Tag Archive: milkshake ipa

Sometimes you’re Two Hearted. Sometimes you’re Natty Light. This brew day felt more like Natty Light.

I was not actually ready to brew. I had most of the ingredients. I had the yeast I wanted to use. I had most of the hops I wanted to use. I had the mango. I had both vanilla beans and a vanilla tincture. I didn’t have water put out, but I had Campden Tablets… which I had to look for.

I also am trying to make small improvements in my brew day. I’ve been adding tri-clover fittings to everything… the decision to use this type is due to my boil kettle having that type – and I want only one system.

In addition to the tri-clover fittings, I had a three-way valve. Something I’ve never used.

So I start getting the HLT heated up (and it’s temperatures are not reading correctly, as I found in my last brew day), and getting some water started to pre-heat my mash tun. At that point, I decided to mill my grain. My system for this is really shoddy – I have my mill mounted to a too-thin piece of plywood with nothing to ensure that all the milled grains go into a bucket. Usually, I can get all the grist into the bucket. This time was different, I lost a fair bit to the floor.

I mashed in and hit my temps and somewhat close to my gravity numbers… given that I had a bit of malt sitting on the ground that went into the trash can.

Then I got to 15 minutes remaining in the boil. I added a late charge of hops and started setting up for a whirlpool and to run hot wort through my new counterflow chiller… and I was one tri-clover clamp short. I tried to adapt by attaching my pump directly to that new three-way valve. As soon as I powered up the pump, it started squealing so I turned it back off. After much finagling, I got the pump running on the “wrong” side of the chiller. I would have preferred to have the pump between the kettle and the chiller… I was able to get stuff running by having the pump between the chiller and the whirlpool inlet. I then added the whirlpool hops and (oops, late) lactose.

I had a very weak whirlpool that made me concerned, but I let it go… and it did chill. I got the wort down to around 85 and had difficulty getting the three-way valve to send the wort to the fermenter. After finally getting it there, I pitched some Omega Hothead Kveik.

After two weeks in the fermenter, I added mango. I used 5 pounds of frozen cubes that I slightly thawed in my microwave and then pureed in the blender (sanitized, of course) and dumped the puree in via a funnel. A few days later, after the secondary fermentation kicked off, I added around 8 ounces of vanilla bean tincture (cheap vodka aging 4 vanilla beans that were sliced open). I had so much difficulty with getting samples that I cold-crashed the fermenter and kegged without too much tasting. I was half a gallon low into the fermenter (I target 5.5 gallons in the fermenter any time I dry hop). I lost a gallon to fruit. Maybe it would have been better if I cold crashed longer, but I’m not sure.

I kegged it on July 7 with some keg hops. I was hoping that I could take it to a homebrew club meeting on July 11. Between running out of CO2 and green hop flavor, it wasn’t happening.

The aroma is vanilla and tropical fruit, obviously dominated by mango. The appearance is opaque copper. Once properly carbonated and aged to allow the hops to meld a little, the flavor is quite nice – the slight carbonic acid bite actually works well here. There’s a lot of hop flavor, little bitterness (but there is some), and some vanilla that comes in late. There is a sweetness to it, which is as expected. The mouthfeel has a slight thickness, which works well for the style but could probably use to be amplified.

Cheers!