Pineapple Milkshake IPA recipe help for lactose and fruit additions

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HausBrauerei_Harvey

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All,

I have to do a beer with pineapple for our latest club competition. I brewed up 5 gallons of a hazy on friday and planned after the fact to turn it into a pineapple milkshake IPA. I brew a ton of lagers and the occasional hazy so this is new territory for me.

I've got two 20oz cans of crushed pineapple I could use, I was going to add one can to my SS tea infuser tonight with the first dry hop addition. I was also going to add some boiled/cooled lactose with a bit of water. i'm struggling with the lactose amount to use.

A half pound of lactose would be 3.8% of my grist, a pound would be 7.4% I honestly dont have much taste experience with this style so i'm not even sure what I should shoot for. Any advice would be welcome.

Also, is one 20oz can enough pineapple? I was thinking I could taste when doing the second dry hop addition and add the second can then if it's not pineapple enough for my tastes.
 
When i've done my milkshake IPAs, or any extremely sweet stouts, i will regularly use .5 to 1lb of lactose in a 5gallon batch. It depends on what flavor you're using, and what your brew method was like. Lactose doesnt necessarily add sweetness, as much as it does thicker body. Which can easily be achieved through a higher mash temperature, but that will add extra sweetness.

For Milkshake IPAs, i tend to mash on the lower end, like 152-154, and then add about 1lb of lactose. This makes the beer less sweet, but the body full. To my taste anyway. I prefer to let the vanilla and whatever fruit i'm adding handle the sweeter flavors. For a 5 gallon batch of my Strawberry Milkshake IPA, i use 3lbs of frozen strawberries, but strawberries are much less intense than pineapple. You can probably get away with 20oz as its a more more noticeable flavor.
 
1 lb is good territory for a milkshake IPA.
Can't speak to how much pineapple needed, but I made a 1 gal of pineapple wine once (pureed a whole pineapple and added sugar). It ended up tasting like a semi-sweet white wine with a hint of pineapple, so I wouldn't expect the flavor to come through very well. I suggest Bravo as a hops - it can give a good pineapple flavor.
I did an NEIPA once with Azacca, Bravo, and CItra, and when fresh it tasted like pure pineapple juice - no fruit added.
 
Thanks guys. Since I wanted to do this last night I added .75lb of lactose, which was about 5% of my grist, and went with one 20oz can of the crushed pineapple. I figure I can taste it in a few days (I love my anvil fermenter with a spigot!) and see how it's shaping up, and I can add more pineapple of lactose with the last dry hop addition if needed.
 
So just to update, I ended up adding the rest of the lactose when I did the second dry-hop addition, it didn't have as much lactose punch as I was going for initially. I kegged this up (CO2 transfer) last weekend and tapped it early last week. Wow this is a really great beer! The pineapple really comes through well but plays off the hops nicely, and the lactose adds another nice layer of flavor. Definitely far from my normal brews (that's what I love about our club competitions, forces me to do something different) but a really great summer beer, i'd brew it again for sure.
 
So just to update, I ended up adding the rest of the lactose when I did the second dry-hop addition, it didn't have as much lactose punch as I was going for initially. I kegged this up (CO2 transfer) last weekend and tapped it early last week. Wow this is a really great beer! The pineapple really comes through well but plays off the hops nicely, and the lactose adds another nice layer of flavor. Definitely far from my normal brews (that's what I love about our club competitions, forces me to do something different) but a really great summer beer, i'd brew it again for sure.
Awesome!
So you ended up with a full pound of lactose?
That's what I used in my vanilla milkshake and I thought it was just right.
 
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