When making cheese from milk, you keep the curds and discard the whey. That seems wasteful, and so Dr. Paul Hughes of Oregon State University developed a way to make hay of that whey. Instead of paying to have it hauled off, dairies could ferment that whey and make it into distilled spirits. The process is both sustainable and profitable.
Todd Koch, owner of TMK Creamery in the rolling hills of Oregon’s Willamette Valley, remembers reading about Hughes’s work in the newspaper early last year. Large, corporate-owned creameries can afford the expensive equipment that converts whey into profitable products such as protein powder. But at his family-owned, 20-cow farmstand creamery, Koch and his wife simply fed their whey into the fields through a nutrient management system. Rather than continue to bury the byproduct, Koch decided to ferment as a means of profitably upcycling the whey while bringing visibility to his animals. He teamed up with Dr. Hughes and a nearby distiller to manufacture the creamery’s newest product: a clear, vodka-like liquor they call “Cowcohol.”
They aren't alone. Several other small family dairies are trying the same thing, with one calling their product “Vodkow.” Read about dairy vodka at Atlas Obscura.