The approach feels more like the brewers asked themselves what type of flavors lactose lends itself to. In my opinion, it’s a novelty, and that’s just not what I look for as a beer drinker.īack on the other side of the fence, Maplewood Brewery & Distillery has a rice crispy treat beer called Krispie Cakes that straddles the line between satisfying and overbearing quite well. Then they try to make the beer by throwing the same ingredients in there. So maybe they think about flavors that they like outside of beer that are sweet: candy, pastry, and mallow. What I think we’re seeing on the bad side of lactose brewing is burdened further by people trying to get in on the getting because the getting’s good. “Without the vanilla, you can definitely have a couple and not feel like it’s sitting in you, weighing you down.” We feel it’s often way over the top-could be done extremely well, but we think lactose by itself adds enough sweetness and creaminess.” I’m more than inclined to agree.Īnother point Danny brings up is that overdoing lactose affects drinkability, the quality of being able to drink more than one of a beer without feeling full. Matt Sampson, in charge of fermentation and branding and marketing for Hacienda, says, “A lot of breweries pair lactose with vanilla, which also tricks your mind into thinking the beer is sweet by itself. Flavors that work well in tandem crash through the palate with no desire for harmony. Creosote’s dinner from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life-the entire menu mixed up in a bucket. Though after cracking open another beer-cocoa, vanilla, cinnamon, coffee, and lactose-I’m rethinking my optimism. We’re all riding it out, but some are actually enjoying themselves. No matter how convincing an argument might be for or against lactose beers, the fact is the machine has no shutoff, and no one knows how much gas is in the tank. It shouldn’t be that sweet anyway.’ And then there’s breweries, who I have no issues with, who are like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it in everything.’” “There’s a lot of people who are like, ‘Absolutely not. “I feel like both parties are super vocal about it,” says Danny McMahon, head brewer at Hacienda Brewing Company. To get all sides of the argument, just listen to discussions happening at any brewery taproom. I won’t be hunting these down on a regular basis, but so what? Why does everything thrown at the wall of consumerism need to stick? Something I can give a nod to and appreciate in both aim and execution. It certainly won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, and it’s stretching thin the idea of what is and isn’t a beer, yet there’s thought behind it. I’m able to pull apart the beer on my tongue and more easily identify flavors, as opposed to being lost in too many sweets. The hint of dryness in the backbone derived from the beer’s malt bill is actually doing a lot of work here in terms of managing the sweetness. I love blueberry pancakes, why would I want the beer version of it? Even though it’s the well-established Stout-with-lactose style, to me, this beer had everything going against it. As I’m writing this piece, I’m drinking Saugatuck Brewing Company’s Blueberry Maple Stout. Last year, a lot of people thought the lactose craze had reached its peak. Considered the first commercially available Milkshake IPA, Apocalypse Cow from 3 Floyds Brewing Company failed to garner much attention when it came out in 2008 (most likely because it was new rather than being a poor attempt), but now the style is everywhere. It makes sense when considering brewing with lactose in most anything aside from Stouts is a recent trend, and the Milk Stout itself only goes back to 1907. The reality is most of these lactose-focused pastry beers and milkshake takes are subpar. Opportunity, however, doesn’t equate to success. Because lactose can be added at any point in the brewing process, with some ingenuity, brewers can turn one batch of their latest brew into two by splitting the beer into two vessels then adding lactose to only one during secondary fermentation.
That means that all the sweetness from those sugars finds its way into the beer. It’s about a quarter of the sweetness of cane sugar and is, most importantly, nonfermentable. Lactose, for starters, is simply milk sugar. And as far as the taste goes, after telling my inner purist to take a seat, it’s not too hard to see there are some brewers out there making it work with an adept showing of balance. But for the brewery, it’s brought in a bunch of non-beer drinkers, which is fantastic. In some implementations, it’s like pouring honey over homemade pasta-an insult to the chef at the very least.
I really want to hate what lactose is doing to beers. But you can’t push lactose ‘round lactose makes dough.
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