Beer + Ice Cream? We're Not Quite Convinced

Deep-fryers and ice cream are the only sure things in American cuisine: You can sell just about any ingredient to just about anyone if you dip it in batter and fry it ― or puree it and add it to frozen custard. If anyone is going to test the limits of our love for ice cream, it's Humphry Slocombe. Witness the Mission shop's rotating selection of microbrew ice creams in honor of SF Beer Week. This week it's stocking the cases with six batches at a time, rotating in new flavors as the old ones sell out. The section rotates frequently ― check Slocombe's Twitter feed for updates.

Order a tasting flight of four for $4.50 and beg samples of the other two from the counter person, and you can taste the whole six-pack at once. Actually, a better strategy is to taste all of the flavors before you eat a whole scoop, because some of the scoops are decent and some (almost) disgusting.

Which is what SFoodie did this weekend. Because freezing mutes flavors and sugars, most of the beer-ishness of the flavors came out subtle. There is a long and noble tradition of brewpubs serving stout ice creams, and the toasty, chocolaty flavors of the Magnolia Smokestack survived freezing. The cardamom in the Blue Frog's 2009 wassail, a spiced holiday ale, also came through, along with a lovely wash of caramel and malt. The only ice cream that the makers seemed to tweak was Coney Island Blind Albino, an XXXtreme take on spiced Belgian wheat beers. The beer's citrus and ginger emerged, faint but present, riding on the fragrance of a few drops of added rosewater.

But the two most directly beer-flavored scoops failed. Magnolia Thunderpussy, a barleywine, mostly tasted of fermentation, and the Lagunitas Hop Stoopid, a double IPA, was as bitter as a crushed Tylenol, with none of the herbal hoppy aromas that make IPAs palatable.

Whether any of the beer ice creams deserve a place on Humphry Slocombe's regular menu is a matter of some doubt. Of course, we cleaned out our bowl. It was ice cream, after all.