Brewing A Milk Stout

Stouts are one of those beers where it’s either a hit or a miss with regular beer drinkers. There are the astringent bitter Imperial Stouts like Guinness which some people swear by while others tend to pass. With Milk stouts, it’s more of a middle ground. So they are called Milk Stouts since they have lactose(milk sugar) added in the wort. This makes a milk stout sweet. The wort is essentially a solution of simple sugars and disaccharides which the yeast can digest and produce alcohol in the process. Thus a beer does not taste sweet, as at the end of the ferment all the sugars have been converted. With lactose, things are different. Yeast, lack the enzyme Lactase, which is needed to break it down into Glucose and Galactose, Simple sugars the yeast can feast on. There is hence a sweetness to milk stouts.

Milk Stout Recipe

Shinjon

How to make milk stout at home without using any specialized brewing equipment

4.67 from 3 votes

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Prep Time 20 minutes mins

Cook Time 1 hour hr

Total Time 1 hour hr 20 minutes mins

Course Drinks

Cuisine alcohol, English

Servings 8 liters

Calories 50 kcal

Equipment

• boiling pot
• fermenter
• Airlock
• cloth bag

Ingredients

  

• 700 gm Pilsner Malt
• 100 gm Chocolate Malt
• 100 gm Black Malt
• 120 gm Lactose
• 100 gm Flaked Oats
• 20 gm coffee
• 750 gm DME (wort extract powder)
• 5 gm Arishtam Stout Yeast

Instructions

 

• Grains steeped for 20 mins
• Boil Time :60 mins
• 30min addition of 20gm Galena Hop flowers
• 45 min addition of Lactose and Coffee.
• Cool down and ferment at 24°C for 10 days.

Notes

This is a simple recipe to get beer brewing hobby started. Once we get a hang of it, we can introduce nitrogen gas to make Guinness style beer

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Lactose is not Milk Powder. Milk Powder has a lot of milk solids and proteins that you don’t want in your beer. Good Quality Lactose can be obtained at any homeopathy shop or on online medical stores.

Video

Milk Stout by 033MAWD

Keyword home made beer, milk, stout

Stout Styles

English style beers with high residual maltiness are typically called stouts. If the alcohol content is also high then they are called Porter. If the alcohol content reaches 10% then they are called barley wine. Here are some prominent stout styles.

• Irish Stout: It is a Dry Black Stout Beer. Roasted and black Barley malt is used to give it this character and impart coffee-like smokey notes. Hop bitterness is medium to medium-high.
• Nitro Stout a.k.a. Guinness: A kind of dry Irish Stout that is infused with N2 and CO2 mixture during Kegging. This adds a signature foam to this black beer. It has a full-bodied mouthfeel with smoky aromas of coffee, chocolate, and caramel. Unlike typical Irish Stout, this is bitter with a smooth finish.
• Sweet Stout: Milk Stout. It has malt sweetness coupled with Lactose to get the buttery chocolate and caramel flavors. Unlike Milkshake IPA, it is not hoppy. but still high on alcohol ABV.
• Oatmeal Stout: Also called Breakfast Cereal Stout. It does not have the roast caramel flavors as the Irish Stouts. Here Quaker Oats, terrified wheat, and other breakfast cereal flakes are added in the mash to get the rich mouthfeel.
• Foreign Export Stout: There were the forefathers of modern IPA (India Pale Ale) These hoppy bears were designed for a long voyage. Hence they had a prominent hoppy characteristic.
• American Stout Also called Rogue Stout is the New England style stout.
• Imperial Stout: Contrary to popular misconception this stout was brewed for Imperial Russa under Czars and not for Imperial England under Victoria. They are strong dark beers very similar to a porter style.
• English Porter: Stouts with high alcohol developed in the 18th Century. They are brown beers with not much-roasted barley or chocolate flavors. Ideally meant to be drunk by blue color workers, manual laborers in the port, etc.
• American Porter: New England Style of high alcohol developed about 50 years ago. It is essentially high alcohol beers made from roasted barley.
• Baltic Porter: Smooth, higher ABV, cold-fermented and cold-lager beer style brewed with lager yeast
• Barley Wine: It is made from Barley with a copious amount of malt extracts. It is called wine because it is flat and has 10-12% ABV. However, it has sweet toffee flavors because ~200-220gm per liter of malt extract was used in making this unique beer-wine style. Modern Barley wines are excessively hoppy to get the balance of flavors.

Are Stouts Sweet?

Stouts and porters have excess amount of malts in them as compared to IPA that have excess hops in them. Some of these malts and dextrins don’t get fermented completely. Hence less hops compounded with excess residual malt makes stout, porters and barley wine much sweeter than regular beer. Milk stout is exceptionally sweet because lactose (unfermentable milk sugar) is added to it.

Which is darker and stronger Beer?

Porter by definition is a strong beer (7-10% ABV) compared to stout (5-7%). I love the term Stout-Hearted which is an epitome of strength and courage these styles of beers can bring. Traditionally porters are darker as they have higher ratio of black and chocolate malts in them. However, both styles of beer are halal and vegetarian (though why would anyone call alcohol halal is always a mystery).

What is a mild beer?

Beer today is a social lubricant. It is a catalyst that fosters great conversations and stronger friendships. Getting drunk might be fashionable in the previous generation. Today the goal is having a good time and for as long as possible. Now mild beers come in handy. They are dark stouts which are low alcohol content (~3%).

Unlike IPA (India Pale Ale) these beers are low in hops and hence are sweet beer. They are often infused with nitrogen to make a nice creamy foam. The dark color of porter stands out and gives the beer drinker maximum pleasure.

Vanilla Stout

Traditional Vanilla stout are made from Madagascar Vanilla Beans (about 1-2 pods per 5 liters). However Vanilla Pods from Kerela are inexpensive are equally flavorful. Couple of things to remember:

Vanilla like most spices used for desserts exhibits their full aromas and flavors when paired with residual maltiness. So try to brew a stout, use low attenuation yeast, and use a high ratio of crystal and non-fermentable sugars. Adding a bit of lactose in vanilla stout really improves its features. Below is a simple Vanilla Stout Recipe. Also vanilla can be a great addition for Gruit style malty beers (or low hopped beers)

English Brown Ale

You would have now understood the difference between the porter and a stout style of beer. However what is an English Brown Ale?

A porter is a stout style with high alcohol and more smoky black flavors. However a sweeter mild style of English stout is often called English Brown Ale. These Ales specialize in sweet, malty nutty flavors. A lot attenuation yeast (i.e. a yeast that can consume <70% of maltose) with lesser ratio of dark specialty malts often is the key to a great English Brown Ale recipe. They are often fermented at higher temperatures to develop a complementing cherry and fruity aromas. These paired with a dominant sweet nutty mouthfeel makes a great ale.

Related Links:

LalBrew Dry Yeast for Ale & Lager High Alcohol Ale Beer Yeast CN36 Safale Dry Yeast Craft Beer Style Guide