TMK Creamery sent out a press release last night (it is very exciting when someone deems us worthy of receiving a press release), and the news is big. Excerpted:
TMK Creamery, a farmstead dairy and creamery operation located in Canby Oregon, has completed construction of the first farmstead Distillery + Creamery. While TMK Creamery cares for their Cowlebrities and makes the cheese, TMK Distillery upcycles the whey leftover from the cheese-making process into a vodka they call Cowcohol.
After 2 years of trial & error, TMK Distillery partnered with a good friend and owner of Hurricane Distillation Systems, Ryan Kliewer, to design and build a custom whey still, and then perfected the art of turning whey into vodka. To solve challenges in processing whey, while also creating an efficient small footprint still, Todd Koch and Ryan Kliewer created the world’s first continuous whey still that can operate 24 hours/day.
When asked about adding the Distillery to the farm, founder Todd Koch, says “Going through college, I was like ‘Man, if I could just figure out how to get these cows to make alcohol, we’d be set.” Visitors to TMK are surprised to learn that each pound of cheese created can produce nine pounds of whey, which is fermented with special yeast and distilled into vodka. “We’re able to create one more product from that same gallon of milk. We feel like we’re getting everything we possibly can from that initial raw resource” says Todd. In this case, sustainable never tasted so good!
This isn’t all that new to longtime readers. We wrote about TMK Creamery all the way back in March of 2020. (It was the biggest news of the month!) We’ve been waiting for developments, and now we have them: These beautiful dreamers have not only successfully made Cowcohol, but they’re selling it, and at the perfect time. Just as many look to separate themselves economically from Russia, a milk-based vodka emerges here in the free world. Is that the motivation behind the distillery? It doesn’t seem so, but the connection is undeniable. We can change history, friends. And we can do that with milk.
