Homemade Beer Ice Cream

I tried making beer ice cream tonight and was met with absolute, complete, and utter failure. I found a few different recipes online, picked one out that called for amber ale (I used Boulevard’s amber), and went for it.

It was pretty much a disaster from

Image Source

the start. I’m usually a pretty good cook but with this everything that could go wrong, did. First the beer boiled over when it was supposed to be simmering. Then my whole milk/heavy cream mixture almost foamed over. When I mixed those two together with my eggs/sugar the milk and cream curdled.

The recipe called for the whole mixture to be strained before freezing so I thought (stupidly) that it might still be salvageable. I strained out the chunks, which accounted for about half of the volume of my mixture, and put it in the fridge to cool before I put it in the ice cream machine.

I grew up using an old-style hand crank ice cream maker. This was my first time to ever use an electric one, and as you can assume, it didn’t go well. At first it was taking WAY too long for the ice cream to set, then I let it run for a while, and that of course turned out to be too long, it was over-mixed.

Even after all of that, I was still determined to give it a try. I pulled off the lid, stuck in my spoon, and threw that first bit down the sink. It smelled absolutely awful. I thought I was sure to have gotten a bad spoonful so I reloaded to try again and my nose met with the same result. A bad smell was a perfect indicator of the impending taste. It was less like I had made some kind of beer ice cream, and more like I mixed some beer into an already bad ice cream recipe.

Everyone around the house had a spoonful or two to humor me but we all quickly agreed that the sink should be responsible for the remainder of the beer ice cream. I was planning on including the recipe in this entry but I don’t want anyone to get confused and try making it.

I’m not sure if it was a bad recipe or just my complete ineptitude when it came to the simple preparation, but this couldn’t have gone worse. I’m determined to not be beaten though; I already have plans to try again. I talked it over with my sister and this week we’re going to buy a growler of the absolutely delectable vanilla cream ale from a local brewpub, Raccoon River Brewery, and try out a new recipe. I feel like a vanilla cream ale would be much better suited for ice cream than amber ale was. When I find a recipe that works I’ll post it here for you to take a look at.

I’ll keep you posted on how this goes, I’m determined now!