Beer Pops Redux

Just like ice cream, my first batch of beer popsicles was an impressive defeat. I should just start by assuming that any time I am freezing beer, it won’t turn out well. In round one of beer pops I did my best to match a recipe used by a restaurant in New York. Much to my chagrin, I even used Tecate, their beer of choice. I didn’t have proportions to work off of so I made six beer pops with varying amounts of sweet simple syrup and lime juice in each.

Every single one was awful. It tasted like…..frozen Tecate with sugar and lime in it. Makes sense.

In round two I did my best to forget any guidelines I had found in my research for the first batch. I went out and bought one of the nifty “pick six” packs from the grocery store. I didn’t choose my favorite beers, but instead went for six that I thought might actually make a pretty decent popsicle.

Here is what I ended up getting:

Brau Brothers’ Strawberry Wheat
Sam Adams’ Blackberry Whit
Big Sky Brewing’s Summer Honey
Capitol Brewing’s Wisconsin Amber
Fort Collins Brewery’s Chocolate Stout
Mike’s Hard Pink Lemonade


Each sample was split into two plastic cups to be frozen. One was frozen as-is but the second had something like a tablespoon or so of simple syrup (one cup of water boiled, then dissolve 1 cup sugar). I was pretty surprised by which ended up tasting good as beers vs. as popsicles.

Here are my brief thoughts on each and a picture of my friend Eriq; he didn't want to try any beer pops.

Strawberry Wheat
w/o syrup: Pretty darn good popsicle. Had a bit of a bitter aftertaste, but still good.
With syrup: One of the best popsicles. The taste of strawberry came through pretty strongly and the simple syrup did a pretty good job of reducing the bitterness. Surprisingly good for a beer I didn’t like drinking straight.

Blackberry Whit
w/o syrup: The only one of the bunch that tasted better without being sweetened. Another beer that I’m not a fan of drinking that surprised me as a popsicle.
With syrup: Very similar to how it was with syrup, but didn’t seem to have a “complete” flavor.

Summer Honey
w/o syrup: Could taste a slight hint of honey, mostly just tasted like an ale that got too cold on accident.
With syrup: The sweetener brought out the flavor of the honey a little more prominently to the front of the profile. Tasted okay, but not something I would make again.

Wisconsin Amber
w/o syrup: Rough finish to this one. The beer itself is delicious so tasting it frozen just depressed me.
With syrup: Much better than without syrup. Had hints of the flavor of straight Wisconsin amber but wasn’t close enough to make me wish I was drinking that instead of having it as a popsicle.

Chocolate Stout
w/o syrup: In the words of my friend Ken who was joining me for the tasting session. “This tastes like feces.”
With syrup: Tasted a lot like a chocolate phosphate. Sweet and chocolaty but also still nice and malty. Very high recommendation on this one!

Mike’s Hard Pink Lemonade
No syrup in either of these two. It’s not like it needed to be any sweeter than it already is. The pink lemonade was my last ditch “I’m going to make one of these work no matter what.” I figured that it would be a popsicle pretty much no matter what I did to it. It turned out to be exactly what I thought it would be. It tasted like a popsicle I had when I was a kid. Well….not exactly like one I had when I was a kid. It would still be pretty good for a summer party at some point though. I wouldn’t buy a Mike’s Hard Pink just for drinking, but for freezing? Yeah, I would do that again.

Beer Pops FAIL

Is it odd that every time I try making something new and completely fail, my website hits spike?

Well, if the level of my failure is at all linked to the increasing hits, this one should be a whopper! I found a Mexican restaurant out in New York that has been making “beer pops” and put up a post about it. The reviews of them were pretty good. People seemed to like them quite a bit. The problem is that I didn’t have a recipe to work from to try recreating them. All I had to work off of was the fact that it only included a can of Tecate, lime juice, and simple syrup.

I set myself to work putting together a little experiment. After a little bit of research I found a few other recipes for “beer pops” on the web with varying amounts of simple syrup (1:1 ratio of sugar to water) and lime juice. The one constant was that pretty much all of them utilized a can of Tecate.

In the name of science I swallowed my pride and bought a six-pack of Tecate to try making my first batch of beer pops. I only say that I swallowed my pride because I have a personal policy to try to avoid any beer made in a country where I can’t safely drink the water. I set up six cans, drank a little from each, and added different ratios of simple syrup and lime juice to each based on the different recipes I found on the web. Once they were nice and mixed I put a stick in each to give it the genuine popsicle effect.

That was mistake number one. Have you ever put a piece of wood into beer? It foams uncontrollably. I had Tecate all over the counters, cabinets, and floor. After some cleaning I tossed them into the freezer to chill.

Day 2 – The Tasting

I was joined by my friend Ken and my mom to try out my creations. After cutting the bottoms off the cans I ran a little warm water on the sides to help them slide out. I wanted to start out by trying the one closest to the recommended recipe I found. A Tecate with two teaspoons of lime juice and two tablespoons of simple syrup. It was bitter, there was too much lime, and not enough syrup.

I shouldn’t have expected much when I started with a sub-par beer, but I made it worse. In fact, every single one of my six trials was bad. The lime and syrup had sunk to the bottom. Then the top tasted like malty, somehow spoiled beer.

DO NOT TRY THIS. I see no possible way that it could have worked out well. Seriously, don’t even consider it.

I’m trying a variation on it and have 12 test subjects in the freezer right now. I’ll put up a post in the next day or two letting you know how it worked out. Unless I get some pretty promising results I’m going to give up on the idea of beer popsicles.