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A yeast to ferment lactose?

edited February 2014 in General

I have been searching for kluyveromyces marxianus to ferment lactose all over the web and cheese industry with dead ends. I'm not sure how you guys feel about alcohol fuel :)>- but this could be a vodka perhaps? I see this is being done all over the US with success in fuel and spirits form. I know this forum if full of brilliant and successful artisan distillers so any info would be greatly appreciated.

Comments

  • Hi Cheezy. Pretty sure that's a process and a yeast that's protected by the current industry. I think you'd have to find an underhanded way of obtaining it.

    StillDragon Australia & New Zealand - Your StillDragon® Distributor for Australia & New Zealand

  • I think i read somewhere you could use lactaid to ferment milk. I'm not sure but it might have been in The Alaskan Bootleggers Bible...

  • edited February 2014

    @Law_Of_Ohms and @Chalmer, I have come across that thought in the past. I was looking to directly ferment the lactose but at this point I am grasping at any thing. Lactase is found in Lactaid to aid in lactose intolerance. It breaks down the long chain sugars into simple sugars. With that is it possible to use a distillers yeast to carry out the ferment? It sounds like I need to do some experimentation with this idea and see where it takes me. :-?

  • Don't the Mongolians have a fermented milk drink?

  • edited March 2014

    That's a process that coul;d be investigated i reckon. Dunno how eeficient it is. There's a big GNS industry in New Zealand that comes from milk waste from what i've read. There's an aussie distillery doing it too in Vic or Taz i saw on Landline that are pretty big and attached to a milk factory.

    Hellyers Road Southern Lights Cold Grain Vodka

    This is the one, they don't say their products are made using milk, the vodka description is a 'cold grain' vodka whatever that is, but i'd be surprised if the aren't using the waste stream in the building next door.

    StillDragon Australia & New Zealand - Your StillDragon® Distributor for Australia & New Zealand

  • Would "cold grain" mean that it hasn't gone through the mashing process?

    Work employees many people in the area, so I'll have to ask around. $60 for 700ml though. I'm tempted to buy a bottle.

  • They call the starter culture used to make milk Keifer or Bulgaros "grain" because it looks a bit like clumped grains

  • edited March 2014

    I think Law nailed it about - Wouldn't it just be easier to use lactase enzyme to break down lactose into glucose and galactose? Both of which I believe would be readily used by the usual strains? Would be relatively easy to get your hands on a few bottles of lactose intolerance pills and do a few pilot runs to see if it is even worthwhile. Suspect this would be much easier than trying to get your hands on kluyver, since if you can get it, you'll need to be able to keep your own cultures and from there propagate enough to pitch for each batch, which might not be easy.

    Don't really know much about kluyver, but I'm going to guess it excretes lactase (or galactosidase) to that it can break down lactose and use the resulting monosaccharides directly, so the end result might not be so different. Besides, does anyone know what the flavor profiles are of kluyver? They might be terrible, using a typical strain might just result in a better product anyway.

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