How To Make Beer Ice Cream

I first had beer ice cream at Sweet Action here in Denver and was really impressed. They are masters of incorporating odd ingredients into ice cream (sour cream and chives!,!,) and it's a regular stop of mine. I knew I had to give beer ice cream a shot, but I had never even made ice cream before let alone with beer in it. It turns out making ice cream is stupid simple. It's also a hell of a lot of fun. For the beer, I use Left Hand's Nitro Milk Stout. 8-ounces gives you a nice beer flavor without being too intense.

Adjust up or down as you wish. Others beers work too of course. I really like it with Great Divide's Hibernation Ale. I really want to try it with a big buttery English Strong ale, like Geary's Hampshire Special. This is one application where diacetyl is desired. Enjoy the video. The written recipe and directions are below. 1. Whisk together the yolks, salt, and sugar in a sauce pan or pot. Then mix in the whipping cream. 2. Slowly heat to 180°F, stirring often. This should take 10 minutes or so. You don't want to go too high and scramble the eggs. 3. When the mixture hits 180°F, remove it from the heat and pour it through a fine mesh strainer into a medium-sized bowl.

4. Whisk in the beer. 5. Immediately put the medium bowl into an ice bath to cool it (this should feel familiar to homebrewers). 6. When the mixture hits 70°F, remove it from the ice bath. Put Saran wrap on top and put the bowl in the fridge to cool overnight. 7. When chilled, remove the bowl and pour the mixture into the spinning ice cream machine. The machine's container should be completely frozen. 8. It will take 20-30 minutes to make the ice cream, during which time you can add any ingredients you want to it. 9. If you let it sit in the freezer for a while it will harden up. If you make your own beer ice cream, let us know in the comments how it turned out and what beer you used. As a beer judge, I see the same off-flavors again and again. So I made this video to show you a 3-step technique that will get rid of those common off-flavors and produce a cleaner tasting beer.

This recipe/technique is based on sweetened condensed milk. Ice creams based on condensed milk have a fundamentally different taste and texture profile from simple eggless American style ice creams and egg custard based French style ice creams. They are their own third style of true dairy based ice cream. I would characterize their taste as slightly carmelized, cooked rather than fresh tasting. I am by no means, damning them with faint praise. Vanilla-Cardamom, Vietnamese Ice Coffee are just two of a number of flavors based on condensed milk that I love. I describe versions of them using this technique below.

Fruit ice creams in most cases, are better served with Philadelphia and custard based styles (not to mention ices) made in an ice cream maker. With this technique you can not make vegan, dairy-free, or sugar free ice creams. You might be thinking that you could make it sugar free by replacing the condensed milk with evaporated, but unfortunately a cup of evaporated milk still has 23 grams or so of sugar. At some point I will post on blender, frozen banana based, dairy-free alternatives. I found this simple, clever technique on the Eagle Brands website. If you are a fellow fan of sweetened condensed milk, the website is worth checking out for the large number of recipes there.