Kettle souring with whey

[Reveirs]

Hello all, I've recently started kettle-souring using the leftover whey from home-made ricotta and the results have been so good that colleagues are offering me money to make more. Apart from a few mentions that whey can be used as a source of lacto I haven't been able to find any specific recipes using whey so thought I'd post my experience for others that are starting to experiment with sours. I've used whey in both extract and all-grain beers and they've all turned out really well. On brew day I get the grainfather humming then make the ricotta, double strain it to avoid chunky bits in the beer, and when the wort is done I leave it in the grainfather, set the temp control to 40 degrees C and pour the whey in. I use it all - about 1.5 litres. It's probably overkill but otherwise it goes down the drain. I then cover the top of the wort with cling film and leave it at 40 degrees for 3 days. I then re-boil the wort to kill the lacto, add any hops or gruit that I'm using and then ferment as normal. Once fermentation is going (2-3 days) I will add any fruits (e.g. raspberry, blueberry, mango, dragon fruit, pomegranate, etc.) and leave it to finish. I recently did a blueberry all grain and then hot-tubbed a Coopers Cerveza with wheat malt off the AG. Both delicious. I imagine that as little as 200ml of whey would be enough but that's just a guess. Hope this is helpful and saves you forking out $$$ for IBS capsules.

 

[sp0rk]

That's interesting, Ricotta is usually an acid set cheese (some people make it with cultures, but it's not that common) so I'd think the culture that's grown in your whey would be wild
I'm sure it works just fine, but you're not using a known lacto source like you usually would with a kettle sour