Little Miss Muffet

Sat on a tuffet,

Eating her curds and whey;

There came a big spider,

Who sat down beside her

And frightened Miss Muffet away.

The term “whey” may conjure up the nursery rhyme, but for most cheesemakers, dealing with whey is no laughing matter, nor does it have a storybook ending.

Whey, the slop left over when curds are strained from liquid milk, is an abundant byproduct of milk and yogurt production. It’s that watery cheese liquid you’ve seen in freshly opened container of yogurt. A pound of cheese generates nine pounds of whey. Last year, more than 21 million metric tons of whey was produced globally.

Wheyward Spirit, a California distillery, has found a way of taking leftover whey from local cheesemakers and turning it into an alcohol spirit. It has just partnered with Ben & Jerry’s to replace the Irish cream liqueur in its Dublin Mudslide flavor, offering the same taste with less waste.

But what about the small-scale cheesemakers? Sadly, they don’t produce enough whey to have access to such markets as Wheyward Spirit does. Still, they’re being resourceful in other ways.

Young’s Dairy in Yellow Springs, Ohio, is in its seventh year of producing cheese from their Jersey cows. The farm utilizes 500,000 pounds of milk to produce 65,000 pounds of cheese annually that they use in their restaurant and retail sales.

“When we make our cheese, the by-product created is whey,” says Youngs CEO Dan Young. “For every 100 pounds of milk we get about 12-13 pounds of curds, or in other words, cheese. What’s left over, or the other 87-88 pounds, is mainly water with the whey.

“In large commercial type production facilities, the whey is dried and then the whey powder is used in many different foods, such as baked goods, crackers, breads, nutritional supplements and animal feed to name a few. But since we’re a small operation as far as cheese production goes, the investment in the in the equipment and energy used in drying whey is prohibitively expensive.”

Up until last year, Young and his staff collected the whey and spread it out over their crop fields as fertilizer, thereby recycling whey back into the crops that, one way or another, create the food that the cows eat. The company is moving to a new building for its cheese making processes so all things are on hold, but when the new structure is complete Young, and his staff will resume the spread of whey on their fields.

 “It’s one of the ways we’re able to recycle and use some of our waste to benefit our farm and the environment,” Young said.

On a much smaller scale, Urban Stead Cheese in Cincinnati has been in existence for four years. Owners Scott Robbins and Andrea Siefring-Robbins both have dairy farming in their family history. The couple is resourceful in many ways. For instance, some of the racks and equipment they use came from the Ohio Prison system’s dairies when they closed down a few years ago.

When it comes to cheese, the Robbins start with 6,000 pounds of milk each week (in Ohio, milk is measured in pounds, not gallons). Robbins drives a flat-bed truck with a tank each week to Bohl’s Jersey Farm in Highland County, roughly a 100-mile round trip. Bohl’s Jersey Farm is home to 300 milk cows.

After producing cheeses, they deliver the unwanted whey byproduct to a local farmer, who in turn feeds his livestock.

Ah, but this whey trail doesn’t end there. Tiffany Shinkle of TF Farms in New Vienna, Ohio, swings by Urban Stead once a week to fill one or two 300-gallon totes with whey. She hauls it back to her family’s farm, where it feeds nearly 60 pigs. Even though the pigs are pastured, they’re not grazing animals and have to be given supplemental feed. Adding nutrition-packed whey to the hogs’ water helps Shinkle stretch her feed budget and enhances the flavor of the resulting meat.

TS Farms also raises dairy cows, and Shinkle feeds leftover milk and whey from their herd to the pigs, but they don’t have nearly enough, which is why she makes weekly trips to Urban Stead.

Pearl Valley Cheese in Fresno, Ohio is another small cheesemaker that has found a good home for its whey byproduct.

The company, located in Coshocton County, just south of Ohio’s Amish Country, sells its whey protein to a company that makes products for nutritional drinks, infant formula and milk replacer for calves.

Whey is an issue outside the Buckeye State as well. In Illinois, a family of cheesemakers have gotten very creative with their one-time “unwanted” whey.

Sisters Amy and Beth Marcoot, co-owners of Marcoot Jersey Creamery in Greenville, Illinois, have found their own use for whey. Makers of 20 varieties of artisanal, farmstead cheeses, the Marcoots also produce a whey-based product known as Extreme Ice. Extreme Ice is a frozen treat that combines whey with crushed fruit creating a product that that has a fresh flavor and texture of Italian ice but with a major perk: one five-ounce serving also contains 20 grams of protein.

In 2017, their whey-based product was initially launched as Whey Ice, before it was rechristened to its current moniker, Extreme Ice. It is now sold in the greater St. Louis area. It is marketed to athletes as a post-workout boost.