Vodkow

The lowly sheep was once king in the Eastern Ontario town of Almonte. Towards the late 19th Century, woollen mills became a cash cow for the region. Little Miss Muffet was happy here sitting on her tuffet eating her curds and whey. But it wasn’t the spider that sat down beside her who chased the mills away. They couldn’t compete with inexpensive foreign textiles that began arriving in the 1950s. The last mill standing closed in the early 1980s.

From Baaa to Mooo

But for Dairy Distillery founder Omid McDonald, Muffet’s diet choices offered a new opportunity for Almonte. The town is surrounded by Dairy Farms that produce tanker loads of sweet, creamy milk. Some of that milk, when it is ultrafiltered into milk solids to make yogurt and cheese, leaves behind a liquid waste byproduct called milk permeate. Milk permeate liquid happens to be high in milk sugars.

A few years ago, McDonald wondered if milk permeate could be fermented and distilled. A researcher at the University of Ottawa helped answer that question with a yeast strain that has an insatiable appetite for milk sugars. From here, McDonald wove together a plan to distil a vodka called Vodkow from local raw milk permeate. He sources this from a local dairy that is also Canada’s largest. That dairy produces 100,000 litres of this fermentable white gold every day.

Reducing Waste

McDonald’s vodka-making process does more for the environment than just reduce milk waste. The fermentation process uses less water and energy than traditional vodka-making. Unlike grain or potato vodka, the star ingredient in Vodkow arrives already in liquid form. And it’s only fitting that this innovative vodka was born and raised in Almonte. James Naismith, who created the game of basketball, grew up on a nearby farm. So, in 2018 when Dairy Distillery’s spirit began dribbling from the gleaming Christian Carl hybrid still, it was an apt alley-oop – the first batch sold out instantly.

To make Vodkow, the team at Dairy Distillery pass fermented permeate through their 19-plate column still three times, rectifying the spirit to 96% alcohol. They then proof it with local spring water and filter it through activated carbon before shipping it out in gorgeous old-fashioned-style milk bottles.

Lactose-Free And Ever So Creamy

Vodkow has a creamy and crisp texture with traces of fresh dairy hugging the olfactory system like a comforting wool sweater. Slightly sweetened whipped cream effortlessly glides across the pillowy palate with just a hint of vanilla. A calm, glowing heat in the throat is a layup for marshmallow on the finish.

Milk vodka and several flavoured cream spirits have certainly brought success and Dairy Distillery is growing. Expansion is scheduled to be completed in the summer of 2021 to allow them to process up to 2.8 million litres of milk permeate a year. That translates into about 600,000 bottles of Vodkow – a steady supply for spirit lovers and a slam dunk for this Almonte distillery.