Please, how do I make Blaand?

[Jack]

Gidday

I have just started another batch of cheese and am looking at what to do with the whey. Me being such a mean old bugger I don't like to waste anything.

I hear blaand can be made from the whey and after reading up on the stuff from some searches I did, I am wrapped with the idea of making an ancient drink of my ancestors.

So please, can anyone tell me how to make it?

[hoomin_erra]

Welcome to a very frustrating search. I've been looking for this for ages. The only person who seems to make it is some Etherrington bloke near glasgow, and that is on a commercial scale. So the chances of him sharing the recipe are slim.

I have bought a book that has a very vague recipe for it. I'll try and find it and type it in for ya.

I am assuming the guy in glasgow is doing something different as his must be able to keep for a long time. This recipe i found seems to give it a very short lifespan.

[Jack]

Gidday

Thanks mate. I am very keen to give it a go. Just wonderinmg, though, about it giving a very short lifespan. I have already had a fairly long lifespan so perhaps it will have to make me younger before it can kill me off.

[farmerdrea]

Why not make ricotta with the whey? You just bring the whey to the boil, turn off the heat and add vinegar (I use apple cider vinegar) till the last of the milk solids curdle. What is blaand? I've never heard of it.

Andrea
NZ

[hoomin_erra]

Blaand is pretty much Fermented Whey. Used to be common in scotland and the islands. But the decline in home cheesemaking has pretty much killed it off.

[Muddypause]

I am wrapped with the idea

Don't know anything about blaand, but I'm pretty intrigued by Jack wrapping himself up in a brown paper idea.

In fact you might say I'm rapt with the idea.

[possum]

I found a recipe!
This drink is simply the whey of buttermilk left to ferment in an oak cask. To make the whey, pour enough hot water on the buttermilk to cause it to separate. Drain the whey off the curd (which may be pressed and eaten with cream). Pour the whey into the cask and leave undisturbed until it reaches the fermenting sparkling stage, when it may be used.
After the sparkle goes off it, Blaan becomes flat and vinegary, but you can keep it at its best stage by the regular addition of fresh whey.

[farmerdrea]

Right, now where do we find an oak cask?! Also, what is the whey of buttermilk?? Whey is from cheesemaking, buttermilk is the liquid that's left over when we make butter... I know you can use buttermilk as a starter culture for certain types of cheese..... confused....

Andrea
NZ

[possum]

1. the more or less acidulous liquid remaining after butter has been separated from milk or cream.
2. a similar liquid made from whole or skim milk with the addition of a bacterial culture.

so it seems buttermilk doesn't have to come from butter making

a milk serum, separating as liquid from the curd after coagulation, as in cheese making

and also that whey, doesn't have to come from cheesemaking, so i guess you create buttermilk by curdling the milk and then separate it.

btw, I am no expert in cheese making, just got the definitions from dictionary.com

[Jack]

Gidday

Hey Muddy, if I get drinkin this stuff I reckon I would be keen to get my pause on you and have a rap sesion.

So Possum, to make this stuff all you need is an oak cask and let it ferment on it's own? No wonder the Scotts and Vikings were tough old buggers.

Andrea, I like the thought of getting into that drink of the old Highland Crofters who couldn't afford whiskey.

Our calf is sick with the scours so we are taking all the milk our cow gives and have just made my second batch of Farmers Cheese. Tastes fairly good too.

[Muddypause]

Jack, I blame those spell chequers, witch aunt as good as there maid out two bee.

[possum]

So Possum, to make this stuff all you need is an oak cask and let it ferment on it's own? No wonder the Scotts and Vikings were tough old buggers.

look I found you a recipe, that doesn't make me any sort of expert on the subject. if you want to know it was in an extract of a book about pictish wiccan religion (yes I saw the connection immediately , erm not)

[hoomin_erra]

And that is actually just about word for word, the recipe in the book i had. Told you it was vague.

Seems to have been a word of mouth recipe.

[Jack]

Gidday

Sorry about that Possum. I wasn't really trying to suggest you weren't telling me everything.


But this leaves me with another question, Eh!

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?

[possum]

No offense, I didn't mean it to come accross that way, but that was all the info I could find. Heck I had never even heard of the stuff till this thread