My wife is from Argentina and I am in love with dulce de leche. I want to use it in a recipe and was just wondering if anyone out there has used it before and what flavors it imparted in the beer. How much did you use and how did it taste?
I have read about the use of mate in beer and considered using both with Argentine Cascade hops. To make a Tango Ale or something.
I haven't used it, but I suspect it would ferment out like if you used both Belgian Candi and Lactose.
My only concern would be that the milk might hinder head retention. I don't know how much milk "character" it retains. If you can find the hard candy version it might do better than the syrup version.
It's probably very rich in lactose, if the bonds don't all get broken when making it, which would result in a relatively sweet brew. Not sure if lactose breaks down during production, though, or whether yeast can consume galactose...
I looked around a bit because I haven't heard of galactose and I was curious.
It looks like it is fermentable but not very well.
From what I read, it looks like it will ferment as long as glucose is also being fermented, but it will go more slowly. So when the glucose fermentation stops, there will be unconverted galacose left.
In other words, it will finish with a high FG and be sweet. My recommendation would be to try it in a sweet stout.
Please report back on how it turns out - I would be very interested - my wife is from Chile and also loves Dulce de Leche...
Suerte.
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Hehehe... My wife is Puerto Rican. But I'm the dulce de leche and flan freak.
I'm interested in how it goes too. I might adjust my milk stout if it goes well.
My only advice on formulating a recipe is keep the dulce de leche under 8oz for your first attempt. That's the max amount of lactose I put in my milk stout. I don't know if you'll end up with more or less residual sweetness than straight lactose, but I suspect it will be more.
Have not tried it yet. Just switched over to all-grain and I am still trying to figure out my system. The recipe is written but I just have not gotten around to it yet. I will keep you updated when it happens. Cheers!