Once the potato plants have died back, the postal sacks are easy to tip out, the spuds collected through and sorted into relevant sizes.  Big ones for mashing and jackets, small for boiling and average size for roasting.  

As summer is starting to pass us by and autumn approaches at a startling rate, the hedgerows are abloom with crimson and blackberries.  We do love blackberry season as we tend to spend many days harvesting the berries from the local forest covered hills and country lanes.  

Alas this year, we are not going to pick the berries in such vast quantities as we normally do.  With our forthcoming move, we are trying to reduce the quantity of wine that we have stored in bottles and demijohns (No easy feat drinking so much).  I am sure that we will have a few days out in the countryside picking blackberries for pies and crumbles. 

We are hoping that where we are going will also have an abundance of blackberries as blackberry wine is, in our opinion, the most scrumptious of  homemade wines.

With my recent interest in making Blannd, I did wonder how using  different types of whey would influence the outcome of the Blaand.  What would be better?  Whey from goats milk or cows milk?  

There is a big difference in the flavour of cheese from the two types of milk, largely due to the size of the fat molecules and the lactose content.  Goats milk has smaller fat globules than cows milk, it also has a lower lactose content. 

The lactose can not normally be fermented by yeast, hence a higher lactose level may well result in a sweeter Blaand.  Well, that is my theory anyway. 
Yesterday, we decided to set up an experiment to see the difference see the difference between Blaand made from goats and cows whey.  

We followed the same recipe for Blaand that we used to make our initial batch of goats whey Blaand - recipe found here.  

We extracted the whey in the same method and added the same quantity of sugar (1,5kg) to each batch. 

​24 hours on, they are both fermenting away well.  I will add further updates as the two gallons ferment!

Blaand, an old Norse drink that was at one time popular in the Scottish highlands and islands, frequently made before the demise of cottage cheese making.  Like all good recipes, the details of how to make this drink were held close to the chests of those who made it and passed down through the generations. 

Blaand is a fermented drink made using the whey left over after cheese making, as the recipes were passed down orally, finding information on how to make it on line are sketchy at best. Any one interested in home brew has to marvel at old methods of drink making, and an unusual drink offered to drinking companions is always worth a shot at making. 

You can find the full recipe and method here