Milk permeate is essential to the products in Dairy Distillery’s business model, which is more diverse than the company’s name suggests.

In 2016 Dairy Distillery started by making vodka or rather, what it calls Vodkow. Taking a cue from the creaminess of its product, Dairy Distillery expanded it product line to cream liquors. At the 2022 San Francisco World Spirits Competition, Vodkow and Vodkow cream liquor won gold and silver medals respectively.

When the pandemic began, the distillery pivoted to making hand sanitizer, although the company had to add a bittering agent to discourage anyone from drinking it.

Dairy Distillery now partners with the Michigan Milk Producers Association, turning permeate into biofuel and is developing technology to convert milk by-products into clean energy.