Please, how do I make Blaand?

[Jack]

Gidday

Never know, I may wish I had never heard of it if I make some and drink too much Eh!

[sekhmet]

I have been looking for blaand recipes tonight & stumbled on this topic. I actually have this site bookmarked, but have never participated in the forum.

I have a micro-farm in the pacific northwest of the USA, with a laying flock, milk & beef cow, large garden, small orchard, etc. I brew beer, wine, mead & cider, and have learned to make simple cheese with my cow's milk. I usually give the whey to my hens or mix it in the dog's food.

I'm hoping to use this week's whey to make blaand. Basically I'll sanitize a jug & airlock, put the whey in and cross my fingers

Has anyone here tried more experiments with blaand-making?

And feel free to take a look at my farm blog - Seven Trees

[Ellendra]

I usually make blaand by leaving out spiice.

Sorry, couldn't resist :p

[sekhmet]

[cormac]

Jack, regarding brewing of blaand, you wisey asked:

"Do I just put it in a recepticle and leave it or do I try to start it with some sort of yeast or something?"

I know this: brewing and vinting without explicitly adding yeast is always a risky proposition. There are wild yeasts in the air (or in the case of wine-making, on the surface of the grape), but these can be bad-tasting, and, more importantly, are always mixed with all kinds of bacteria.

The use of Oak casks can be good, because yeast and "good" bacteria often live in the wood, however, they don't last forever, they may not be best suites to your needs, and they may not be sufficient in quantity for your purpose.

In any event, if the cask hadn't previously been used for fermentation it won' be very useful. I advise introduction of, say, beer or champaign yeast at the beginning and then sealing the brew with an airlock for a few days.

[LBR]

I googled several phrases with the word "blaand" and only came up with this:

http://www.scottishfoodguide.com/Detail ... spx?id=613

H J Errington Features
FALLACHAN
SUPERIOR SCOTCH
BLAAND

Fermented and Bottled
by
HUMPHREY ERRINGTON
Blaand, the fermented whey drink, has been made in the wilder parts of Scotland for centuries; it was originally introduced by the Vikings, who themselves probably encountered the drink on their overland journeys to the Black Sea.
(It is still made by shepherds in the Carpathian mountains, as they move their flocks from pasture to pasture through the seasons, and I believe that it may also be made on remote farms in Norway and Sardinia).

Shetland fishermen took casks of Blaand to sea with them, and in many parts of Scotland where the Temperance Movement was strong in the 19th century, ale and whisky may have been abjured, but Blaand fermentation continued, with the excuse that the drink possessed elixir-like medicinal properties! Production was always a domestic affair on individual farms.

As cheese and butter making disappeared from farms in the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s, so also fermentation of whey was abandoned, and Blaand disappeared: it might well be termed “Scotland’s Forgotten Drink”. FALLACHAN is a Scots word (from the Gaelic), meaning “Hidden Treasure”.Appropriate, I believe, for a product which deserves to be rediscovered: its bouquet and taste are unique and their qualities fascinate.

I particularly recommend drinking FALLACHAN, chilled, with my own LANARK BLUE CHEESE!



Sounds adventuresome!

Here's how to contact them, on the odd chance they'd give you a recipe: http://eatscotland.visitscotland.com/wh ... ngton.html

[frenchfarmer]

Hi, all. I tried that very excellent product when I was back in Scotland early September. It was good and very different and about as strong as wine.
The recipies that I have read since all say the same thing as the one above so I think it has to be an oak cask. It seems to be an ongoing process once it is started and you just keep adding whey and wahey fill me up and watch me dance.
Maybe I'll have to get a small cow but then there has to be a calf and we already have sheep and pigs. I'll go visit a cheese farm. Here in the Limousin area of france is where most of the oak for casks comes from but boy are they expensive.
Good luck to all who try it out.

[frozenthunderbolt]

Jack, regarding brewing of blaand, you wisey asked:

"Do I just put it in a recepticle and leave it or do I try to start it with some sort of yeast or something?"

I know this: brewing and vinting without explicitly adding yeast is always a risky proposition. There are wild yeasts in the air (or in the case of wine-making, on the surface of the grape), but these can be bad-tasting, and, more importantly, are always mixed with all kinds of bacteria.

The use of Oak casks can be good, because yeast and "good" bacteria often live in the wood, however, they don't last forever, they may not be best suites to your needs, and they may not be sufficient in quantity for your purpose.

In any event, if the cask hadn't previously been used for fermentation it won' be very useful. I advise introduction of, say, beer or champaign yeast at the beginning and then sealing the brew with an airlock for a few days.

OK, as i understand it, the sugars in milk products are primarily lactose, this is used in beer and wine brewing as a sweetener as it is non-fermentable with a conventional yeast so residual sugar remains in the drink once other sugars are fermented out.

This said, there are other fermented milk drinks like kvass (sp?) fermented mares milk.

I would suspect that you would need a particular strain of yeast with the mutation that alows it to break down lactose into ferementable products. I would think that the oak barrel method would relate to it previously having held wine then used repetitively as a whey recepticle. at some point it is fairly likely that some yeast had a mutation that allowed it to work on whey.

I think you have three routes avalible to you:
1. get a bottle of commercial blaand and try to use that as a starter, and hope that it hasn't been filtered too finely and they there are still yeast cells in it.
2. contact brewcraft or a similar brewshop and ask if they have a specialist yeast (could also try some middle eastern shops maybe)
3. wack a sprinkle of several different yeasts into the whey and hope that one has a favorable mutation to alow it to digest lactose.

sorry i couldn't be more helpfull, but i couldn't resist adding my 2cents worth

[frenchfarmer]

If Blaand came to us via the Vikings it is highly unlikely that they had wine casks.
If it was made in remote Scottish crofts it is unlikely that they had casks at all so I would suppose that it was origionally made in crocks. I think it has all the necessary yeasts already and just needs to be put in something airtight ( remember the bit about the bubbles/sparkling) and then , like a Ginger Beeer plant, just needs drawing off, topping up and a bit of quaffing on a regular basis. Perhaps if one doesn't quaff enough it might explode but we all know the answer to that one. " It's alright dear I'm just stopping the cottage from exploding"

[Andy Hamilton]

Came across blaand whilst researching my new book and low and behold it brings me back here!

Has anyone actually had a go at making it yet? I intend to give it a go at some point and see if I can develop a workable homebrew recipe to go in the book. Needless to say an oak barrell might be hard to come by so yep will be using a crock, well more than likely a fermentation bin.... Although Frozens poing about the yeast in the barrel got me thinking, if it is only used due to the yeast left over from wine then perhaps a wine yeast will work? Otherwise I think being in Bristol I could find a middleastern shop somewhere and try the starter route. Hmm... interesting challange.

[frozenthunderbolt]

Oak barrel might also be for some tannin - a handfull of oak chips (depending on quantity to make) might also be an idea if you want to be authentic, or failing that a little grape tannin.

[hmk]

Perhaps if one doesn't quaff enough it might explode but we all know the answer to that one. " It's alright dear I'm just stopping the cottage from exploding"

Self-fermenting dairy by-product that may explode if you don't drink enough. Call me unadventurous, but ricotta sounds like a really good idea....

[BernardSmith]

Resurrecting this very old thread and while I don't have an authentic recipe for blaand I do make something that must resemble this old crofters wine. (Talk of buttermilk and oak casks seems to me to be focused on the wrong end of the telescope).
You make your cheese and you boil the whey that is left over. I boil this whey (or raise the temperature of it to near boiling ) This to remove the curds that would still give you ricotta and/or if you culture your milk with bacteria (you make hard cheese and not acid produced crowdie) to kill the lactc bacteria that would continue to transform the lactose into lactic acid even during fermentation - souring the wine.
To this whey you add sugar or honey or another fermentable sugar. I have not tried to add brewers malt. (lactose is not fermentable by wine yeast). When the whey has cooled you add wine or beer yeast (you could add bread yeast - but wine makers tend not to because bread yeast does not drop out of solution as well as wine or beer yeast and so leaves you with a cloudier drink). I would add tannin (could be a cup of strong black tea or tannin powder or oak chips, and I add yeast nutrient (I don't know that whey has enough of the nutrients that yeast need).
I make cheese from gallon batches of milk so I have about 6 or 7 pints of whey left over each time. I add enough sugar (or honey) to raise the specific gravity of the whey (it'll be about 1.020) to a level of sweetness that will provide me with the amount of alcohol I am looking for - Could be about a lb of sugar (for a level above a strong beer) or 2 lbs of honey (to a level of a wine). When the fermemtation ends (about 1-2 weeks after pitching the yeast) you can stabilize this and add more sweetener or simply bottle and drink it. It's a great way to use what is essentially a waste byproduct of cheese making.