The idea of making a beer ice cream has been floating around in my head for a long time…. I had ideas either to make it a sweet ice cream (like the one I present today), or a gourmet ice cream, paired with a bruschetta with apricot chutney and a goat cheese… we’ll save this version for another recipe 😉
The latest Gelato Project v1.3 chapter on alcoholic ice cream, added in August, was the perfect excuse to make it a recipe for the blog as well.
If recipes like this intrigue you, know that you will find plenty of them in my iterative eBook on ice cream: the Gelato Project (available in Italian and English too).
But let’s talk about today’s recipe starting with the choice of the beer. I am not a great connoisseur, in fact I relied on a shop to recommend a dark beer that had caramel notes and a significant alcohol content. I ended up on a Belgian beer that was perfect for my recipe, but I will let you choose yours according to your personal taste without recommendations 😉
The important thing, in the case of beer, is to reduce it to remove alcohol and bubbles and intensify the flavor, before combining it with our ice cream mixture.
Recipe (for 750 g ice cream)
For the dark beer reduction
- 0.5 l dark beer
For the dark beer ice cream
- 393.5 g Whole Milk
- 104.9 g of cream with 35% fats
- 26.2 g of Skim Powdered Milk
- 26.2 g of butter
- 2.1 g of Neutral (locust bean + guar)
- 87.6 g Sucrose
- 43.8 g of Dextrose
- 65.6 g dark beer reduction
For the salted caramel
- 200 g of cream 35%
- 80 g of butter
- 200 g Sucrose
- 2 g Salt
For finishing
- Chocolate chip cookies
- Some popcorn
Steps
For the dark beer reduction
Reduce the beer to 1/4 of its initial weight by simmering it in a saucepan. This will intensify the flavor, which we will then use to flavor and give a nice caramel color to the ice cream.
For the dark beer ice cream
Combine the powders (powdered milk, sugars, neutral), keeping some sugar aside
Heat the milk with the sugar kept aside (will prevent the milk from incorporating too much air)
Add the cream at approx. 30°C (to make the fats emulsify better)
Add powders when cream and milk reach approx. 40°C
Add the dark beer reduction and pasteurize at 85°C for a couple of minutes
Chill the ice cream to +4°C. In the cooling stage, when it reaches around 40°C, add the butter and emulsify well.
Ripen the mixture in the refrigerator for 6 to 12 hours
Churn in ice cream maker.
For caramel and finishing
Caramelise the sugar in a small saucepan over medium heat, trying not to move it
Heat the cream in the meantime and add it when the sugar browns
Stir quickly and keep on the heat until the mix is smooth again
Remove from heat and allow to cool a little before adding the flaked butter and salt, always stirring until a smooth, homogeneous caramel is obtained
Crumble some chocolate chip cookies in the bottom of a plate.
Serve a quenelle of ice cream and finish with caramel, some popcorn, and maldon salt flakes.
Are you a lover of ice cream and special flavors?
You will find an avalanche of recipes in the Gelato Project, my iterative book of ice cream recipes, available in Italian and in English as an eBook version. The best thing about the project is that you define the content. In fact, supporters of the project have access to a feedback area in which they can request recipes for future editions and find them a few weeks later in the book 😉
Download the gelato project to get this and tons of other recipes, constantly increasing being a “living book”. This specific recipe is available from version 1.3.
For a few little bonuses enter my telegram channel (in italian), where I occasionally leave some exclusive little giveaways for subscribers to my privileged channel (in which you will be together with a small group of followers that I always treat with kid gloves, dispensing preview updates but also exclusive content).
- Dark beer ice cream, popcorn & caramel - 8 September 2023
- Homemade “croccantino” ice cream - 1 September 2023
- Snickers ice cream reverse engineering - 8 August 2023
