Not All Who Wander Are Lost

Do you like beer? Do you like ice cream? Well, has Ben & Jerry's got a taste for you...

I consider myself somewhat of an ice cream snob, ever since I spent a summer scooping ice cream at a local Steve's franchise, my first real job (from which I was ultimately and rightfully sacked, a story for some other evening). At Steve's, we made all our own ice cream, and it was beautiful to watch; we folded our own toppings in by hand on a long, creamywhite countertop long before a generation of Cold Stone employees discovered tendonitis, and it was a glorious, sticky summer all around.

One especially hot and adolescent evening we decided to try making beer ice cream. It tasted like vile swill -- mostly because the beer already tasted like that before we put it in. But otherwise, our experiments were generally a success. I can still taste the fresh peach ice cream like it was here in front of me. With mixed-in mini-sized chocolate chips. Mmm.

And after being so close to the process, I'm always game to blow those gourmet bucks on the best quality. No cheap, rectangular ice cream cartons for me; it's Ben & Jerry's if I'm doing the shopping. For a long time, I stocked up on Pecan Pie (with real chuncks of pie!) or old standby Chubby Hubby when I got the chance.

This week, after eyeing it on the shelf since it's release date in March, I finally tried something really new. Black & Tan, Ben & Jerry's new pintflavor, ain't the work of a couple of stoned teenagers. Here, the bitter bite has been tempered to a faint and fond hint of a quite distinctive cream stout.

I don't usually "do" product reviews these days, but this is amazing: deep, rich, extra-dark chocolate ice cream blended with cream stout ice cream, with a cream stout head. It doesn't taste like beer so much as it tastes like the world's best beer ice cream. It's like frozen Guinness, if Guinness didn't leave that bitter bite on the back of your tongue. And it looks like this:

Yeah, I know it's freezing out. But there's still no snow. Settle for ice cream.

Comments:

I MISS WAVY GRAVY!

# posted by

Shaw Israel Izikson : 6:24 AM, December 31, 2006

My B&J tastes have been extremely stable over the last twelve years: mint chocolate cookie on hot days, coffee heath bar on cold days. One still reminds me of abstract algebra (fall semester, 1991) and the other of number theory and mathematical logic (spring semester, 1992).

# posted by

Anonymous : 11:36 PM, January 04, 2007