Cheese A Day: I'm now taking refractometer readings of cheese whey

Cheese Makers Forum FAQ Equipment part 1 Equipment part 2 History

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

I'm now taking refractometer readings of cheese whey

#14, which won't be published for a week or so, had whey so sweet I decided to start tracking it. I measured the sugar content on my refractometer, and it came out to 7brix. Basically, what that means is if I fermented the whey from this loaf, it would turn into a beverage of 3.5% alcohol. While that may not sound like a lot, keep in mind that is within a percentage of most light beers.

So, to simplify the analogy, this whey has so much lactose in it, it could make beer.

(p.s., if there are any brewers that read this, I am perfectly aware of why this wouldn't work in reality. It was only an analogy.)

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Cheese A Day by Jeremy Pickett is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at cheeseaday.blogspot.com.

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