Making Black Cow in the least wasteful way

 It is important that we make Black Cow in a way that is sensitive to the environment, whether that be ridding our packaging from plastic or re-purposing waste materials and ingredients. After all, at the very heart of Black Cow is the repurposing of whey – a byproduct of the cheese-making process – to make gloriously smooth vodka.

Below we share a handful of things sure Black Cow is made in the least wasteful way.

Cushioning your cheese

Plastic packaging. It’s bad for the planet and not easy on the eye. That’s why we’ve gone about it a little differently. In 2020 we started packaging cheese ordered from our website using leftover lambswool. The wool doesn’t travel far, in fact it comes from a natural mattress company just down the road. They no longer need the offcuts, so we take several bag loads and use it to cushion your cheese. It’s kinder to the planet and has a lovely bounce. Once more, wool is a natural insulator. It keeps things either hot or cool by absorbing the moisture from the air, minimising the humidity and condensation and maintaining a stable temperature. We package the cheese alongside a cool pack making sure it keeps cool for longer. 

The whole milk 

In the world of cheesemaking there is not a lot of love for whey. Simply put, when you make cheese you take milk and separate it into two: curds and whey. The curds go off to make cheese but, as for the whey, there’s so much of it that a great deal of it ends up being wasted. Whey has long been relegated as a by-product of the cheesemaking process; standing in the shadows while curds take centre stage.    

At Black Cow we love whey. In fact, it’s the stuff that makes our vodka so creamy. We take the whey which has been leftover from making our cheese and then ferment it into a milky beer using a special yeast which converts the milk sugars into alcohol. That beer is then distilled and treated to our very own blending process, before being finished and hand bottled on the farm. 

Wonky strawberries 

We like our strawberries wonky. Rather than go in the bin, last year we started to collect them up, press them down and combine them with our creamy Pure Milk Vodka. Think of it as our take on strawberries and cream. The result was so delicious that we ramped up our strawberry picking; now we make Black Cow + English Strawberries all year round. All natural, no added sugar, fewer wasted strawberries.