Shouldn’t all milkshake IPAs fall under the NEIPA category instead of regular IPA?
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Almost certainly.
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I think they will be own style once the reorg happens but could be wrong haven’t kept up
Milkshake IPAs and NEIPAs are not the same thing.
Agreed. But they’re closer to NE than regular IPA, no?
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I guess, yeah. The ones I’ve had are probably closer to a Fruit Beer than either IPA or NEIPA.
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The new reorganisation will likely have a fruit / flavoured IPA category which milkshake IPAs will fit under.
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That seems to make the most sense to me. It’s a very commonly brewed substyle—both the plain fruited IPAs and the offshoot Milkshake variety. Certainly worthy of its own substyle IMO.
Fruit beer.
Are we also going to be defining milkshake IPAs as any IPA with lactose? If so, I think that in some cases Milkshake IPAs should fall into the hazy/NE category. For example, go to Other Half and tell me honestly that you can tell the difference between their lactose IPAs and non-lactose IPAs. That said there are definitely sef-professed milkshake IPAs that take it up a notch.
I think of Milkshake IPAs as a base IPA + Lactose + Other Sweet (vanilla, fruit, etc). So, yes, for me these are pretty easily distinguishable from Hazy IPAs that don’t have any additives.
Not sure if I’ve ever had a Hazy IPA with just lactose added, so I couldn’t say if I could tell the difference.
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The daydream series at Other Half is wjat I was referring to: https://otherhalfbrewing.com/beer/ddh-double-citra-daydream
These have just oats and lactose. Agreed that vanilla or any creamsicle style beers should be separate.
Yeah I agree. I’m surprised at people wanting to classify these as NEIPAs because in my mind there’s definitely enough of a difference.
I suppose it depends on your definition of a NEIPA. If your only qualifier is it being an “IPA” and its appearance being hazy then we will have tens of thousands of otherwise “normal” IPAs to move as well, so I think it needs to be a bit more nuanced than that. What about using a New England / Vermont derived yeast strain? At least here in the UK that seems to be the defining ingredient.
Off the top of my head, I think I’ve only ever had one NEIPA that had lactose, vanilla and fruits added (in that case I argue it’s a milkshake IPA), apart from that, no, the self-styled Milkshake IPAs I’ve had were different enough from NEIPAs that I wouldn’t include them in the same style. I don’t think they should be classified as normal IPAs either. They deserve their own style, there’s enough of them now. At the very least bundle them in with fruited IPAs.
That definitely appears to be an exception and somewhat of a hybrid, I don’t think it’s typical of NEIPAs to include lactose is it? Also that is similar to the beer I was referring to in my previous post. This one btw https://www.tinyrebel.co.uk/beers/fields-forever/
With the way they are marketing that, as well as the OH beers you linked, I’d be inclined to classify them as a Milkshake IPA (similar to “Ice Cream Pale Ales” I guess) as they have far more in common.
If you can’t do this you shouldn’t be rating.
Thanks… in any case, I was at OH today. I see you live in NY, even though you don’t rate, so I assume you had the beers. So I thought about this question there, having had a few lactose beers. Yes, those were generally a little sweeter and in some cases creamier than the already sweet and creamy double IPAs OH is known for. My point was more to say that I didn’t really think that they are so different from one another to qualify as different styles. That is my opinion on this matter.
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That’s a much more reasonable statement than implying that people can’t tell the difference between the two.
