Beer-Shake v2

What a week, it was not even 7 days ago that we were embarking on the inaugural beer-shake and now it’s time for another one. 200 followers! I love how passionate, excited, and engaged everyone in the community is. After the first successful experiment, the immediate next thought was how to improve on an already delicious thing. One thing Bob and I have in common is that we love coffee so it was a natural next step to make a coffee version of the successful beer shake.

As if it were fate, Counterweight released a coffee version of the Void stout that made such a great milkshake component for the first try. Why mess with success? It was an easy choice.

For the ice cream, I love the idea of keeping it as local as the beer. Fortunately there are some quality places only a few miles away, and we decided to go with Wentworth’s Homemade Ice Cream in Hamden near Sleeping Giant State Park. Although I have been there on many crowded summer nights, I was more than happy to grab a pint each of chocolate and coffee to go. I can wax poetic, but I will just say that Wentworth's makes some seriously good ice cream and leave it at that.

In this case, we did one beer with two different ice creams. A straight up coffee and one closer to a mocha. Also it never hurts to have some whipped cream hanging around.

Procedure was pretty similar to the last round: blend the ice cream with just enough milk to make it mixable and then stir in beer. We did learn that keeping the amount of milk as low as possible results in a creamier tasting shake.

Overall, these were as good as the first. I think I give the edge to the chocolate because it had more of a shake-like flavor, but I would be happy drinking a glass of either. As an added surprise, we happened to have some Trader Joe’s chocolate chip dunkers on hand, which were a great companion to this treat.

In Cannery Row, John Steinbeck writes, 

“You love beer so much. I’ll bet some day you’ll go in and order a beer milk shake.” It was a simple piece of foolery but it had bothered Doc ever since. He wondered what a beer milk shake would taste like.

If you are wondering, like Steinback’s character, let me tell you, beer shakes are very good and totally worth taking a trip down the ice cream isle, getting out your blender and going for it. If you decide to give it a try, let us know how it goes. Cheers!