Beer Making - Using Whey

[Tomer1]

They do say stout is like a meal in a glass.

[MolBasser]

As a professional brewer, I can say that in my opinion that this is a really weird idea.

I'm not sure what it would bring to a beer that could not be better brought by other methods, but would be interested in trying it.

What would the goal be?

Milk stouts rely on the lactose content, which I'm not sure remains in the whey.  The protein content would probably be a negative and the fat remaining would be a major negative.

MolBasser

[gmac]

Head retention would suck.
Chill haze would suck.

Go for it.

Oh and Mol, a cheese for Nyan Cat.

[Tomer1]

Head retention would suck.
Chill haze would suck.

Thats why I suggested getting rid of the proteins ahead of time using cooking and fining. It should be releativly fat free if your cheese making process was decent without much fat lose.

[beechercreature]

What would the goal be?

to have a fun experiment.  :)

I would let it sour as much as possible and try for a berliner-weisse kind of flavor.

[knipknup]

I've given this a bit of thought in the past two days.  Here are some ideas:

For extract, just use whey and water to your initial boil water, then follow recipe as normal adding extract, hops, etc.

For all grain, try several different avenues; mash with whey, add whey to wort before boil, add whey to boiled wort in fermenter as top-off.

The most interesting is probably the mash.  I have heard lactose doesn't convert and should be washed into your initial wort during the sparge.  How it changes the mash is unknown.  Your efficiency may be lower if it affects the enzyme action.

Adding whey as top-off water in the fermenter is probably most like adding lactose to a milk stout.  Both methods will probably increase the sweetness of the beer and your gravity readings will need to take this into account.

Let us know what you do and how it comes out.

[Tomer1]

Id say the main thing which may alter the convertion is the pH of the whey, you need to use very sweet whey to stay in the optimum enzyme convertion range for alpha amylase (which is the main strach convertor if I remember the thoery correctly).  around 6.7-7 is optimal.

5 kg of Hallumi maybe? :)
   

[gmac]

Yeah, mash pH is gonna have to be watched if you are going all - grain.  Mash pH should be about 5.4 or so.  You'd probably have to add grain and see how much it lowers the pH and adjust after you get the grain in.  Darker malts lower pH more than lighter ones so it would also depend on what you were trying to make. 

Like I said, go for it. You may make the worlds first Cheese Stout.  Or Indian Whey Ale.