Chocolate Stout Ice Cream Base
How to Make Homemade Chocolate Stout Ice Cream Base Recipe:
Who doesn’t like chocolate ice cream? This Chocolate Stout Ice Cream Base recipe turns the chocolate level up to 11 with the addition of stout beer. Cooking with stout beer adds some bitterness and astringency that complements the natural flavors found in chocolate, along with more complex chocolate and roast (coffee | espresso) notes to a rich and luscious chocolate ice cream base. The alcohol does evaporate when this stout ice cream base is prepared so that it won’t affect the ice cream finishing texture, as alcohol inhibits the freezing process. I suggest using a Chocolate Stout beer style for this ice cream base, yet as I encourage you to cook with beer, there are a lot of different stout beer styles that will work in this Chocolate Stout Ice Cream Base recipe. Depending on how you prepare this recipe, the type of stout used will change and evolve, depending if an Irish Dry Stout, Foreign | Export Stout, Russian Imperial Stout, Coffee or other infused Stout, to an extra milky, full of un-fermented lactose Milk Stout | Sweet Stout. To add extra elements when choosing the beer to cook with, outside of the beer style, each brewery adds their own take on the beer style. New flavor combinations are available. Your ultimate beer selection will change the final flavors of your ice cream. This recipe was designed to allow you, the maker of this very unique base ice cream recipe, to pick and use a stout beer in a dessert application.
Ice cream is a culinary process to freeze milk | heavy cream and or half & half (a mixture of whole milk and heavy cream) with sugar and air. Dairy is the largest percentage of this recipe mass. High-quality milk and cream will impact the final flavor and texture of this and all ice cream recipes you make at home. Where I live, in Northern California, I use Straus Family Creamery for many reasons. They are an organic dairy, using renewable energy, capturing methane gas, and reusing it to power their dairy, and they don’t over-process their milk products. Straus is one of the few dairies that doesn’t ultra pasteurize their cream. Unless you have a source for raw cream, the most un-processed of the milk products, a pasteurized cream is what you would want to use to make the best quality ice cream. Yet most dairies, to increase the shelf life of cream, ultra-pasteurized their heavy cream in the US is now the normal process. This ultra-pasteurized process has a side effect, it strips the flavor and nutrients out of the cream. The flavor is what you want in cream, milk, and all dairy products. Staus Family Creamery does not homogenize their milk, the process to keep the cream in suspension, retaining the fat from separating and floating to the top. This process again changes the final taste of the milk. Using the best ingredients, from the cream, milk, and beer will create better-finished ice cream.
If you prefer dark chocolate ice cream, you can add more cocoa powder. As most cocoa powders are 100% cocoa (pure chocolate), the flavor will be intensified. Another variation to this Chocolate Stout Ice Cream Base recipe would be to use a higher percentage of chocolate, such as 66 – 90%. These styles of chocolate use less sugar and milk solids, making the chocolate flavor stronger and more intense. That chocolate melts into the stout beer reduction | cream | half & half mixture. Using a combination of cocoa powder and chocolate (dark | milk |white chocolate) will intensify the ice cream, making a Double Chocolate Stout Ice Cream or a Milk Chocolate Stout Ice Cream versus a Stout Ice Cream.
This Chocolate Stout Ice Cream Base recipe becomes a building block for other ice cream creations. Think Chocolate Stout Ice Cream with a Malted Peanut Butter Cookie Dough and Peanut Butter Cups or a Chocolate Stout Ice Cream with a Malted Marshmallow Ripple and Malt Candied Cashews. Replace the sugar in the Chocolate Stout Ice Cream Base with 1/3 cup of the Irish Whiskey Smoked Salted Caramel Sauce to make an Irish Stout Chocolate Whiskey Caramel Ice cream!
All these recipe variations can be made from this Chocolate Stout Ice Cream Base! This ice cream can also just be consumed as is, used in an ice cream sundae, or mixed with additional swirls, crunchy bites, toasted | smoked nuts, and more. Also try my Irish Whiskey Smoked Salted Caramel Sauce, Butter “Scotch” Sauce, Barley Malt Maple Syrup, or Whipped Yogurt recipes to make a crazy Eat Beer inspired Beer Ice Cream Sundae Bar!
Want to make an ice cream cake? Try using this ice cream recipe as a filling, sandwiched between Chocolate Irish Stout Cake, for the chocolate lover, or my Sour Cream Pound Cake. Then use the remaining chocolate stout ice cream as a frosting, coating the cake, then freezing it completely.
While I do enjoy Hãagen-Dazs Stout Chocolate Pretzel Crunch when I don’t have time to whip up a batch of Chocolate Stout Ice Cream Base. This beer ice cream recipe can be homemade, using the provided recipe and folding in some extra toasted hard pretzel pieces once the stout ice cream is just set.
Chocolate Stout Ice Cream Base Recipe Variations:
- Once the ice cream is done freezing and the Malted Peanut Cookie Dough and peanut butter cups are swirled in, drizzle some of the cooled butterscotch sauce infused with peanut butter and fold in a few turns to create a ripple. Freeze. Recipe for a Peanut Butter Butter ‘Scotch’ sauce here
- Chocolate Stout Ice Cream Donut ‘Sandwiches’
- Make Rocky Raccoon Ice Cream, a riff off Rocky Road Ice Cream, but with a Malted Marshmallow Fluff Ripple and Malt Candied Cashews.
- Another way to make an ice cream sandwich is to make a cookie out of the raw dough by adding an egg to the peanut malt cookie dough recipe, mixing in well. Line a sheet tray with parchment paper and portion out the dough into tablespoon-size balls. Space them 2 inches apart and bake in a preheated 350°F | 177°C oven for 12 – 14 minutes. Cool completely before adding a scoop of the finished ice cream, then top with a second cookie.
- Love mole and spice? Add a teaspoon of Eat Beer Hot Sauce | Nor-Cal Mole to this Chocolate Stout Ice Cream Base recipe to make a Chocolate Stout Mole Ice Cream.
- Make a Chocolate Stout Cake, using the ice cream as a filling and frosting it with a malted vanilla ice cream. This makes a killer ice cream cake.
- Using 1/3 cup of Irish Whiskey Smoked Salted Caramel Sauce substituted for the sugar, making an Irish Chocolate Whiskey Stout Ice Cream.
- Make an Irish Chocolate Smoked Salt Caramel Ice Cream, by replacing 1/3 of a cup of Irish Whiskey Smoked Salted Caramel Sauce for the sugar, and substituting 1/2 cup of the half & half with this Homemade Irish Cream Liqueur in this Chocolate Stout Ice Cream Base recipe. For the stout, I would use an Irish Dry Stout or Foreign | Export Stout
BEER ICE CREAM FACT:
Blending beer and ice cream has endless possibilities for making cold, frosty treats. But in creating these special blends, the technique is important and the understanding of food science. Two factors are key when thinking about taste. First, ice cream is cold and it numbs your taste buds, causing the flavors to be suppressed. Second, the fatty cream clogs the taste buds, again turning the flavor down a notch. So, by reducing the beer first and intensifying the beer’s characteristics, plus removing water, the flavor of the final product is enhanced. However, remember to note that when reducing hoppy beer (or other beers with a very high IBU), the bitterness increases because the hop oils do not evaporate and this will impact the overall bitter taste of the ice cream.
Special Beer Ice Cream Making Equipment:
1 Cuisinart 1.5 Quart Frozen Yogurt-Ice Cream Maker
or the classic
1 White Mountain Hand Cranked Ice Cream Maker with Appalachian Series Wooden Bucket
Makes: 1 quart, about 6 servings
Adapted from BeerAdvocate Magazine: Cuisine à la Bière | Mar 2010 | Issue #38
| Servings | Prep Time |
| 6 servings | 5 minute |
| Cook Time | Passive Time |
| 20 minute | 2 hour |
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Chocolate Ice Cream made with Stout Beer, adding extra dimensions of chocolate and roast to the classic ice cream base. Chocolate Stout Ice Cream Base can be used for many different ice cream applications.
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- 16 ounce Chocolate Stout, such as Young's Double Chocolate Stout or other American Stout Brewed with Chocolate or Sweet | Milk Stout
- 2 cup cream, heavy or whipping preferably organic and not ultra pasteurized
- 1 cup half & half, preferably organic
- 1/2 cup Dry Malt Extract (DME) available at Beer Beer and More Beer
- 1/4 cup sugar, organic
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3 tablespoon
cocoa powder, such as Valrhona 100% Pure Cocoa Powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt, kosher
- 4 each egg yolks, extra large,
- In a medium-sized pot, over low heat, add the Stout. Bring to a low simmer and reduce by half to two-thirds. Then add the cream, half & half, DME, sugar, cocoa and salt, increasing the heat to medium. Stir to dissolve the sugars, then bring mixture to 180°F | 82°C and remove from heat. In a separate bowl, add egg yolks and whisk for a minute. Whisk in 2 ounces of the hot cream mixture to the yolks to temper them. Add another 2 ounces, whisking to prevent cooking the mixture. Pour yolk mixture back into the remaining cream mixture, whisking to incorporate. Bring the heat slowly back up to 165°F | 74°C, stirring with a wooden spoon until the mixture thickens and coats the back of the spoon. Strain mixture through a fine sieve into another bowl to remove any cooked yolk (if any). Chill mixture in either a water bath or refrigerator until the mixture is very cold. The colder the mixture is before it is added to the ice cream machine, the fewer ice crystals will develop, making the texture smoother on the tongue.
- Follow the manufacturer’s directions on the ice cream maker. As the ice cream is freezing, place a metal bowl, and spatula into the freezer to chill. Once the ice cream is a soft, semi-frozen consistency, remove from the ice cream machine and place it into a seal-able container and place it into the freezer, letting cure to infuse the flavors for at least four hours before consuming.
More Beer Ice Cream Recipes:
Hi, Sean- I notice this recipe calls for DME. Can you please provide some context on why and what this ingredient adds to the ice cream flavor and or texture?
Hi Manny,
Using DME for some of the sugar, creates that malted milk flavor into the finished ice cream. The sweetness of the DME is different than that of just sugar, so I find this recipe is less sweet than a traditional all sugar recipe, while having supportive flavors of the beer and the hint of nostalgia.
Sugar in ice cream helps prevent the mixture from freezing. The use of DME does give the ice cream a nice texture, along with the over run (air) that is whipped in the ice cream as it freezes. I’d suggest using the DME, but you could use a 1:1 ratio of DME to sugar, to avoid using it.
Let me know what you think and decide to do.