ITHACA, N.Y. - Many people drink milk. Many also drink beer.
Would they drink beer made from milk? Or, more accurately, would they drink beer made from a dairy "waste" product?
Sam Alcaine, an assistant professor at Cornell University's Department of Food Science, is working on it.
Alcaine and his research team have created an alcoholic beer-like beverage made from acid whey, according to a news release from Cornell in Ithaca.
If it works -- and if it's palatable -- it will do more than create another new type of alcoholic beverage. It could solve the problem of what to do with acid whey, a byproduct of New York states' growing Greek yogurt industry.
Acid whey is difficult to dispose of and has little other profitable use, the Cornell news release says. It's produced by companies like Chobani and Fage, who strain the whey out to make their high-protein Greek style yogurt.
Cornell University doctoral student Marie Lawton measures a beer made from the dairy byproduct called acid whey at the university's Department of Food Science.
Alcaine, a former product innovation manager at Miller Brewing Co. is hoping dairy-based acid whey could join the list of other agricultural products that produce alcoholic beverages. Those include barley, corn and rye (for beer and spirits) and grapes, apples and other fruits for ciders and wine.
"There's this whole movement around craft beer and spirits, but dairy doesn't play in that space at all," Alcaine said in the Cornell news release. "If we could convert whey into something that people want to drink, it opens an entirely new economic arena for entrepreneurs and brewers to explore and innovate within."
So far, Alcaine and his fellow researchers have successfully produced a low-alcohol acid whey beer with a sour and salty flavor comparable to German-style gose beer. It's just 2.7 percent alcohol by volume, about half the kick of a standard American lager like Budweiser. It's also described by Cornell as being similar in flavor to pulque, a traditional central Mexican drink made from agave.
The research at Cornell has had to overcome some obstacles, such as figuring out how to break down the sugar in acid whey, lactose, into alcohol. Traditional brewers yeasts don't work, so Alcaine and his team have experimented with other methods to make the acid whey fermentable.
Still, Alcaine says in the Cornell news release, dairy alcohol could be on the market within a few years.
"Right now, brewers use farm products like corn, rye and barley to make alcohol," Alcaine said. "Dairy is a natural addition, especially now, when consumers are demanding novel and interesting flavors."
Don Cazentre writes about craft beer, wine, spirits and beverages for NYup.com, syracuse.com and The Post-Standard. Reach him at dcazentre@nyup.com, or follow him at NYup.com, on Twitter or Facebook.