Making Whey with the Marcoot Sisters

The term “whey” may conjure up the nursery rhyme with Little Miss Muffet, but for cheesemakers, dealing with whey is a big part of the job. Standard ways of using it include making whey-based cheeses, feeding it to animals, and turning it into protein powder, but a family of cheesemakers in Illinois have gotten much more creative with it. 

Sisters Amy and Beth Marcoot, co-owners of Marcoot Jersey Creamery in Greenville, IL, have found their own use for whey. Makers of artisanal, farmstead cheeses, the Marcoots also produce a whey-based product known as Extreme Ice. Extreme Ice is a frozen treat that combines whey with crushed fruit creating a product that has the fresh flavor and texture of Italian ice but with a major perk: one five-ounce serving happens to also contain a whopping 20 grams of protein. Traditional ice cream doesn’t come close. Even Greek yogurt is bested by this kind of extreme nutritional content.

Understanding this unique product sheds light on certain challenges small creameries face to maintain financial solvency, and as well as the ingenious problem-solving ability on the part of the Marcoots, not entirely surprising given the curious history of how they came into the cheesemaking business in the first place.

In 2009 Amy and Beth Marcoot each made the life-altering decision to scrap their academic pursuits, in counseling and education respectively, to take the torch from their retiring parents, the 6th generation of Marcoots at that point to have been Jersey cattle farmers. Rather than simply sell off the milk to dairy co-ops as had been the case in many generations before them, the sisters opted to take it a step further and make their own cheese, which, as older sister Amy remembers, they “learned the hard way, by trial and error.”

Beth Marcoot, the younger of the two sisters, recalls their dad during their childhood saying, “wouldn’t it be so cool if we could make our own cheese?” Even as a kid from a dairy-minded family, the thought that something complex like cheese was within the scope of their own production was far-fetched at best. “But we also had a saying in our family,” Beth stated: “Never is a long time.”

The Marcoot sisters

Taking cues from Vermont-based cheesemaker and dairy consultant Peter Dixon’s resources, the Marcoots literally bet the farm on it, building their own cheesemaking outfit, including a cheese cave based on a drawing by Dixon himself, who now makes regular visits to see the cave. With their “what do we have to lose?” attitude, by 2010 they were able to sell their own cheeses, and they now offer roughly 20 varieties of fresh and aged cheeses, from quark, to tomme, to cheddars of numerous flavors. Several varieties of “tipsy cheddars” incorporate beers from local breweries.

But the whey presented a particular logistical challenge; specifically, there was a literal ton of it. In cheesemaking, the whey is the milky liquid left behind after acidification, when the now-separated curds have gone on to greet their destiny as cheese. It’s a shame to waste it, given its protein content. “We thought, we should really try something,” Amy said. It’s nutrient dense, fat-free, and easily digestible, but bland, something the Marcoots thought they could actually use to their advantage.

Some of it got “recycled” and went back to feed the herd. Larger dairies can afford to ship large quantities of whey to processing plants where it is commonly converted to protein powder, but through more trial and error, the Marcoots came up with a more lucrative, closer-to-home solution. “We had been working on different ideas for a while,” Amy explained, in terms of trying to fashion it into something healthy and delicious. “We looked all across the spectrum at the different ways people were using whey. Human consumption is the most valuable, and there’s nothing else out there like this.”

“This” being dessert. To preserve its health-positive attributes, the Marcoots found the most success by just relying on the natural sweetness of crushed fruit and combining it with the fresh whey. In 2017, the product was initially launched as Whey Ice, before it was rechristened to its current moniker, Extreme Ice. Available flavors at the Marcoot farm store and in the greater St. Louis area include mango, strawberry, and strawberry banana. Additionally, certain varieties are packaged as Extreme Ice Pro and sold wholesale, marketed to athletes as a post-workout boost.

Extreme Ice was born due to the precise brand of Midwestern can-do attitude and optimism that is mandatory for taking on a 24/7 enterprise like a dairy farm. “The herd has to be milked twice a day, every day,” Amy explains. “They don’t take Christmas off.”