Booze and Ice Cream in One Fell Scoop

NEW YORK — Arlo SoHo is a trendy hotel in the West SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan, in New York. It has a spacious backyard that is set up like a glamping site. There are tents, picnic tables, Adirondack chairs, trees. There is also an ice cream cart.

At first glance the ice cream looks normal. But you might want to pace yourself: This innocent-looking treat can have up to 5 percent alcohol content per scoop.

Made by New York’s Tipsy Scoop, which has a store near Gramercy Park, the ice cream comes in flavors like strawberry rhubarb bourbon or cake batter vodka martini.

The hotel also serves elaborate ice cream cocktails made by Muddling Memories, a beverage company in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. Floating Through Life, for example, includes vanilla bean bourbon ice cream, strawberry rhubarb bourbon ice cream, bourbon, elderflower, ginger beer and edible flowers, all topped with lemon meringue cookies.

The Arlo is one of many places where New Yorkers are indulging in boozy ice cream. Here is a look at the trend.

Boozy ice cream is “any ice cream that incorporates liquor, wine or beer in its ingredients,” said Ali Rosen, cookbook author and television host. But it’s actually hard to pull off. Because liquor has a lower freezing point than milk, too much of it can warm ice cream, making it melt. “Mostly it is used for its flavor,” Rosen said.

“Rum raisin was popular starting in the 1930s,” Rosen said. “A 1947 copy I have of the ‘Boston Cooking-School Cookbook’ has an ice cream recipe with brandy.” But there are a few reasons the decadent treat is popular now. Ice cream used to be the product of large corporations, which had to work within the confines of changing liquor laws, so it was easier for big companies to avoid alcohol altogether, Rosen said. It is perfectly legal, though, for businesses to prepare foods with small amounts of alcohol (5 percent or below) without the need of a liquor license, although these products should not be sold to customers younger than 21, according to the New York state Liquor Authority.

Meanwhile, smaller shops like Tipsy Scoop also have the freedom to collaborate with bars and hotels that have liquor licenses to intensify the booze factor. The ice cream at the Arlo is strictly for those 21 and older.

OddFellows Ice Cream Co. in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn makes quirky flavors like tequila pineapple and absinthe chocolate chip — all with a negligible amount of alcohol — in its three shops in Williamsburg, the East Village and Nolita. For its new location in the Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn, the company is applying for a liquor license to make the truly boozy stuff. Il Laboratorio del Gelato, on the Lower East Side, also has a few tame selections flavored with alcohol, including Kahlúa, Sambuca and Nocello, as well as a prosecco sorbet. A short walk away is Morgenstern’s Finest Ice Cream, known for its cinnamon whiskey flavor. The restaurant Dante, in the West Village, is offering an Aperol ice pop (made by OddFellows) that comes with a shot of Aperol spritz. “It’s not going to get you drunk by any means,” said Nick Matus, a bartender there. “But it’s delicious.”

Carly Petrone, 38, a writer and social media manager, tried Tipsy Scoop’s margarita ice cream and fell in love with it immediately. “I think it’s a fun way to meet up for happy hour with friends, especially in the summer when it’s so hot outside,” she said. Noe Jose, 25, a marketing director who lives on the Lower East Side, said his friends get tired of drinking the same old cocktails. “I’m in the events business, and not everyone wants to drink all the time,” he said. “This can reinvent the way people consume alcohol.”

“I think the only downside is sometimes certain liquors come across too much in some flavors, which makes it hard to eat more than a few bites,” Petrone said. So it also could be off-putting to certain ice cream snobs. It’s also more expensive than regular ice cream.