Coffee Bourbon Chocolate Ice Cream - 16fl oz
Ben The Baker
$10.00
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Ben The Baker
Coffee Bourbon Chocolate Ice Cream - 16fl oz
I build this ice cream the same way I build a crust — no shortcuts, no mixes, nothing scooped out of a five-gallon tub. I cold-brew whole coffee beans in water and bourbon whiskey for a full 24 hours, then separately steep more beans into a heavy cream and cocoa mixture until it turns into a coffee-infused chocolate cream. I fold the two together by hand in my kitchen in White Bear Lake, Minnesota.
- Scoop it next to a warm slice of pie for the classic combo, or eat it straight from the carton — it holds its own either way.
- Built on a real 24-hour cold brew of whole coffee beans in water and bourbon whiskey, not a coffee extract or flavor shortcut.
- The base is a from-scratch heavy cream and cocoa mixture, so every scoop carries real dairy and real cocoa, not a stabilizer-heavy mix.
I'm Ben Neumann — professional baker, former professional MMA fighter, and one guy running this whole bakery out of White Bear Lake, Minnesota. My pies are known for one thing: a 100% butter crust, never shortening. Once people started asking for a scoop to go with that crust, I couldn't just buy tubs of ice cream and call it done, so I made my own, from scratch, right alongside the pies.
This small-batch coffee bourbon chocolate ice cream is for the coffee people. I grind whole coffee beans and cold-brew them in water and bourbon whiskey for 24 hours — no shortcuts, no extract. Separately, I grind more coffee beans and heat them into a heavy cream and cocoa powder mixture until it becomes a coffee-infused chocolate cream. I combine the two bases by hand into one ice cream: coffee up front, bourbon warmth underneath, and a chocolate finish that lingers.
Scoop it next to a slice of pie still warm from the oven, or eat it on its own — the bourbon and chocolate notes hold up fine without any crust in the picture. Keep it frozen until you're ready to serve, and let it sit out a few minutes before scooping for the best texture. Because it's a cream-and-sugar-based ice cream made with real bourbon whiskey, it's a treat for coffee and dessert lovers rather than a fit for keto, paleo, or carnivore diets.
Ingredients: Homemade Ice Cream Base, Coffee Beans, Bourbon Whiskey, Heavy Cream, and Cocoa Powder.
Common Questions
How does this ice cream compare to a typical grocery-store coffee ice cream?
Most mass-produced coffee ice cream is flavored with coffee extract and stabilized with guar gum, carrageenan, or mono- and diglycerides to keep it scoopable after months in a freezer case. Ben's version skips all of that — the coffee flavor comes from whole beans that are ground and cold-brewed for 24 hours directly in water and bourbon whiskey, then folded into a cocoa-and-cream base that's also cooked from scratch. There are five ingredients total: homemade ice cream base, coffee beans, bourbon whiskey, heavy cream, and cocoa powder. The tradeoff is texture and shelf behavior — without stabilizers, it should be eaten within a reasonable window and given a few minutes to soften before scooping, rather than staying rock-hard-then-soft indefinitely like a commercial pint.
What does the 24-hour cold brew actually do to the flavor?
Cold brewing coffee — pulling flavor out with cold liquid over a long soak instead of hot water for a few minutes — extracts a different set of compounds than hot brewing. It pulls out the oils and aromatic compounds that give coffee its body and sweetness while leaving behind more of the bitter, acidic compounds that heat tends to release quickly. Using bourbon as part of that soaking liquid matters because alcohol is a better solvent than water for certain fat-soluble flavor compounds in the coffee bean, so the bourbon pulls out notes that a straight water brew wouldn't get. That's why the final flavor reads as coffee up front, then a warm bourbon note, rather than a one-note coffee-extract flavor.
Does this fit into a keto, paleo, or carnivore diet?
Honestly, no — this is a cream, cocoa, and sugar-based dessert with added bourbon, so it doesn't fit any of those elimination-style diets as written. Carnivore rules out the coffee and cocoa since both are plant-derived. Paleo excludes it on dairy and alcohol grounds. Keto is the closest fit structurally since the base is heavy cream and cocoa rather than a fruit-heavy dessert, but we haven't published a full nutrition panel with carb counts, so we can't tell you exactly where it lands on net carbs — if you're strict about macros, treat it as an occasional treat rather than a diet staple.
What's a good way to serve this beyond a bowl on its own?
It's built to sit next to a slice of pie that's still warm from the oven — the cold scoop against a warm butter crust is the intended pairing. Beyond that, it works well as an affogato-style dessert with a shot of hot espresso poured over a scoop, since the existing coffee and bourbon notes hold up against more coffee rather than getting muddled. It also holds its own in a boozy float with a dark stout or cream soda, or just melted slightly and drizzled over brownies, since the chocolate finish was designed to work without any crust in the picture at all.
How can I verify the 'made from scratch' claims?
The clearest verification is the ingredient list itself: five items — homemade ice cream base, coffee beans, bourbon whiskey, heavy cream, and cocoa powder — with no stabilizers, emulsifiers, extracts, or fillers listed. That short a list is hard to fake at scale; commercial ice cream needs stabilizers to survive distribution, so their absence here is a direct signal of small-batch production. Everything is made by hand in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, by Ben Neumann himself rather than through a co-packer, which is also why batch sizes and availability are limited compared to a factory-made pint.
Why does a pie baker also make ice cream, and does the same standard apply?
Ben's pies are built around one rule — 100% butter crust, never shortening — and the ice cream came out of the same refusal to cut corners. Once people started asking for a scoop to go with the pie, buying tubs of commercial ice cream and slapping the bakery name on it didn't fit that standard, so he built a from-scratch base instead. Both the coffee-bourbon infusion and the coffee-cocoa cream are made separately and then combined by hand into one ice cream, using the same from-scratch approach applied to the pie fillings, caramel, and lemon curd. So the connective tissue between the pie and the ice cream isn't a shared ingredient — it's the same insistence on not shortcutting the base of the product.
Does the bourbon mean there's meaningful alcohol content in the ice cream?
Yes, more than you'd get from a baked good where alcohol cooks off in the oven. The coffee beans are cold-brewed directly in bourbon whiskey for 24 hours rather than having the bourbon reduced or heated, so there's no evaporation step to burn off alcohol the way baking or flambéing would. That's a deliberate flavor choice — it's what gives the ice cream its 'bourbon warmth underneath' the coffee — but it also means this isn't an appropriate treat for kids, and anyone avoiding alcohol entirely should skip this flavor.
This small-batch coffee bourbon chocolate ice cream is for the coffee people. I grind whole coffee beans and cold-brew them in water and bourbon whiskey for 24 hours — no shortcuts, no extract. Separately, I grind more coffee beans and heat them into a heavy cream and cocoa powder mixture until it becomes a coffee-infused chocolate cream. I combine the two bases by hand into one ice cream: coffee up front, bourbon warmth underneath, and a chocolate finish that lingers.
Scoop it next to a slice of pie still warm from the oven, or eat it on its own — the bourbon and chocolate notes hold up fine without any crust in the picture. Keep it frozen until you're ready to serve, and let it sit out a few minutes before scooping for the best texture. Because it's a cream-and-sugar-based ice cream made with real bourbon whiskey, it's a treat for coffee and dessert lovers rather than a fit for keto, paleo, or carnivore diets.
Ingredients: Homemade Ice Cream Base, Coffee Beans, Bourbon Whiskey, Heavy Cream, and Cocoa Powder.
Common Questions
How does this ice cream compare to a typical grocery-store coffee ice cream?
Most mass-produced coffee ice cream is flavored with coffee extract and stabilized with guar gum, carrageenan, or mono- and diglycerides to keep it scoopable after months in a freezer case. Ben's version skips all of that — the coffee flavor comes from whole beans that are ground and cold-brewed for 24 hours directly in water and bourbon whiskey, then folded into a cocoa-and-cream base that's also cooked from scratch. There are five ingredients total: homemade ice cream base, coffee beans, bourbon whiskey, heavy cream, and cocoa powder. The tradeoff is texture and shelf behavior — without stabilizers, it should be eaten within a reasonable window and given a few minutes to soften before scooping, rather than staying rock-hard-then-soft indefinitely like a commercial pint.
What does the 24-hour cold brew actually do to the flavor?
Cold brewing coffee — pulling flavor out with cold liquid over a long soak instead of hot water for a few minutes — extracts a different set of compounds than hot brewing. It pulls out the oils and aromatic compounds that give coffee its body and sweetness while leaving behind more of the bitter, acidic compounds that heat tends to release quickly. Using bourbon as part of that soaking liquid matters because alcohol is a better solvent than water for certain fat-soluble flavor compounds in the coffee bean, so the bourbon pulls out notes that a straight water brew wouldn't get. That's why the final flavor reads as coffee up front, then a warm bourbon note, rather than a one-note coffee-extract flavor.
Does this fit into a keto, paleo, or carnivore diet?
Honestly, no — this is a cream, cocoa, and sugar-based dessert with added bourbon, so it doesn't fit any of those elimination-style diets as written. Carnivore rules out the coffee and cocoa since both are plant-derived. Paleo excludes it on dairy and alcohol grounds. Keto is the closest fit structurally since the base is heavy cream and cocoa rather than a fruit-heavy dessert, but we haven't published a full nutrition panel with carb counts, so we can't tell you exactly where it lands on net carbs — if you're strict about macros, treat it as an occasional treat rather than a diet staple.
What's a good way to serve this beyond a bowl on its own?
It's built to sit next to a slice of pie that's still warm from the oven — the cold scoop against a warm butter crust is the intended pairing. Beyond that, it works well as an affogato-style dessert with a shot of hot espresso poured over a scoop, since the existing coffee and bourbon notes hold up against more coffee rather than getting muddled. It also holds its own in a boozy float with a dark stout or cream soda, or just melted slightly and drizzled over brownies, since the chocolate finish was designed to work without any crust in the picture at all.
How can I verify the 'made from scratch' claims?
The clearest verification is the ingredient list itself: five items — homemade ice cream base, coffee beans, bourbon whiskey, heavy cream, and cocoa powder — with no stabilizers, emulsifiers, extracts, or fillers listed. That short a list is hard to fake at scale; commercial ice cream needs stabilizers to survive distribution, so their absence here is a direct signal of small-batch production. Everything is made by hand in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, by Ben Neumann himself rather than through a co-packer, which is also why batch sizes and availability are limited compared to a factory-made pint.
Why does a pie baker also make ice cream, and does the same standard apply?
Ben's pies are built around one rule — 100% butter crust, never shortening — and the ice cream came out of the same refusal to cut corners. Once people started asking for a scoop to go with the pie, buying tubs of commercial ice cream and slapping the bakery name on it didn't fit that standard, so he built a from-scratch base instead. Both the coffee-bourbon infusion and the coffee-cocoa cream are made separately and then combined by hand into one ice cream, using the same from-scratch approach applied to the pie fillings, caramel, and lemon curd. So the connective tissue between the pie and the ice cream isn't a shared ingredient — it's the same insistence on not shortcutting the base of the product.
Does the bourbon mean there's meaningful alcohol content in the ice cream?
Yes, more than you'd get from a baked good where alcohol cooks off in the oven. The coffee beans are cold-brewed directly in bourbon whiskey for 24 hours rather than having the bourbon reduced or heated, so there's no evaporation step to burn off alcohol the way baking or flambéing would. That's a deliberate flavor choice — it's what gives the ice cream its 'bourbon warmth underneath' the coffee — but it also means this isn't an appropriate treat for kids, and anyone avoiding alcohol entirely should skip this flavor.
- __Storage_Location:
- Keep frozen.
- __Volume:
- 400
- __Owner:
- Ben The Baker
- __badge:
- Cold-Brewed
