Turning sheep milk into liquor
Like many off-the-wall ideas, Sam Brown’s came to him on a night out with friends.
The Kiwi entrepreneur and founder of The White Sheep Co was living in China when he realised New Zealand had no national drink.
‘‘I was out with friends and we decided to have a drink for everybody’s country.
‘‘We had a bit of tequila for a guy from Mexico, some vodka for a guy from Russia and even some brandy for a person from France,’’ he said. ‘‘It got to me and I just drew a blank. There was no spirit that had that tie to New Zealand.’’
The idea for a spirit made from sheep milk took hold and Brown, who has a background in international trade, began to research how it could be done.
‘‘The history of it goes back to Mongolia, where Genghis Khan and the Mongols would milk their horses and that would ferment into something like a low-strength beer,’’ he said.
Brown continued working and travelling as he chipped away at his sheep milk project but returned from Australia last year to focus on it fulltime.
He took a hypothesis and ideas to Massey University and spent eight months experimenting with fermentation to refine the science. ‘‘It wasn’t cheap but it was worth it. I had to make sure it could be done efficiently and to scale.’’
The long hours in the lab led to the development of a 12-day process using special yeast and traditional brewing techniques to create a base spirit used in both The White Sheep Co’s vodka and gin.
Although unable to put a figure on how much milk went into each 500ml bottle of spirits, Brown said using readily available yeast with wheat or potatoes could produce a spirit with about 15 per cent alcohol.
The long fermentation meant a lot of the milk flavour stayed in the spirits and the vodka in particular had quite strong milk notes in both its flavour and aroma, he said.
Three years on from that night out in China, Brown launched his sheep milk vodka, gin and liqueur in New Zealand and the vodka promptly won gold at the New Zealand Spirit Awards.