A distillery in outside Ottawa is turning leftover bits of milk into high-end vodka.
turns the discarded ingredients of dairy production into vodka that the company鈥檚 founder and CEO says 鈥済oes down extremely smooth with a slight caramel finish.鈥�
鈥淭hat smoothness of milk is coming through by having absolutely no burn,鈥� Omid McDonald told CTV鈥檚 Your Morning. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a great-tasting product.鈥�
McDonald teamed up with researchers at the University of Ottawa to come up with a way to distill milk permeate, essentially the leftover lactose that would typically be dumped by dairy farmers who produce cheese and butter.
The result is Vodkow, a 40 per cent alcohol with the potential to offer farmers some extra cash, while reducing waste at the same time.
鈥淩ight now no one from the alcohol industry buys milk and we鈥檙e hoping to change that,鈥� McDonald said. 鈥淚f we can make this popular, we can be a new revenue source for farmers.鈥�
McDonald said in the process of creating Vodkow, the big question mark looming over the project was the taste, but it surprised everyone.
鈥淵ou never know until you scale it up and go into production and when the first drops came off the still, we were blown away,鈥� he said.
During a blind taste test, eight out of 10 restauranteurs and mixologists chose VodKow as their favourite vodka from a selection of high-end competitors, McDonald said.
Dairy Distillery opens on Nov. 1. It costs $25 for a 500 ml bottle of Vodkow.
