Ingredients: Stone Imperial Russian Stout and Ben & Jerry’s Vanilla Ice Cream
Taste: The beer choice is strong, smoked coffee flavor and bitter. The vanilla ice cream adds a sweet after taste to the concoction.
Conclusion: I know what you’re thinking, but no, this is not the first time I’ve had one of these; nor will it be the last. Think of it as a colder, bolder black and tan. My first was at a bar with some soccer hooligans I’ve since befriended. They ordered me up a Newcastle float some years ago. I’ve since had a few more, but the last one of note was at the fabled Stone Brewery on my last birthday. I decided to replicate the experience and review it for the site, since technically it is beer related. We’ve had a bit of a heat wave the past few days in SoCal, so I thought a beer float would hit the spot. Nice and cold brew with some ice cream… it just hit the spot. Thing is, the beer was so strong, it kind of warmed me up a bit too. Still worth it though. The depth of flavors created was pretty amazing. I used some traditional vanilla ice cream, about one scoops worth, because it’s a pretty versatile ice cream with its neutral flavor and all. The foam created was pretty wicked. To say it was an acquired taste is an understatement. The foam is very bitter with an ever so slight sweetness to it. It contained all the smokey flavors of the beer as well, so you have a bitter sweet, smokey, eatable cloud floating at the top of your drink, and its pretty harsh. After a few spoonfuls of the stuff, I couldn’t take it any more. I busted out my straw to get to the goodness of the beer. The foam was so thick it held my straw in place without it sinking to the bottom of my mug. I did not see that coming.
“LOOK MA, NO HANDS!”
The vanilla ice cream blended well with the smoked coffee flavor of the beer, but something was missing… Blend you say? I gave it a stir with my spoon then tried it again. Man, what a difference. Its like a dark beer milkshake! …with some harsh foam on top. The beer itself was fantastic though. Nice and creamy with a better mix of bitter and sweet and a strong smokey blast. This drink is cool enough to ward off the heat, but thick and strong enough to keep you warm in the dead of winter. Its kind of like those new sports jerseys being made by Nike and Adidas that will keep you cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Only this one tastes good and looks better.
I'd recomend trying this with any dark beer because of the more intense flavors dark beers bring to the table. Maybe a vanilla or any other sweet stout would work great as well. Although I've not tried it yet, I bet this would work great with a Young's Double Chocolate Stout... Mmmm, chocolate beer float...
I didn’t give this post a score because its not a drink you can just go to the store and purchase… well, not yet anyway. STONE, get working on it!!
I didn’t give this post a score because its not a drink you can just go to the store and purchase… well, not yet anyway. STONE, get working on it!!
1 comment:
We were actually talking about beer floats Sunday morning. We were at a guy's camp, did a huge mtn bike ride on Saturday and all stayed over at the camp. it was raining in the morning so we sat around and talked bikes n beer. We had some Bell's brown ale (by the way, a great after ride beer) left in the keg so a couple guys started in with that, one of which kept dipping stuff in it, pancakes, sticky buns, what ever was on the table and eating it. That brought about the float story. One of the guys keeps a keg of Guiness on tap at home and it came up they tried a guiness float with homemade vanilla ice cream. again not something you want to do every day, but they claim its good.
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