Beer Ice Cream

Howdy!

I've found a couple of beers that I wouldn't mind turning into ice cream beer and I was going to use the vanilla bean ice cream recipe as a base and add the beer to that but I have a couple of questions:

Do I need to adjust the ratio of cream/milk in order to accommodate for the beer (water) or can I use a 1:1 ratio in terms of liquids.
Should I reduce the beer before adding it to the custard base? I've read different opinions in regards to this. Some say to just whisky the beer to flatten it before adding it to the base. Others say simmer on the stove top to reduce the water content.

I'm also looking at using liquid nitrogen to set the ice cream.

Any other tips on how I could go about making this would be greatly appreciated.

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Comments

tshewman

Th relative amoun of alcohol in beer is unlikely to affect the freezing temp a great deal (it will some, but at a typical 5% not a tone), so reduction would depend on the desired goal/flavor. For ratios, keeping the liquid volume would seem reasonable. However with Beer having no NFMS and allot of water where whole milk is ~87%water and ~3.5%mf), I would suggest going with a cream and beer mixture (maybe ~750gcream:250gbeer). The other alternative would be to add NFMS (powdered milk) and go with a different ratio (less cream more beer). The carbonation is unlikely to be an issue. It's a gas (we can churn with the stuff-dry ICE IS CO2 and it disappears). Good luck and let us know how it churns out. :-)

ttpoker

I would assume reduction would be necessary. Start with a 1/2 reduction and taste. Keep reducing down until the flavor is not affected for what I would assume will be the best possible result. This is of course just an educated guess, I haven't tried this yet but it seems logical.

Warren_Knox_265708

Thank you both for the information and tips.

So I ended up using dry ice for churning the ice cream (liquid nitrogen is quite cost prohibitive starting out) and I think the results weren't too bad (I've only a small taste of each after churning).

First batch was a vanilla ice cream base with a Neapolitan Milk Stout with the following ingredients:

Heavy Cream (36% fat): 3 cups
Whole Milk (3.25% fat): 1 cup
Sugar: 3/4 cups
Beer: 1.25 cups
Egg Yolks: 7
Vanilla Pod: 1

Notes:

The base ended up being quite runny and I think that may have been due to the number of egg yolks (I added an additional egg for the second one). The ice cream churned but it's quite a smooth ice cream. I also steeped the vanilla bean pod in the milk and then added it to the egg yolks and 1/2 cup of sugar that had been whisked together so I don't know if that made a difference.

I didn't end up reducing the beer because I still wanted it to be a little boozy (not sure how boozy it's actually going to be) but depending on how the flavour turns out I may end up doing a reduction next time to bring out the flavour (I could always do the reduction and then add more beer afterwards I guess)

From the calculations I made this batch should have around 17.42% butter fat so it should have quite a smooth mouth feel without being too greasy.

I let the base (with the beer mixed in) sit overnight (~8 hours) and I don't think this makes any noticeable difference as long as you chill the base before churning (see next batch below)

Second batch was just a normal sweet base with a Salted Caramel Scotch Ale from Parallel 49 (it's under seasonals) with the following ingredients:

Heavy Cream (36% fat): 3 cups
Whole Milk (3.25% fat): 3/4 cups
Sugar: 1/2 cups
Beer: 1.5 cups
Egg Yolks: 8
Brownies: 105g

Notes:

I think the base for this one turned out quite well, it was a little bit thicker and churned up kind of chunky so it looked more "ice cream" like. I also just combined the cream, milk, sugar, and yolks together and mixed that over the double boiler rather than heating the cream, milk, and some sugar before adding it to the whiskey yolks and remaining sugar.

I made the base and then churned it almost straight away after I had cooled the base in an ice bath so that it had cooled down. This seemed to work just as well letting it sit overnight so I think this will be my go to way of doing it (although depending on how many different batches I'm making I might still do it the day before)

I made the ice cream base (minus the beer and brownies, which were store bought) and once I had cooled the base added the beer and brownies.

I also took a different approach to the dry ice by trying to crush it and then put it through a sieve into a bowl so I had a fine powder ready to go (I was using a cast iron pan to crush the dry ice between some tea towels in small batches, I really need a blender...)

Calculated total butter fat for this mixture was 16.5%.

Overall notes:

I think the second batch worked a little better, it may have been due to the way I made the custard or the addition of the extra yolk (as they are the only different variables)

Depending on how the flavours turn out a reduction might be needed in order to bring out the flavours of the beer.

I'm still experimenting with the flavours but given that I'm fairly confident with the base I think I should be able to work with those fairly easily (although I'd love a better way of working out if adding x of a certain ingredient will change the flavour by y amount)

The measurements were somewhat imprecise due to the fact that I don't have a set of scales at the moment. I intend to purchase a set of scales to use for further recipes and it'll be interesting to see how the impacts the results.

I need to buy a blender and standing mixer...