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June 2005

Product Reviews / Main Nibbles / Desserts

Beer Ice Cream

A Really Cold One!

The concept of beer in ice cream often elicits an “eeeeuu” from non-foodie devotees of the cold creamy dessert. But as foodies know, without new thinking, we never discover anything new.

In fact, adding beer to an ice cream recipe is no different from adding Grand Marnier. Readers who have enjoyed the pleasures of fruit lambics, pumpkin ales, and chocolate beers, stouts, and porters will already be nodding their heads in assent. Beer pubs have gotten the message, too. Today, instead of the ubiquitous cheesecake dessert, you can choose raspberry lambic sorbet served in a stemmed Belgian glass; or the triple decker treat of a fudgy brownie and vanilla ice cream with porter poured on top. (Sound strange? A jigger of Scotch poured over vanilla ice cream has long been a gourmet treat.)

“Brew” Your Own

Sweet cream, whipped and frozen smooth, is a perfect foil for malty, slightly bitter flavors of beer. Blended with chocolate, or tropical fruits, beer can be a good stand-in for other liquids in the typical recipe for ice cream. We’ve included some recipes below so you won’t have to wait much longer to sample the pleasures yourself. Conceptually:

• Most ice creams start with a cream or dairy base: skimmed evaporated milk, custard, whole milk, yogurt or half and half.
• Add a sweetener, such as white or brown sugar, or even a reduced wort or malt extract syrup.
• Blend with a binder of some sort—eggs, gelatin, cornstarch or rice flour—especially if the recipe will incorporate fresh ripe berries or cut fruit. Cook the blend (a necessary step if raw eggs are used).
• Add other flavors (vanilla, chocolate, beer), stir well and chill. For best results, the cream base should be well chilled before freezing.

Chefs at fine restaurants, who have long served wine-based sorbets and granitas, are now seeking the best ways to beer to their frozen dessert repertoires. “It’s a little tricky to make a smooth, creamy malt ice cream from reduced wort,” said Darren Chadderdon, a former chef at Gordon Biersch’s Palo Alto brewpub, in a phone interview. “If there is too much sugar in the wort, it will interfere with the fine ice crystal formation that you want in a frozen dessert.” Chadderdon experimented with pure malt ice creams, as well as a Maibock Wine Sorbet. "The wine added another layer of flavor to the sorbet, which made it even better."

Other chefs have experimented with freezing fruit lambics for refreshing ices, or intermezzo sorbets served between courses. In Jamaica, I once sampled a delicious granita made by freezing Dragon Stout with sweetened lime juice syrup. At Chicago’s Goose Island, the chef devised a trio of Timmermans sorbets: kriek, peche and framboise. A colleague has tasted Lindemans lambics made into sorbets at beer tasting dinners held across the country.

Brewpubs aside, other restaurateurs develop frozen desserts with beer. At a Craft Brewers Conference in Cleveland, the Metropolitan Cafe restaurant created a special malted vanilla ice cream made with swirls of golden malt extract.

Still other brewers prefer to drink, not eat, their beer. Brendan Moylan of California, says, “I’d rather have a beer with dessert, than a dessert made with beer. For instance, a raspberry-infused beer goes great with a chocolate and raspberry dessert.”

We encourage you to do both. Three recipes follow:

• Raspberry Lambic Ice Cream
• Speedy Stout Mocha Freeze
• Apricot Ale Frozen Custard

Remember to follow the manufacturer’s directions for your ice cream machine (crushed ice really makes a difference if you are using an old salt-and-ice bucket maker). Prepare the recipe 12 to 24 hours ahead of serving time, to let the ice cream ripen in the freezer.

And consider serving a glass of the same beer in the recipe, along with the ice cream.

If you’d like to share some of your own recipes, click here to tell us about them.

Raspberry Lambic Ice Cream

Ingredients

• 1-1/2 cups seeded raspberry puree
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 cup framboise or raspberry lambic
• 1 envelope (2 teaspoons) unflavored gelatin, softened in 3 tablespoons warm water
• 1 cup heavy cream, whipped with 2 tablespoons powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup vanilla syrup (use a brand made with real cane sugar)
• Ice cream machine

Directions

• Blend raspberry puree, sugar and lambic. Cover and chill overnight.
• Remove the fruit blend from refrigerator and warm to room temperature, or microwave on high for 30 seconds and stir well. Temperature should be around 75 degrees.
• Blend the softened gelatin with fruit beer mixture, whisk until smooth, then fold in whipped heavy cream and vanilla syrup.
• Whisk well and chill for 1 hour.
• Pour into an ice cream machine and freeze according to manufacturer’s instructions.
• Garnish with fresh raspberries and serve.
  
  

Speedy Stout Mocha Freeze

Ingredients

• 1 quart coffee ice cream

• 1 cup stout

• 1 cup grated dark semisweet chocolate

Directions

• Soften ice cream in microwave for 15-30 seconds.
• Place in bowl of a large stand mixer. Mix in stout and grated chocolate.
• Mixture will be soft. Pour into one-cup ramekins and freeze until firm—about 4 hours.
• Serve with a glass of stout.

Apricot Ale Frozen Custard

Ingredients

• 12 ounces Pyramid Apricot Ale
• 8 ounces apricot preserves
• 1 large egg
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup whole milk
• 2 cups heavy whipping cream

Directions

• Pour ale and preserves into a heavy saucepan and simmer to reduce to 1-1/2 cups, remove from heat.

• Mix the egg and sugar in a bowl. Mix in milk, then mix in the warm apricot ale concentrate.

• Mix in the cream. Chill the ale-cream blend in refrigerator for about an hour.

• Freeze in ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions.

Makes around 2 quarts.

© Copyright 2005 Lucy Saunders.  All rights reserved. Images are the copyright of their respective owners.