Brewing Beer from Milk

A Frenchman who has invented a beer made from fermented milk is selling about 300 bottles of it a week.

His recipe is secret, but it combines 75% milk and 25% malt with the culture used to make kefir, a traditional fermented-milk drink in the mountains of the northern Caucasus.

"The idea of producing alcohol from milk shocked everybody at first," said Marcel Besnard, 55, who was a dairy farmer in Britanny, in the west of France, before switching to information technology.

"But, at a time when dairy farmers are holding demonstrations to protest against a fall in milk prices, this could help breathe new life into the industry."

He makes his beer, which he has named Lactiwel, in an experimental brewery, and is selling the wine-size bottles "in little shops, at festivals, and at some markets." [Read more - Japan Today]