Milk Shake IPA

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Clint

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Hello all
Recent tasting of a milkshake IPA got me thinking of recipes...
What does this sound like..?

4kg Maris otter
1kg wheat
250g carapils
120g oats
300g lactose
Mash 66 1 hour
30 minute boil
Hops...all late addition at 80
40g citra,40g el Dorado
Og 1066
Fg 1015
IBU 51.3
6.6%
Yeast US 05
 
Wouldn't you need one of the 'meant to be cloudy' NEIPA type yeast? Such as the new CML one.

I thought this but US-05 works marvellously for NEIPAs if you chuck enough hops in cold-side. I'm starting think the haziness is a function of the huge amount of hops.

You can afford to double/triple those additions in the form of a dry hop.
 
Oops! Misread there...was going to double the flame out and dry hop...I'll get 100g of each and do 40/60.
Now...where to get lactose without going mad and ordering 25kg of other stuff!?
Does the grain bill look ok?
 
Oops! Misread there...was going to double the flame out and dry hop...I'll get 100g of each and do 40/60.
Now...where to get lactose without going mad and ordering 25kg of other stuff!?
Does the grain bill look ok?

You could do that!
 
Hi Clint.

Use something like extra pale, pilsner or golden promise base malt. There is no need to use anything particularly characterful. Use 7-10% flaked torrefied oats per kilo of base malt if you aren't using copper fining and are performing a short boil, it'll look like milk. I don't care for wheat or carapils, but 5% of carapils isn't going to do any harm. 5% of vienna malt is fair as well as 2% caramalt if you can be bothered to use it.

I get approx 88% efficiency from my mash/sparge so for 30L in copper 1.056 I'd be mashing approx 6.36kg of grain total. I would go with 800g oats. 300g carapils. 300g vienna, 50g caramalt ... 5kg base malt.

I'd aim for 150-200ppm chloride and 100ppm sulphate with salts in the mash. I'd treat all brewing liquor with lactic acid to less than 10ppm rA.

I'd get a little evaporation during a 30m boil and would expect to come out with 56-58. I'd add 6 points of lactose based on volume at 320LoD ... which would be 468g in 25L which would be all I'd expect to get into fermenter after losses to hops and evaporation.

I'd aim for no more than 30 IBU's with all of it coming from whirlpool additions. Depending on the speed of chilling during your whirlpool I'd add them while the whirlpool is going hot, then turn the chilling on so they steep during the chill. My system takes approx 15m to get down to 60C so I stir them in and then start the chilling. If your system takes a long time I'd chill it to something like 85C before stirring them in or even 79C and perform a hop stand.

I'd aim to use no more than 6g-8g/L in the boil and would consider my utilisation to be 0.05 in my whirlpool. This would mean 150g of something 10% AA in 25L.

US05 is fine to use as a yeast. It'll leave a beer fairly hazy anyway without significant effort to crash and fine. You want your haze to be from the hops and proteins from the oats, lack of copper fining and short boil not yeast anyway.

Dry hopping would be 10-12g/L. The freshest, fruitiest, juiciest ones you can lay hands on. Dry hop at the tail end of fermentation which with a proper pitch rate will likely be day 4-5. Keep things warm for the first two days at least ideally 4 days to get maximum extraction and to clean up additional fermentation from hop creep and limit diacetyl formation down the line.

If you've a way to seal a fermenter after dry hopping and allow it to ferment out under and while building moderate pressure do so. If you've a way to mix or circulate the hops without oxygenating the beer do once a day so for the first three days. Cold crash beer this for at least 48 hours as cold as possible before transfer to package. If you can't cold crash fast and low consider cold crashing as long as a week, maybe even 10 days as long as you can maintain a positive pressure on the fermenter to prevent oxygen ingress.
 
My recipe is based on what's written on the can of Off Tempo milkshake IPA...

I've drunk a fair few different ones and while I can't say I'm much of a fan of the style I know how I'd put one together. It can be simplified based on what you've got to hand .. basically ..

Produce a proteinous wort designed for average attenuation. Colour can be pale or darker, up to a deep orange, but true caramel/toffee/biscuit notes would be distracting from the hops. You can do a beer like this with lots of different malts, but the paler and more neutral the better because the more other malts you can use for impact before going into orange territory. Using some vienna and caramalt to give the same colour as a much smaller amount of light crystal gives a very different flavour. Oats (or wheat) isn't optional, but the lack of copper fining will be what makes it look like milk.
Water should be low in residual alkalinity and accentuate softness, fullness and sweetness with a chloride bias, the profile of a modern juicy IPA rather than the traditional burton snatch. The rA is for mouthfeel and subsequent impact upon bitterness which is mainly down to pH at all stages of production. When you aren't using a few bags of crystal malt alongside best ale malt rA cannot be left at 60 and still get a good mash pH. This carries over into the boil and impacts upon bittering character. This is standard in these hazy tropical IPA's.
Lactose should be used to make the beer heavier in body to bring up the sweetness and promote a creaminess, but NOT excessive, into the realm of ridiculousness. Average attenuation keeps helps keep this sensible. Too much lactose and dextrines will negatively impact upon drinkability for an IPA and you do not want to have to use a lot of IBU's to balance.
Late hops and substantial dry hopping, should be fruity, bright, tropical, juicy etc.
Beer should have adequate settlement time to minimise the potential for hop burn from the high dry hopping rates which would ruin the 'milkshake' effect.
Yeast should be average in everything, neutral.
Also would say that fruit puree/concentrate wouldn't be unwelcome, neither would be vanilla, neither would I be surprised to detect some artificial 'enhancements' in some of them.
 
In one of my books there is a Omnipolo milkshake IPA that uses US04 and I brewed it (minus the fruit).

You need more hops to give it a more fruitier flavour and you will need to get your water right to make it super soft.
 
Im the same, used to like a milkshake IPA but they are being taken too far now.
I dread to think how much lactose WanderBeyond are using especially in the Octopod.
Youll not really notice 300 grams.
Id go more 600-900 grams in 21 litres
 
Im the same, used to like a milkshake IPA but they are being taken too far now.
I dread to think how much lactose WanderBeyond are using especially in the Octopod.
Youll not really notice 300 grams.
Id go more 600-900 grams in 21 litres

900g in 21 litres is just shy of 14 points which is definitely sickly territory for me. I once did as a trial big chocolate, bourbon biscuit vanilla pastry stout using natural commercial flavourings. That used 12 points of lactose and true to the style was completely unbalanced, to the point where testing samples to get the flavouring additions accurate started to make me feel ill. It tasted like rich chocolate cake and icing. The trial keg went on a bar and got rave reviews. To those who like that style, unbalanced sickly sweetness is what they want.

But from that and other experiences I personally wouldn't put more than 6-7 points of lactose (393g-459g) into a milkshake IPA with 30-40 theoretical IBU's made with a wort that was already proteinous with moderate dextrines. Others would and I'm sure to those that like that style, the sweeter the better.

But then I'm not that keen on the style and I'm usually thinking a lot about drinkability. Great beer needs to be delicious, but you generally need to be able to finish a pint. You might not want another and that is fine, but if the average drinker can't drink a pint of it, usually there is room for improvement.

You can argue that it is supposed to be an extremely exclusive brew, served only in the finest craft tap houses, dispensed by the third into oversized goblets as a rare treat. But then you are entering into the territory unsustainable novelty and fantasy models. As home brewers we are free to do whatever we want, but you've got to draw a line somewhere and have something to live by and generally for me ... you should be able to finish your pint.

Especially when these breweries can the stuff in 440ml cans.
 
I had the black sheep pineapple one yesterday , mostly because I'd never tried one before.
A bit weird but pleasant enough I guess but wouldn't want to make 40 pints worth.
Theres was crystal clear and could have done with dialling back the lactose a bit.
 

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