Hammerton Crunch Peanut Butter Milk Stout is a dessert beer. Mostly sweet and roasted peanut notes. Always to be chugged in a single-can dose, and either as a modest indulgence to round things off or as a little afternoon treat, just like you might have scoops of ice cream. The natural conclusion: why not combine the two?
Whether this marriage manifests as ice cream float or affogato depends on the serving method (and you’d probably want an afternoon float and after dinner affogato). We chose affogato mode for the maiden voyage: smallish mounds of ice cream in shallow bowls with the stout poured over. Affogato al birra robusta / drowned in stout. On this occasion – the launch of this long-considered twist on the hard shake – we went with banana ice cream laced with caramel for the full Elvis. But to be honest, when pomp is not on the table, I’d actually opt for classic vanilla – not too vanillery mind, not flecked with pod bits or very buttery in colour or enriched with clotted cream or hailing from Cornwall, as delicious as all that stuff is. The ice cream shouldn’t jostle for too much attention against the fairly bonkers assault of malty peanut beer; it should be a yielding buffer. Perhaps a Mackie’s or similar, simple and slightly off-white.
Though white is not the colour that comes to mind when I think about affogato al caffe. Rather blue. Three Colours: Blue, the 1993 film by Krzysztof Kieślowski. (Nothing to do with the three colours of Neapolitan ice cream of course . . . Much more French, via Poland.) Beautiful Juliette Binoche and the chicest cafe order: an espresso served alongside two perfect scoops of vanilla ice cream in a small dessert glass. Half the espresso goes into the glass followed by a searching teaspoon. I’ve seen this film a few times (when I can stomach the gorgeous melancholy) but I’ve watched this scene many more. The character, Julie, is alone – so thoroughly alone following unimaginable loss, in the midst of grief – and takes a spoonful of hot and cold. She tastes and maybe coaxes a moment of pleasure (before hearing a man on the street play a particular motif on the recorder, but that’s a whole plot thing).
In the same cafe, Julie meets with a man who confesses feelings for her. The man had worked with her composer husband who’s died. She doesn’t respond, but instead brings a sugar cube to the surface of her black coffee and watches the liquid absorb before dropping it into the cup. We see the sugar cube up close, through her eyes. The shot is five seconds long. In Dominique Rabourdin’s documentary Krzysztof Kieślowski: A Lesson in Cinema, Kieślowski says ‘only the sugar cube matters, and she intentionally focuses on it to shut out all the things she doesn’t accept’. It had to be exactly five seconds, to allow for reflection yet not lose our attention. So he asked his production assistant to test all kinds of different sugar cubes to find one that would soak up the coffee in precisely the specified time. I think they nailed it.
But briefly back to reality and nutty stout confections. If you did wish to further garnish your ice cream dish, and were feeling much more Elvis than Julie/Juliette, may I suggest a Tago Wafer Roll with Cocoa Cream? Especially following the scoop that ice cream sellers have now deemed Cadbury flakes too crumbly for purpose. Call 99(9)! Cadbury’s should (soft) serve time for crimes against Mr Whippy . . .
Still raging about the wafer rolls
love it all