Milk, toast and honey beer - beer to fit a song

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MadLuke

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Hi folks.

Just wanted to share my thoughts, get some inspiration, and maybe inspire someone. Last weekend I went on a nostalgic wave a bit and came across this old song Milk and toast and honey . First, this song is still cool. Second, my taste for music has changed... or was born... since then, so I barely finished it anyway. Third, it made me think about beer. What about milk and toast and honey beer? Or even better, what about milk and toast batch and split it, with honey in one half, and some coffee in the other? That kind of beer that you can open for a breakfast on a lazy, warm, late-spring weekend morning, hug a kid, put some Roxette into the speakers, and then quickly switch it for some Johnny Cash or Metallica.

How to make this beer? Not sure. Have random thoughts, not conclusions. It would have to be malt-foward. Keep it simple. Some biscuit malt and heavy on Munich (or Vienna as the only second malt?) to form the toast?
Milk, well, the fight is between pure lactose and oats. Never brewed oat pale ale, so not quite sure how would that work and how much is not too much? How much will oats in a pale ale taste like cream and how much like porridge?

With honey and coffee, well, I brewed couple of braggots in the past, so some pasteurised honey after the end of the primary fermentation should work. Maybe garden honey or Rata (for kiwies). Just need to think of the balance to give some flowery aroma without making it too boozy.
For coffee, some cold-steeped coffee at the end of fermentation should be fine. Coffee and pale ales is a good combo. How will coffee go with the biscuit malt? No idea.

Hops: Some nobble hops to balance the malt, 60 min addition and thats it. Although for some reason I cannot stop thinking about chucking some blueberries on this toast and add Northdown, but that would be too much.

Yeast is another question. Yeast should get out of the way here. One way would be to go lager-ish - have Marzen in my mind right now. The downside is I don't have a beer fridge, so probably won't quite work. Maybe steam lager style? Or just go for some neutral ale yeast and brew it as cold as possible over the winter.

Anyway, maybe one day... maybe it will work... maybe it won't.

Cheers
 
Right, I have realised that a monologue might not quite promote a reaction... So, two questions?
Anyone has experienced with something similar and better / different ways to turn this idea into a beer?
Also, are some of my ideas ********?

Cheers
 
Funny that you write this - I was just thinking of brewing a toast and honey beer. My thoughts to your initial commentary:

1. Lactose vs oats... I think I'll backsweeten this beer with honey as compared to allowing it to ferment the honey out (or perhaps 50/50). This will give it a much stronger honey flavor and hopefully will keep it from getting too hot. The reason I bring this up here is because the sweetness from the backsweetening will mean that I need to mash dry - and lactose would make the beer far too sweet. I think oats are the way to go. I'm thinking maybe 1lb for 5 gallons but recognize this is a risky amount.

2. I was initially thinking 1/3 2-row, 1/3 Munich, and 1/3 everything else. My vote is for Special B, as that is the most biscuit/bready grain to my palate

3. If I chose to sweeten in the secondary, I'll do cheap Sam's Club stuff followed by some higher quality local honey to backsweeten.

4. If you don't have a lagering chamber, I'd consider the steam beer yeast. Otherwise I'd still go with an American lager yeast and ferment it warm. I'll be racking onto an existing brew that is lagering as I type.

5. Coffee as an option other than honey....I guess the best case would result in something like a blonde stout - but I'm not sure this grain bill is quite right for coffee. I think if you're looking for some other ideas to try, I'd go with maple syrup or bourbon barrel. Cacao might be interesting - wait - I take that back.

Did you end up making any headway on putting thoughts to glass?
 
Funny that you write this - I was just thinking of brewing a toast and honey beer. My thoughts to your initial commentary:

1. Lactose vs oats... I think I'll backsweeten this beer with honey as compared to allowing it to ferment the honey out (or perhaps 50/50). This will give it a much stronger honey flavor and hopefully will keep it from getting too hot. The reason I bring this up here is because the sweetness from the backsweetening will mean that I need to mash dry - and lactose would make the beer far too sweet. I think oats are the way to go. I'm thinking maybe 1lb for 5 gallons but recognize this is a risky amount.

2. I was initially thinking 1/3 2-row, 1/3 Munich, and 1/3 everything else. My vote is for Special B, as that is the most biscuit/bready grain to my palate

3. If I chose to sweeten in the secondary, I'll do cheap Sam's Club stuff followed by some higher quality local honey to backsweeten.

4. If you don't have a lagering chamber, I'd consider the steam beer yeast. Otherwise I'd still go with an American lager yeast and ferment it warm. I'll be racking onto an existing brew that is lagering as I type.

5. Coffee as an option other than honey....I guess the best case would result in something like a blonde stout - but I'm not sure this grain bill is quite right for coffee. I think if you're looking for some other ideas to try, I'd go with maple syrup or bourbon barrel. Cacao might be interesting - wait - I take that back.

Did you end up making any headway on putting thoughts to glass?
Hey,

Thanks for the ideas. Now looking back at my idea, including coffee into this is might be going a step too far. Let's scratch that idea.

Yeah, the grain bill sounds sensible. I don't have any experience with backsweeting, though. Might be an interesting thing to explore. On the bready flavour, I have thought that Special B gives you more of a dark plums - raisins flavour? After recently reading through a book on Sahti, not sure if small amount of cara rye (or 50/50 cara rye and normal rye) would give you the flavour you want? Although you might get more or a "sourdough bready" flavour than the traditional toast.

I have not put it into practise, though. The post here was more of a thought (supported by a generous amount of my coffee stout) than a plan. Plus I don't have a proper cooling setup, and in my part of the world its blazing hot these days, so bad time to ferment anything but kveiks and other weird stuff. If you start making this before me, let me know how it went.
 
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