Brewing with freeze dried ice cream

My concern would be that to add enough to flavor a batch you would also be adding a significant amount of fat, which probably hurts head retention. Still, if ice cream and beer were on my bucket list, I wouldn't let head retention concerns stop me. It is not on my list, but if you brew it please tell us all about it.

 

Just make a beer float in the glass. The cream is going to spoil before the keg kicks. If you bottle it the cream will spoil before it carbonates.

 

Carton Brewing produced at least one beer, Cosmonaut, that included freeze-dried ice cream. The most recent BA review was in august of this year.
Maybe @augiecarton would be willing to offer some insight.

 

Please don't take this personally... but when did beer cease to be good enough for Beer Advocates? I'm not a reingeitsgebot guy, but damn, all these non-beer-ingredient beers BS has got to stop. Anytime I hear of/see beers with all these "extras" I have flashbacks to the "homebrewer" commercial during the Super Bowl years ago. Pastry Stouts, "Sour" Smoothies, Ice Cream Beer... just make a damn good Pilsner.

 

Firstly, let me state that like you I am a fan of “beer that tastes like beer”. In the past weekend’s NBW I discussed a Pilsner:

https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/new-beer-weekend-73.663651/#post-7408202

Just last week I purchased my ingredients for my next batch of beer: 1896 Michelob* which is essentially a Bohemian Pilsner.

And for emphasis I personally do not homebrew with different flavorings or food items (e.g., pastry stuff).

But I recognize that I am ‘old school’ here with plenty of local craft breweries producing what would by my personal standards would be ‘weird’ beers but needless to say there are plenty of other beer consumers who seek out these beers. And homebrewers who also wish to brew like this.

There was mention above of Carton Cosmonaut beer. I recently saw this beer on the shelf of my local Retail Beer Distributor. Not the sort of beer that I would want to drink/purchase but I am confident that others will buy this beer.

As I discussed in my article “What is Craft Beer?”

“Just add more and more stuff to beer

Well, in 2021 there sure seems to be no lack of brewers coming up with ideas on how they can “kick it up a notch” as Emeril Lagasse would phrase it. I just recently read on a brewing forum about a brewer producing Kool-Aid inspired beers (i.e., beers that taste like Kool-Aid flavors). I personally will not be drinking these beers but I have no doubt that some craft beer consumers will buy them. How many will they buy?

There just seems to be no lack of imagination by brewers on what sorts of ingredients to brew with. Whether it be culinary ingredients (lemon verbena, black limes, prickly pear cactus,..) or processed foods (chocolate chip cookies, marshmallows, breakfast cereals,..) or whatever. Do these additions produce better beers? I suppose it is like the old saying: beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

https://www.morebeer.com/articles/What_Is_Craft_Beer

Perhaps I should have stated in the above: beauty is in the eye of the beer-holder?

Cheers!

* My reconstruction of the original Michelob beer of 1896.

 

@JackHorzempa It just seems like the odd challenges that we homebrewers use for Iron Brewer competitions in a brew club setting is now becoming normal in the beer world. Can you create an alcoholic beverage made from malted grains, hops, yeast, and random ingredient that doesn't belong in a beer...

To quote the famous Ian Malcom line from the original Jurassic Park: "your [brewers] are so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they never stopped to think if they should... and now you're packaging it, you're patenting it, and now you're selling it, you're selling it!"

 

LOL!

If I had a dollar for every time I posted the below image in BA threads I would be rich:



Needless to say you and I have very similar viewpoints on what a beer should be but...

Perhaps I should set my timer before some BA replies that you and I are the 'dinosaurs' here!?!

Cheers!

 

don’t take this reply personal. I just creating dialogue. Also, I have thought this many times. All the smoothies and excessive pastry stouts kinda bug me. But I think what bugs me most is when people think that is what beer should be. I like that stuff in the rare occasion vs that’s all I drink.

I guess the question becomes what is a non beer ingredient or what is a beer ingredient? Just hops, barley, water and yeast?

I think everything has its place. I prefer my beer to taste like beer. But it’s is fun to experiment from a brewing perspective as well as a taste perspective. It is crazy to me when I have some crazy smoothie beer and it tastes like a pina colada. While, I like that for the occasional beer I couldn’t drink more than one and on occasion.

One of the beers I am brewing is a coffee, chocolate, coconut stout. Those ingredients have been around forever. Are those beer ingredients or non beer ingredients?

 

@GetMeAnIPA

I get it. It is hard to draw the line on what is okay and what is not. I enjoy adding things to my beers. I make a wonderful Ghost Pepper Passion Fruit IPA. I love my Ghost Pepper BA Imperial Stout. I make a coffee porter, I add bourbon and cacao to Imperial Stouts. A fruited Gose is great on a hot summer day.

I feel like the line easily sits at processed food ingredients. Making a beer with vanilla beans, raisins, flaked oats, wheat, and molasses is far different than adding oat and raisin cookies to a beer. I would also put the line at adding enough of a specific adjunct ingredient that it moves the resulting product further away from BEER and closer to blended cocktail - Sour Smoothies - why sour a beer only to add back a butt-ton of lactose to sweeten it, and enough pureed fruit to feed a small village for a month?

Making a single beer like this isn't a huge deal, but I can't lie, I'm tired of going to a local brewery that got its name on the map with a crisp, clean Kolsch, and now their entire taplist is Sour Smoothies, lactose laden Hazy (chunky) IPAs, and Pastry Stouts. Another brewery in town is making the same kind of beers now too, and recalling exploding cans of beer. Just make good beer.

 

I think that is a fair assessment and would agree more to your opinion than not.

If you want to brew an oatmeal raisin cookie beer add actual cinnamon, oats and raisins etc vs adding actual raisin cookies.

appreciate the civil discord. Cheers.

btw: Ghost Pepper Passion Fruit IPA sounds awesome

 

I too would not enjoy the selection of beers at those two breweries but somebody must be buying those beers/beverages.

Cheers!

 

I think it boils down to taking drastic measures to differentiate yourself in a saturated market in which most of the consumers are not interested in the subtle differences that perhaps only beer connoisseurs appreciate. You could try to compete on the questionable merits of your IPA -- it's hazy; it tastes like rotten fruit; it has 237 IBUs -- but then Brulosophy does an experiment that undermines the effectiveness of perfecting the little things.

 

My suggestion is to contact Carton Brewing (Augie Carton) and ask how they used freeze dried ice cream in their brewing of Cosmonaut:

"Cosmonaut

Super Galena hops early in the boil bring a strawberry touch. Russian imperial stouts have a dark chocolate presence with vanilla nuance; quite pleasing when accented by a bold hop addition. Our walk around this space had us skirting the territory of those three tone blocks of supermarket ice cream. All we needed was an ingredient you can ferment that would push those notions without running over the beer-ness of the flavors. We turned to that classic museum snack, freeze-dried Neapolitan ice cream. Drink Cosmonaut because exploration is what it’s all about."

Cheers!

 

Augie made a video about brewing with freeze dried ice cream:



Cheers!

 

It wouldn't hurt to ask both Other Half and Carton for recommendations here.

It would appear that no BAs have brewed with freeze dried ice cream (e.g., me) so no recommendations. You are a BA pioneer here.

Cheers!