Mikerphone Brewing (2020)

A couple thoughts from today:

I believe I saw of couple other knuckleheads from BA while I was out there enjoying the weather, so hopefully we get a few more opinions.

Double Barrel Bean Spirit - The barrels definitely came through and the adjuncts did not overpower them, in my opinion. The maple was not heavy and the coffee showed up more than anything. At >16% it packed a punch but was not overbearing. Again, my personal opinion, but I think they did a good job with it.

Beer ice cream - Wtf? I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would. It's not quite soft serve as it is a little crystallized. Maybe more like a sherbet or sorbet but with a somewhat creamy texture? I don't know if that makes sense.

I asked what they use to get the beer to turn into soft serve and the server said they add a gelatin mixture or "something" which gets it to that texture. So not sure how the ABV doesn't drop, but maybe it is negligible? I don't want to assume anything since I don't know the exact process, but I could see the original ABV at least being close to the original beer being used. It's a novelty for sure, but it was pretty cool to try.

 

So I did some google-fu and looked up using gelatin a stabilizer for ice cream specifically. It sounds like it typically only makes up between 0.1-0.5% of the mixture which, as you surmised, would have a negligible effect on the ABV. So if it really is just beer and stabilizer, then that's totally plausible.

Total side note, this kind of stuff is right up my alley. I enjoy watching Alton Brown on Good Eats to get the science behind the cooking, but my wife thinks it's the most boring show ever produced. She's obviously wrong.

 

I know everyone has been up at night trying to figure out how this charlatan has invented a way to make beer into ice cream [/sarcasm]

After watching the short piece on Fox 32 tonight, it sent me down a minor rabbit hole. This dude Will Rogers is a chef and seems to have a wacky business he runs to provide food-related activities/demos at events. From what I can tell, the machine that he invented is basically using liquid nitrogen (or some alternative) to freeze the alcohol and when mixed with his patented "NEA" (the gelatin stabilizer?), it creates the soft serve-type concoction. From the news piece, it literally looked like you pour in the 16oz can and boom, there's your ice cream. I'm sure there was some sort of editing going on, but that's a minor point.

Even Mike in the interview mentioned the ABV doesn't lower, which makes sense if that's the process being used. This wacky chef has apparently done plenty of gigs with his machine and made Jack & Coke soft serve, Tito's Lemonade soft serve, etc, so beer seems like it would be a no-brainer if he can get hard liquor to freeze. Though from his pics, the ones with hard liquor look fairly crystallized. Which is fine...freezing a drink like that quickly is still pretty impressive.

I'll be honest, my mind went to the same place as @ECCS with the whole 450N fiasco, but with Mike being very up-front about things, I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. And if he did mess something up, I would imagine he'd be honest and not double-down like the numb-nuts at 450N. Anyway, Mike said they sold 160 cones in 2 days which exceeded his expectations, so it sounds like ice cream will be on the menu for the foreseeable future.

Apparently Mike has 2 of these machines and from Facebook it looks like he is using his seltzer as the other ice cream for now. Yawn. Wake me up when he drops in some BA One Man Wrecking Machine and I'll wait in a socially-distant line for that. Oh, and I'd say get rid of the cones and just drop it in a cup with a spoon and I'm good. Or toss some toasted coconut on it, drizzle some caramel or chocolate sauce on it, add some whipped cream and I bet people would pay an extra couple bucks for a proper ice cream treat.