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                              Est. 5th Feb 2021

🍾 Blaand - whey wine

Blurb:

Okay, I'm really excited about this little experiment. Good thing is that I got a recipe, so it should work. Fingers crossed.

Apparently, blaand is a big deal in the dark ages, vikings used to give it to babies as their first drink and to dying people as their last. So it's got some ritualistic, historical significance. And is still somewhat common in Scotland. I just find it a very interesting so I decided to make it. And a by-product of making blaand is cheese. So that's nice.

This is more complex, like an actual recipe, bare that in mind. Oh, you'll need some kind of cloth to sieve the curdles.

Ingredients:

2l full-fat fresh milk
1 1/2 cup of sugar
1/3 cup of lemon juice (or lime, or a spoon of citric acid)
1/2 teaspoon of bread yeast
1 crushed pill of lactanon

Method:

Clean everything.
Pour the milk in a pot and heat up on a stove. Or a hob. Or whatever. Stirring. When it's smoking hot, pour the lemon/acid into it, stir and watch it all curdle up. Funky, eh? If it didn't, get it hotter, maybe add a little bit more lemon/acid.
Turn the heat off, put a lid on it and let sit for like quarter an hour. Time for a nice cuppa tea.
Now's time to separate the curd from the whey. I put cheesecloth in a strainer and into a big bowl and pour everything into it. Let it drip for a while. Good time for another tea. As good a time as any. Put the curd aside for a bit, we'll deal with that later.
Mix sugar into the whey and pour it in a fermenting vessel - i.e. bottle. When it cools down to reasonable temperature, pitch yeast in and set off in warm, dark place with loose lid.

Now the curd. I just put it in a mason jar with a little bit of salt mixed into it. Left in a fridge until I figure out what to do with it or until I just gobble it up.

It's got a wicked crazy colour, doesn't it? And have you tasted it? It's kinda nice, innit? I'm really curious about the finished product.

Note:

Somebody suggested "lactaid" enzyme. But those fancy things are not available locally. And apparently, pills for lactose intolerance are just that. Because lactose (the milky thing that makes milk milk) isn't digestible by the yeast. So it'll stay a bit "milky" and sweet and stuff. But with the enzyme can digest that and the yeast would eat it just fine and turn it into more booze.

Conclusion:

It's interesting. The taste is surprisingly complex and I'm not sure what to think of it. It's got very rich and fruity sweetness of the whey and under that the alcoholic acidity, it's very odd. Notice I didn't say it's bad. It's really not bad. It's just strange. Last night I put a ground tablet of lactanon (containing lactose enzyme) in it to eat the leftovers and it did clear out and sweetened up a bit. Yesterday I tasted a faint reminants of sour milk in it but today that's almost completely gone. I'm sure it'll get better with a bit of time.

Would I recommend it? Yes I would. It's a cool experiment if nothing else. But the flavour is just hard to describe. And as I said, it's not bad. I can see myself developing a taste for it. And during the process of making whey you also make a bit of cheese, so that's cool.

It's supposed to get really nice aged so I'm setting it off, bottled.

Traditionally, there are two ways of drinking blaand, Young and Old - Young has not been set aside to mature and is a much lighter and easier drink, ideal for summers and paired with light seafood or salad dishes. Old blaand develops an oakiness and a certain depth that is akin to guiness and best paired with a coal fire in the midsts of winter.