

I haven't tried this yet, but here are my thoughts:

If you pasteurize the whey to get rid of the bacteria/yeast from the milk acidification and you add a fermentable sugar (such as honey or cane sugar) but don’t break down the lactose, would you end up with a sweeter wine at the end of fermentation?

Yes, some people add lactose for back sweetening as a non-fermentable sugar. This is what I want to try. You can experiment with how much whey you want to add per gallon to achieve your desired level of sweetness.

If the fermentable sugar is all used up, how do you think the lactose would affect the hydrometer reading at the end?

Yes. Anything dissolved in the wine will affect the hydrometer reading. So if I was adding whey to my wine, and not trying to ferment the lactose, I would do something like this:
* Measure the SG before adding any sugar/honey/fruit. This is the SG level of lactose and other things dissolved in the whey
* Calculate the amount of sugar/honey/fruit to add to achieve my target ABV
* Mix it up and measure the OG, then add the yeast, etc.
* Expect the final SG reading to be a litttle bit lower than the SG before adding sugar/honeyfruit. That is because ethanol will lower the SG.
* You can calculate the final ABV by using the OG (including sugar/fruit/honey) and the final SG.

 

[BernardSmith]

If I take a reading before I add sugar, the whey is usually around 1.020. I generally get about 1lb 4 oz of cheese from a gallon of milk and about 7 pints of whey. I gotta say that I work hard to get most of the solids out of the milk into the cheese, so that when I make my hard cheese, I cannot get any ricotta from the whey - and if I could that would increase the gravity of the whey. Twenty points of sugar (unfermentable) seems about right.
Regarding the number of lactase tablets I crush and add to the milk before I pitch the yeast, it's 6. I have no good sense of how many I need to break down the lactose in the whey, but I have been going by the assumption that if most people who are lactose intolerant take 9000 units before they eat a dairy meal (3 tabs) then a gallon of why may need 6 tabs... But I could be way off. Rice_Guy may know the answer to that.

I have to say that most wines you make are likely to have a reasonably good mouthfeel , not like eating ice-cream, or drinking a glass of whole fat milk.. but good mouthfeel for a wine. A drink that slides down your throat as it coats you mouth and tongue.

 

[Peggy Billingsley]

I haven't tried this yet, but here are my thoughts:

Yes, some people add lactose for back sweetening as a non-fermentable sugar. This is what I want to try. You can experiment with how much whey you want to add per gallon to achieve your desired level of sweetness.

Yes. Anything dissolved in the wine will affect the hydrometer reading. So if I was adding whey to my wine, and not trying to ferment the lactose, I would do something like this:
* Measure the SG before adding any sugar/honey/fruit. This is the SG level of lactose and other things dissolved in the whey
* Calculate the amount of sugar/honey/fruit to add to achieve my target ABV
* Mix it up and measure the OG, then add the yeast, etc.
* Expect the final SG reading to be a litttle bit lower than the SG before adding sugar/honeyfruit. That is because ethanol will lower the SG.
* You can calculate the final ABV by using the OG (including sugar/fruit/honey) and the final SG.

so let me get this straight. If my OG of the whey is 1.020 as Bernard says his usually is in his post below, and I wanted a 12% ABV which would normally be read by the hydrometer as 1.090, then if I added the 1077 g sugar necessary for this, my OG should actually read, 1.110. And if it fermented to dry it would stop at around 1.020 or a little less.

 

[Peggy Billingsley]

If I take a reading before I add sugar, the whey is usually around 1.020. I generally get about 1lb 4 oz of cheese from a gallon of milk and about 7 pints of whey. I gotta say that I work hard to get most of the solids out of the milk into the cheese, so that when I make my hard cheese, I cannot get any ricotta from the whey - and if I could that would increase the gravity of the whey. Twenty points of sugar (unfermentable) seems about right.
Regarding the number of lactase tablets I crush and add to the milk before I pitch the yeast, it's 6. I have no good sense of how many I need to break down the lactose in the whey, but I have been going by the assumption that if most people who are lactose intolerant take 9000 units before they eat a dairy meal (3 tabs) then a gallon of why may need 6 tabs... But I could be way off. Rice_Guy may know the answer to that.

I have to say that most wines you make are likely to have a reasonably good mouthfeel , not like eating ice-cream, or drinking a glass of whole fat milk.. but good mouthfeel for a wine. A drink that slides down your throat as it coats you mouth and tongue.

Which method of cheese making gets rid of the most milk solids culturing or acidification? Could I make yogurt using yogurt with live cultures and get enough whey or would I have to buy special cheese cultures and make a hard cheese? If I made a soft cheese thru acidification, I guess I would have to use lemon juice, as I don't think vinegar would be a safe thing to incorporate into a recipe to make wine. I have never made hard cheese, but I tried soft cheese a few times. Is there any other process to obtain the whey?

 

[Raptor99]

so let me get this straight. If my OG of the whey is 1.020 as Bernard says his usually is in his post below, and I wanted a 12% ABV which would normally be read by the hydrometer as 1.090, then if I added the 1077 g sugar necessary for this, my OG should actually read, 1.110. And if it fermented to dry it would stop at around 1.020 or a little less.

There might be other factors, but I think it would work something like that. With unfermentable sugars present, you won't get the SG down below 1.000. Try it and take notes!

 

[Peggy Billingsley]

There might be other factors, but I think it would work something like that. With unfermentable sugars present, you won't get the SG down below 1.000. Try it and take notes!

Thanks, now to decide how to produce the whey, or maybe I should use the non-fat milk Tracy the original poster is trying.

 

[ChuckD]

My first thought when I saw the title of this thread was … milk wine? Really? But the responses have been excellent and I’ve definitely learned a few things. This why I like this Forum.

 

[Jovimaple]

This why I like this blog.

 

[Rice_Guy]

Thanks, now to decide how to produce the whey, or maybe I should use the non-fat milk Tracy the original poster is trying.

There is a nutritional product “Whey” at some grocery stores. The ones I looked at yesterday tend to have added sucralose or aspartamine or chocolate or vanilla. For a coffee design chocolate may work. For the dairy state we have artesian cheese makers and folks making calf milk replacer.
NonFatDryMilk would work, it has casein that would need to be cleaned out.

 

[Ty520]

i researched blaand for a while before giving it a go.

Here are some of my findings:

interestingly i found that cheesemakers who decided to dabble in winemaking to make blaand were able to produce a (seemingly) better product than winemakers who decided to dabble in cheesemaking to get the whey to make the blaand.

The cheesemakers described the final product as reminiscent of chardonnay; the winemakers, on the other hand described their product as tasting like parmesan.

My running theory is that the cheesemakers were better able to remove all the curds to make a cleaner product.

So I opted to go completely pure:

I fermented only pure lactose, using lactase to break down it down and make it fermentable, and was able to achieve 87% efficiency, leaving about 12 gravity points or residual sweetness.

so far it is young. but surprisingly OK - i will drink it. I think the "chardonnay" description from the cheesemakers is simply due to the high lactic acid content.

I think I will sit it on some neutral oak. It is pleasant and interesting, but a bit one dimensional.

took a really long time to finish fermentation too - i think because the lactase took a while to breakdown the lactose over time while simultaneously fermenting as it went.