Ipa Slushie

This drinkable IPA is reminiscent of the first West Coast IPA’s to emerge with a slight twist of a New England style IPA. The hop regime is a blend of dank, piney and citrus aromas. This Galaxy and Mosaic hazy IPA is a favorite of Outer Range Brewing fans. Outer Range Brewing Co. Mar 31, 2019 - 2 min read All Access Subscribers can download the Beersmith and BeerXML version of this recipe.

1. Poured from a 12 oz can into a tulip glass. Pours a hazy plum color with a finger of pinkish-white head. The head leaves a few spots of lacing before settling into a thin ring. The beer smells like a lemon slushie, with some faint notes of strawberries and lime.
2. As far as summer craft beer cocktails are concerned this IPA mango slushie is a star. It is also the second easiest thing I’ve made for this blog of ours, the first one being the Radler Bier. There are no hard and fast rules about making an IPA mango slushie. All you want is the IPA (your favorite) to be cold and the mango to be ripe.

In January 2015, Jason Alström, co-founder of BeerAdvocate, famously reviewed Tired Hands Brewing’s HopHands, one of the cult brewer’s most coveted pale ales. He gave it a devastating 2.74 out of 5. “Milkshake beers are not a trend or acceptable with traditional or even modern styles,” Alström wrote.

Boy, was he wrong. Tired Hands owner and brewmaster Jean Broillet IV promptly responded by creating 22 milkshake IPAs by the end of 2016 — and other brewers followed.

Milkshake IPAs may not be traditional, but they are most certainly a trend, and one that has sustained three years and counting. In fact, the “category” has inspired brewers to experiment with lactose, fruit, spices, and hop additions in a variety of ways, with relatives and predecessors in the smoothie and hazy IPA category. Contrary to curmudgeonly belief, milkshake IPAs, smoothie IPAs, and even slushie IPAs exist, and they’re filling up taprooms and coolers with their thick, sweet haze. Here’s what they are, why you may suddenly be seeing IPAs that look like tropical ice cream shakes, and five to try.

Lactose, Fruit, Spice, and Everything Nice

A milkshake IPA, and the similar smoothie IPA, are sub-styles of the New England-style IPA. Milkshake and smoothie beers pump up the volume on fruit additions, unfermentable sugars, and adjuncts such as vanilla. This creates a creamy, full-bodied texture and bold opacity that’s akin to what you slurp at a malt shop.

The main ingredient that sets milkshake IPAs apart from other juicy and hazy IPAs is lactose. “That’s the key,” Kyle Carbaugh, co-founder of Wiley Roots Brewing in Greeley, Colo., says. Wiley Roots has a series of Sonic-inspired sour ales called “Slush” that has “exploded in popularity.” Beyond that, “fruit and spice additions further that differentiation” between a New England IPA and a milkshake or smoothie IPA, he says.

Swedish brewery Omnipollo and Pennsylvania’s Tired Hands even add wheat flour to the boil for their milkshake beers, as do other milkshake makers. Oats, flaked barley, and wheat malt are also common, as are apple puree and other pectin-rich, “perma-haze” producing additions.

A Blended History

To our best estimate, milkshake and smoothie IPAs trace back to 2015, when Omnipollo started referring to beers in its Magic Numbers series as “smoothie IPAs.” Omnipollo’s fleet included Magic #411 Wild Strawberry/Rhubarb/Vanilla Smoothie IPA, Magic #4:21 Raspberry Smoothie IPA, and Magic #90000 Bilberry Smoothie IPA.

That same year, Omnipollo teamed up with Tired Hands on an IPA brewed with oats, wheat, and lactose sugar. It was fermented on strawberries and vanilla beans, and hopped to the gills with Mosaic and Citra. They called their creation simply “Milkshake.” And thus, a style was born.

Omnipollo and Tired Hands continued to collaborate over the years, creating Strawberry Milkshake IPA, Mango Milkshake IPA, and others. Meanwhile, brewers across the country and around the world have been trying their hands at the style. From WeldWerks Brewing in Colorado, to Austin Brothers Beer Co. in Michigan, to Sixpoint Brewery in New York, to The Booth Brewing Co. in Seoul, Korea, milkshake IPAs have proven they are a movement.

“A large contingent of brewers are making milkshake IPAs that are also in the hazy, New England IPA camp as well, drawing on techniques from that other style to create something new,” Carbaugh says. “What WeldWerks is doing with like their Double Peach Milkshake IPA is heavily influenced by their Juicy Bits series, and their whole lineup of New England IPAs.”

A Rose By Any Other Name

Whether there’s a difference between milkshake IPAs and smoothie IPAs is splitting hairs. For example, it’s unlikely to have a milkshake IPA without lactose, as milk sugar’s sweet, creamy attribution is the defining characteristic of this type of beer. Most smoothie IPAs have lactose, too.

For many brewers, smoothie and milkshake IPAs represent a playful but very real evolution of the New England-style IPA; for others, it’s just another way to make an IPA.

“Other brewers out there still aren’t quite ready to call it a style or a sub-style of New England IPA, but I think by and large brewers that are making these definitely are in the same camp,” Carbaugh says.

But is a fruited IPA sans lactose still a smoothie IPA? “Yes,” Carbaugh says, laughing. “If you’re adding fruits to a New England IPA, I think people would call that a smoothie IPA, or a fruited New England.”

5 Milkshake and Smoothie Beers to Try

Austin Brothers Arn’t You Peachy Smoothie IPA
NEIPA with lactose, peaches, and vanilla.

Odell Cloud Catcher Milkshake IPA
IPA with lactose.

Sixpoint Dreamsickle
Sour IPA with blood orange, tangerine, vanilla, and lactose.

WeldWerks Double Peach Milkshake IPA
IPA with peach puree, Citra and Amarillo hops, lactose, and vanilla.

Wiley Roots Brewing Cherry Limeade Slush
Sour ale with sweet cherries and limes.

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Ipa Slushie Beer

ALL GRAIN

Batch size: 5 gallons (19 liters)
Brewhouse efficiency: 72%
OG: 1.070
FG: 1.015
IBUs: N/A
ABV: 7.2%

Ipa Slushie Machine

MALT/GRAIN BILL

Ipa Slushie Mix

7.65 lb (3.47 kg) Pilsen malt
2.29 lb (1 kg) White wheat
2.53 lb (1.15 kg) Malted oats
13.4 oz (381 g) 2-row malt

HOPS SCHEDULE

Flame-out hops
0.42 oz (12 g) each Citra, Mosaic, and El Dorado

Steeping hops (180°F/82°C for 30 minutes)
2.12 oz (60 g) each Citra, Mosaic, and Eldorado

Dry hops #1 (add 1 day after active fermentation begins)
0.68 oz (19 g) each Citra, Mosaic, and El Dorado

Dry hops #2 (add after removing the yeast and keep on for 2 days)
1.08 oz (31 g) each Citra, Mosaic, and El Dorado

YEAST

White Labs WLP066 London Fog

DIRECTIONS

Mash for 60 minutes at 149°F (65°C), vorlauf for 15 minutes, and boil for 60 minutes. Add the flame-out hops, then chill the wort to less than or equal to 180°F (82°C) and add your steeping hops for 30 minutes. This will help keep the bitterness down and the juiciness up. Pitch the yeast at 68°F (20°C). It’s important to add the first charge of dry hops at high krausen, whenever that happens to be for you. Add the second charge after you remove the yeast.

BREWER’S NOTES

Ipa Slushie Maker

The malted oats tend to prevent stuck mashes, so you may not need to use rice hulls. Despite the low mash temperature, with the grain bill and yeast mix, we seem to end with a relatively high finishing gravity, which accentuates the “juiciness” of the hops. We adjust our mash with phosphoric acid to get a pH (reading taken at room temperature) around 5.4. Use calcium chloride in the mash to get around 150 ppm.