Has global warming made it too darn hot to think about autumn events like Oktoberfest?  Can't choose between a milkshake and a beer? You are in luck, the Red Robin restaurant chain is simply mixing the two.
 
A cold beer milkshake can appeal to beer enthusiasts and dessert-lovers, they believe, so now through November 11th, they are selling a Samuel Adams® Octoberfest Milkshake. You can probably guess its ingredients; soft serve ice cream, Samuel Adams® Octoberfest draft, vanilla and caramel.

"Nothing says Oktoberfest better than a beer, so I incorporated the fun spirit of Red Robin into this innovative milkshake," said Donna Ruch, master mixologist with Red Robin - which sounds like a pretty cool job to have. "Now, our guests don't have to choose between a beer or a shake to go with their burger. They can have the very best of both in our new Octoberfest Milkshake."

Is this really new? Milk stouts have been around for a while and ice cream is just cream rather than milk. Chitoshi Nakahara debuted Bilk (beer + milk, obviously) a few years ago, though that was more economics than consumer demand - the area where the brewer is located is heavily dairy and dairy is heavily subsidized. They ended up throwing out a lot of milk due to lack of demand at the price they need to charge so they came up with the idea of making beer from it instead. 


Credit and link: Japan Probe

As we discussed in The Science of Beer Foam, messing with lipids will impact the foam, but you're not drinking a beer milkshake because of the foam anyway - you are drinking it because they sell it at Red Robin. 

I don't think Bavarians are embracing the idea just yet - but they don't embrace any new idea easily.  Bavarians get a bad rap because they are blunt but you just have to know how to deal with that. I try to explain it to Americans this way; Bavaria is the Texas of Germany, they dress in funny hats and strange clothes from a hundred years ago, they talk their own way and they don't give a hoot what anyone thinks about that.