Imperial Stout Snow Cone

After reading Glyn's post about snowy beer pairing it got me thinking about my own snowy beer.

He stated that he preferred IPAs because he thought Imperial Stouts were a little bit unimaginative, a view which he's completely entitled to, after all it's been done to death a little of late - "it's cold! I need something strong and dark" It got me thinking though, does it really have to be unimaginative? After all I've been bastardizing the drink for many years now.... adding whisky to it, pouring it over ice cream, blending it half and half with Imperial IPA and even mixing it with fruit beer. After a bit of thought and the fact there's 4 inches of snow on the ground, it suddenly hit me;

I'm making me some IMPERIAL STOUT SNOW CONES!!!

I'm about to blow the doors off this beast. Sounds crazy right.... well, it is. There's just something about my hatred for the snow that just brings out my inner idiot, and for once I just wanted to have a little bit of fun.

Check this out:

Now with Imperial Stout Snow Cone making, there's a set of rules you must follow;

1. - Firstly make yourself a good cone. Get a good piece of card, cut a circle out of it and cut a quarter out of that circle, then stick together with tape - simple! You want to make sure you get the freshest fallen snow here to pack out the cone. We're not looking for yellow snow here, we're looking for the purest, whitest snow which we can turn into brown snow.

2. - You need to choose your Stout very carefully. As we're basically watering it down by pouring it onto snow, (to release the flavours, like a whisky don't you know...) you're going to need one with the most booze, the most flavour, so it really shines though in the icy goodness. I went for Goose Island's Bourbon County Stout - A personal favourite of mine. There's just something about the power of this beer, I knew it would beat the crap out of a little bit of the fluffy stuff.

3. - Realise what you've just done by pouring a very expensive beer into snow, try not to smile while you take a giant bite, savour, enjoy and repeat, then rush back inside to your fire and enjoy the rest of the bottle of beer.

That was my experiment then, and I loved every minute of it. I couldn't help but smile and laugh when I started to pour the beer over the snow. When are you going to do yours? Just remember, it's just beer at the end of the day - have some FUN with it!

This post was brought to you by the 'Stop GhostDrinker being a moron foundation'