Check the label

To be fair (if there is such a thing) to Milkshake IPA's, I have had a few that aren't bad, but they were highly restrained. One that is pretty highly available is Cloud Catcher by Odell. It wasn't over the top and thought they did a good job of it for a mass produced beer. The sweetness was in check, the vanilla wasn't over the top and there was a hint of orange/peach going on.

 

I thought this was a decent article ...

https://beerandbrewing.com/got-milk-examining-hazy-ipa/

I liked this line:

Unless this is an elaborate prank, no brewery does that without seeing some kind of black ink at the end of it.

BTW, I'm not a fan of lactose or the concept of milk shake IPAS.

 

Lactose is indeed a sugar but it is not as sweet as sugars like sucrose.

From a quick web search:

“Lactose (milk sugar) is a disaccharide, similar to Sucrose (ordinary sugar).

It is made up of two simple sugars - Glucose and Galactose bound together by a glycosidic linkage. Sucrose is similar but has Fructose instead of Galactose in the mix. It is only 15% as sweet as ordinary sugar.”

Brewers have been using lactose for quite some time in brewing (e.g., Milk Stouts) but they are adding the lactose more so to add body to the beer vs. sweetness.

Needless to say lactose is indeed a sweet additive but not really all that sweet as you can read above.

Cheers!

 

As with any beer style it is a combination of things. How much of ingredient x is used and how it is used. How does ingredients x 'work; with ingredients y? Will x + y = extra stuff?

The best I can tell you is that lactose is not a sweet sugar like sucrose is a sweet sugar. Maybe you dislike the beer in question (which you choose to not name) because of the variety of ingredients used? Maybe you just have a bias against lactose as regards the IPA beer style? Maybe...

Who really knows here? Do you really know here?

Cheers!

 

If you are willing to share with me what beer you are discussing here I may be able to provide more feedback.

Cheers!

 

Generally it will add sweetness, body and calories. In a stout it will offset the harsh roasty character and give it a smoother milder finish, sometimes causing other flavors that were hammered by the acrid bitterness of some malts to shine thru like chocolate and coffee. You can also use it to correct mistakes to some level. If you screwed up and made your beer too bitter, it is possible you could dose it with lactose to add some residual sweetness, body to offset the bitterness. This is not optimum, but for a homebrewer it could save your batch if it was undrinkable in its current state. I think the use in the Milkshake IPA is to add a little more residual sweetness to go with the vanilla and whatever fruit was jammed in there along with some additional body to the beer. Most fruit when added to a beer will ferment out the sugars leaving you with only one dimension of the fruit, the lactose stands up that sugar that was fermented out. The exploding cans phenom is due to some brewers adding fruit after fermentation and telling you to keep those cans cold (so the sugars in the fruits won't ferment out). Most will tell you that won't work, it can still happen, and thus we see exploding cans.

 

like anything, it's the skill of the brewer and making a balanced product. I've had lactose IPA's I've liked quite a bit - Track 7 made a blueberry lactose haze bro that was delicious, Revision makes a couple that are highly regarded. I can see if wayyyyyyyy too much lactose was added, that would ruin it.

As for naming beers, I'm all for it. When someone is cagey, it can induce a Streisand effect - by keeping things under wraps, it can actually make things worse. Also, if 99 people say it's wonderful, and one person hates it, it may have been a bad can or some other eventuality which vindicates the brewery. Similarly, if nearly everyone says it's horribad, then I'll consider myself warned should I come across this.