The Beer Ice Cream Man

News broke that Glace Artisan Ice Cream was gong to start making Boulevard Beer Ice Cream and all the local beer geeks started doing that dance you did as a kid when you heard the Ice Cream Truck's jingle a block away. I am no exception, I instinctively started asking my mom for ice cream money. It is no surprise that the initial offering, Sixth Glass and Bob's 47, sold out right away.  Luckily, as Christopher Elbow explained to me, Glace can have a new batch out and ready by the next day.

I sat down with Christpher Elbow today at Glace to talk about beer, ice cream, and beer ice cream.  I am happy to report that he is one of us, a craft beer "geek".  Elbow did some homebrewing in college, and tells me Belgian Sours are his current favorite.  "The funkier and sour the better," says Elbow.  When Elbow goes out to San Francisco to visit his other Elbow Chocolate location, he enjoys the many Russian River sour offerings.  He is also fond of Three Floyds Gumballhead.  "It's about the perfect summer wheat," he says.  "I have to stock up on that whenever I'm in Chicago since we can't get it locally."

When Glace first opened, I thought I heard talk that Elbow wanted to pair up with Boulevard.  That just made sense.  The Elbow Chocolate/Boulevard pairings were mind-blowingly good.  The big question was which ones.  "Stouts were kind of the obvious choice," says Elbow.  "Anyone could come up with that one.  I wanted to do something a little different.  Sixth Glass has a nice profile, and it uses Belgian candy sugar.  The guys at Boulevard wanted to do Bob's 47 to feature it's malty character.  Steven (Pauwels, Boulevard Brewmaster) really helped me out.  Now that we have the base formula down we can take it a step further."

I don't know how he could possibly take it a "step further" than delicious, but I know he can.  While we chatted Elbow treated me to a cup of the Bob's 47 ice cream.  The malt character of the beer does blend amazingly with the ice cream.  Elbow explained it was more than just adding beer to the mix.  Sometimes they use the beer ingredients, like the malts, to get the flavor they wanted.  They still do add the beer, but right before it goes into the ice cream mixer.  He said he was worried that if they heated up the beer it would loose some of it's flavor.

After it is all mixed, the ice cream will still have a little alcohol in it.  "It's diluted, so it might me the same as a non-alcoholic beer," says Elbow.  "Maybe a little more with the Sixth Glass.  We do tell people there's beer in it.  I don't think these are flavors kids will want, they go for the flavors with stuff in it.  Chocolate chips or something."

Elbow says that Boulevard's Long Strange Tripel will probably be the next pairing, maybe with banana  Some of the ideas Elbow has include using those Belgian Sours and Kreiks paired with a fruit sorbet.  A Raspberry Sorbet and Boulevard's Dark Truth Imperial Stout would be amazing.  The possibilities are endless, and Elbow is out to prove it.

In addition to the beer pairings, Glace puts out 5-6 new flavors a week.  "We goof around in the back, but I don't think anything we do is crazy-crazy," says Elbow.  "If it doesn't taste good we're not going to put it out.  We don't do flavors for the sake of being exotic."  However there are some pretty exotic flavors on the menu.  Like Thai Peanut Curry.  "I do like to watch people wrap their brains around what they are experiencing," admits Elbow with a smile.

I tasted the Thai Peanut Curry, and I'm sure my face told the story.  It starts with a coconut creaminess, but as the ice cream melts the curry kicks in.  It's not very hot because the sugars and milk helps negate the heat.  Still, it is a very nice heat and sweet combo.

There have been some flavors that didn't catch on with the customers.  "I thought the tomato sorbet was really good, but I guess it was too weird," says Elbow.  "I also liked the cucumber, very light and airy.  That one didn't catch on either.  That is a benefit of our small batches, if something doesn't work it will be replaced quickly."

One downside to small batches is when something catches on quick, like the beer flavors, some customers will feel left out.  That doesn't bother Elbow too much.  "If we sell out of a flavor, we still do have 23 other flavors," says Elbow.  "And we should have more of that flavor the next day.  It's not the worst problem that we can't keep up with demand."  To help solve that problem, Elbow says he is wanting to expand into other parts of the Metro.

As we were finishing up, we started bouncing around a few other Boulevard/ice cream combos like:

• Nutcracker and pecans
• Unfiltered Wheat and lemon sorbet
• Bully Porter with coffee
• Tripel and Blood Orange sorbet