# Freaky weird-arse beers #1,000,000,000,001: gentian milk porter palooz



## TimT (14/4/14)

Folks round these parts sometimes talk about milk stouts and milk porters, in which they add the lactose to give a creamy taste and a lingering sweetness. I have a variation on that method that I sometimes use: to get a creamy milk taste I just chuck in milk. Well. Whey, actually, a byproduct of my cheesemaking endeavours. I have about six litres of the stuff sitting in the freezer at the moment, and if it doesn't go on the beer I'd have to use it in the garden, and no-one wants that to happen. The idea is the same as with any milk stout - get the sweetness from the unfermentable lactose and maybe try and give the final ale a gentle creaminess.

Previously to this current batch I'd been conservative with my whey additions - before the boil the stuff is swimming with lacto-bacilli which is, to say the least, undesirable. Not this bunch; for 8-9 litres of wort (pre-boil) I added just above 1 litre of whey. I even added some of the whey to the mash just because. I figured (with no science or prior experience to back me up) that the salts and sugars naturally found in milk would if anything help mash efficiency, and even wondered if perhaps the mash wouldn't help to break down some of the hard or impossible-to-ferment sugars in whey into something the yeast would be able to handle. (Yeah, nah, who knows).

In addition to the whey, my base porter recipe that I've been twiddling with and adapting, lifted from Laurie Strachan's_ Complete Guide to Beer and Brewing: _pale ale malt plus a handful of crystal malt and chocolate malt. Nothing too weird because I just wanted smooth flavours. Skipped out the hopping entirely because I could; instead, I provided a straightforward bitterness by adding a teaspoon of gentian. (This might mean I have to drink the ale relatively fresh - no preservative herb - but I'm cool with that.)

After the wort had been boiled down and cooled, I tested the gravity - the expected gravity range for the porter recipe normally is between 1.040 - 1.060. I got 1.071! Not sure how much lactose was in the whey, but it must have added at least 10 points to the gravity, and maybe quite a bit more than that. My mash efficiency has improved a lot lately, so I'm guessing maybe without the added sweetness from the lactose, the gravity would be about 1.058(?) or maybe a bit lower(?)

Anyway, it's been fermenting a week now; I added oak chips, a spot of cloves a vanilla bean and some cinnamon sticks to it today and will let it sit for a bit more. I took another gravity reading too; about 1.025 - again if we take out the unfermentable lactose, the gravity is maybe about 1.014-1.012(?) All a bit of a mystery. Anyway, I'm happy to have a bit of remaining sweetness because sheee-it, that gentian is bitter stuff. Good - but bitter.

There is no moral to this story. And, unlike an angry politician, I am not stalking back and forth demanding answers. But I'd be happy if you gave me them anyway in comments. Or called me an idiot, really, it's up to you. Basically I just wanted to share this with you all. Sharing is caring


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## dent (14/4/14)

Love your work.


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## Mardoo (14/4/14)

If you're using unpasteurized milk the whey would likely still be enzymatically active, which might contribute. Just a guess however.


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## Blitzer (14/4/14)

I add Max Gain Protein Powder 3000, get drunk & bulk up at the same time! :chug:


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## TimT (14/4/14)

I usually use pasteurised unhomogenised milk for cheese (though I probably shouldn't bother, because after a month of ageing cheese becomes too acidic for listeria anyway). In the process of pasteurisation apparently a lot of the calcium chloride in the milk gets knocked out, so you're often advised to add it back. So I presume whey from unpasteurised milk would have more of those salts beneficial for brewing.


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## AndrewQLD (14/4/14)

Whey is fairly acidic so it would have helped lower your mash ph which could have improved your efficiency.


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## TimT (14/4/14)

Is it but? I know it *is* acidic, that's the point after all - once milk tips from alkaline to acid the curds and whey separate. But I thought the acid - lactic acid - was fairly gentle and wouldn't change the pH *that* much.


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## AndrewQLD (14/4/14)

Lactic acid is one of the most commonly used acids in home brewing to adjust ph although at much higher concentrations typically 88% but you only use a couple of ml. 
It's also possible the whey would continue to acidify during the mash as it does in cheese making.
Depending on how much whey you added to the mash could make a significant difference, my water here has a ph of 7 if I used a reasonable proportion of whey with a ph of under 5 it would make a big difference to the resultant mash ph.


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## Ross (14/4/14)

Tim.... maybe time to invest in some ph papers & start measuring things & getting a better understanding of what you're doing


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## Ducatiboy stu (14/4/14)

Ross said:


> Tim.... maybe time to invest in some ph papers & start measuring things & getting a better understanding of what you're doing


Now where would the fun in that be....


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## TimT (14/4/14)

The pH would depend a bit on the type of whey, too. There are two or three ways of making, er, whey. One is letting lacto-bacilli do its work with the aid of an enzyme (rennet) (This counts as two ways if you remember that curds can be made with either mesophilic, 'room-temperature loving', or thermophilic, 'heat-loving', bacteria). The other is to just skip the formation-of-lactic-acid process and just chuck in any old acid - vinegar or lemon juice are common types - when the milk is hot (just under boiling point). I'd imagine the whey formed from bacteria has a much more gentle acidity; and if you used mesophilic culture they'd almost all die off during the mash; if you used thermophilic culture they might stick around and continue to acidify during the mash. (When you make cheese with thermophillic culture you heat the milk up to around 50 degrees celsius). Though I do occasionally make cheeses with vinegar/lemon juice, I generally avoid using this whey in anything to do with food, partly because I suspect the acidity is much higher. (Often, you can taste the vinegar and lemon juice). I have a house culture and it's mesophilic, so my whey comes from that; so it would be the least acidic type of whey you'd get.

What a lot of brackets I just used.


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## mr_wibble (14/4/14)

I hope you wrote down a detailed recipe and method, so when this turns out awesome you can re-create it.
(or write on the bottom "Do Not Try This At Home")

How much lactose do you think is in the whey?
Something I read estimates about 5%, so about 50 grams of lactose per litre?
The whey proteins would increase the gravity a bit too no?


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## OzPaleAle (14/4/14)

Was at a sheeps milk cheese place just south of Hobart last week and they decided to use the whey waste product to create a vanilla liqueur, I tried a bit, not normally a fan of liqueurs myself anyway but it was not too bad, a little of the hot alcohol taste to it, worth looking at if your doing a lot of cheeses. 

Edit: This is the stuff.

http://grandvewe.com.au/product/grandvewe-gourmet/vanilla-whey-liqueur/

also had a Pinot paste to go with the cheese using the waste pulp from making wine, was pretty tasty also.


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## TimT (14/4/14)

Mr Wibble - it was in very small quantities. 4-5 litre batch. So:
900 g pale ale malt, 100 g crystal malt, 60 g chocolate malt, 1 to 1.25 litres whey, 1 tsp gentian, cloves, oak chips, two cinnamon sticks, 1 vanilla bean. Nottingham yeast.
Mash as normal, with a little added whey. Added rest of whey and gentian full boil. Cooled down, added yeast. It fermented flat-chat for two, three days, and by the sixth/seventh day it was pretty stable, so I added the oak and cloves and vanilla then.
My *plan* is to have a very smooth, sweet rather than bitter ale with some added tanniny astringency from the cloves and oak and cinnamon. We'll see how that goes; I tasted when I took a sample on adding the oak/spices yesterday and it seems to be working well so far: nice malty sweetness, with a bit of biscuit character from the crystal malt, supplemented by the sweetness of the whey. Little aroma otherwise, but it could work out to be a very nice desserty ale.

I'm not too sure how to calculate the lactose content of whey since apparently it varies a good deal anyway - even milk from the one cow will have different qualities on different days.


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## manticle (14/4/14)

If the enzymes in the mash break down the unfermentable lactose, won't that defeat the purpose of adding lactose?


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## TimT (14/4/14)

Good point. I guess I was wondering about the other sugars and carbohydrates in the milk as well - galactose, etc. I don't know too much about that.


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## jyo (14/4/14)

It makes me think of a black chai latte!


Not that I've ever drank chai latte h34r:


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## Camo6 (14/4/14)

jyo said:


> It makes me think of a black chai latte!
> 
> 
> Not that I've ever drank chai latte h34r:


Oh, save it sister. We've all seen the pics.


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## Mr. No-Tip (14/4/14)

If this ain't a contender for the ANHC fifth ingredient comp, I don't know what is...


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## toncils (14/4/14)

This is whey cool!


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## TimT (15/4/14)

Using whey is not exactly an original idea, though it's hard to find information about it on the net - a stray blog post here or article there mentioning the possibility and a vague reference to the long history of milk stouts somewhere else originally put the idea into my head. That, and the fact that when you make cheese you get shedloads of whey each freaking time and you've got to do something with it so why not give it to some yeast and let the two fight it out amongst themselves?

If I was going to put it in the ANHC competition I guess I'd tweak it more. Whey's the feature ingredient so maybe just go for a conventional bittering with hops. Or maybe not worry about bittering? (The point being the sweetness from the lactose and the malty flavours?) I suppose the recipe could be taken in several interesting directions.


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## TimT (15/4/14)

Took a taste of this today, a day after I added the vanilla, oak, cloves, and cinnamon, partly out of curiosity, partly because I started getting antsy about whether I'd added too many spices at once. Already it has a pleasant vanilla taste, possibly backed up by the cloves and oak. In retrospect I probably should have added spices conservatively, and one at time, as is often recommended, so that I'd be able to have a better idea what each ingredient added to the brew, but I was worried about the possibility of infection with multiple additions. Then again, if I'm going to be doing multiple tastings it might have the same effect 

I wasn't sure what to expect with vanilla bean actually - but it seems to have flavoured my brew relatively quickly. I seem to recall other brewers being underwhelmed by the effects of vanilla bean in their brew, but maybe the bean flavour was overwhelmed by hops?

Anyway. I'll let it go for a bit longer before bottling and carbonating, but it seems to be well on its way to being a tasty brew. Huzzah!


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## OneEye (15/4/14)

I think it depends on the quality of the vanilla bean. I've used some from Coles and some I picked up at a farmers market. Both went into different porters but the beans from the farmers market gave a much stronger vanilla taste. Not too sure if it was the freshness or actual quality of the beans. Both prepared the same way too, sliced down the middle with the contents scraped out and dumped into the fermenter (after fermentation had stopped). Sounds like this is going to be quite an interesting brew!


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## TimT (8/5/14)

Okay, I've flipped the lid on one of these and tasted. Though there was a schppp the carbonation doesn't seem to have got that far yet; no significant bubbling or head. But it tastes really nice; definitely to the sweet side (the whey and the crystal malt and the vanilla bean are really working together to give it a beautiful desserty taste). The bitter/dry kick from the gentian and the tanniny stuff - the cloves and the oak chips and maybe something from the chocolate malt too - is present just enough to balance out the sweetness. To my mind it's really, really drinkable - just about exactly what I was going for. (My wife describes it as 'Christmas pudding taste', I'll take that!)

The main reason I wanted carbonation was because I thought this would work better with a creamy head - otherwise it makes quite a nice still ale. Maybe in future I'll develop this brew in two directions, going for carbonation and creamy head in one (adding a bit of wheat malt perhaps? Would the addition of whey be affecting head retention - positively or negatively?) and turning the other into a still dessert ale.


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## TimT (21/5/14)

Interesting. I just read today that whey is also a good source of nitrogen, so perhaps it provides some nutrient for yeast as well if added to beers.


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## seehuusen (29/5/14)

This is a very interesting topic! my mrs makes her own cheeses, I may have to try this out too one day 
Though I think I'd not go down the same bittering path, and stick to hops on that front. Thanks for sharing your experiment!


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## TimT (29/5/14)

Yeah gentian is working for me at the moment and seems to definitely like beers of this style but hops would go well too.

Reading a brewing book the other day and it struck me that gentian beer sounds very like the old 18th/19th century ale, 'Mumm'. Kind of a lost style now but it was flavoured with a number of herbs, including gentian.


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## seehuusen (29/5/14)

I'm not 100% surprised, though I wasn't aware of that being used for flavouring.
Using hops is a relatively new phenomenon in beer making on the grand scale of things (beers having been brewed for thousand's of years and hops only used for what a couple of hundred years?)

Do you have a recipe that you used for your version? If you don't mind publishing it of course


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## TimT (29/5/14)

Recipe's on the previous page!


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## TimT (29/5/14)

I had thought about using hops in another version of this so as not to detract attention from the whey - 'whey' being the feature ingredient, as it were. I thought maybe something that added a spiciness to the brew and not just a straightforward bittering hop - I'm told if you add Fuggles at about 60 mins you'll get an earthy spiciness as well as bitter. Haven't tried it though. In the future I might experiment with a hoppy version.

There's also this: the gentian - if used judiciously, you don't want to over-add it - really seems to go well with the sweetness, making this a nice dessert beer. (It's the bitter component in Angostura and Bitters). I think it would complement other sweet flavours too - liquorice, for instance.


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## Kiwifirst (29/5/14)

I have to say Tim, that I really enjoy your posts. I love the experimental aspect of them and you have already inspired me to get some science experiments on the go in the Brew shed.

All in can say, without sounding like a fanboy, is 'Cheers Mate!'


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## Kiwifirst (29/5/14)

Of course you can also read that post as a weasely way to get an invite round to try a milk stout


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## TimT (29/5/14)

Better hurry up.... almost all drunk up


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## Kiwifirst (29/5/14)

Thats fine, because I know you'll have some other experiment on the go next week


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## gazzagahan (10/6/14)

B.


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