The Ice Cream Flavors That Pair Perfectly With A Pint Of Guinness Beer

The remarkable way that beer complements sweet foods is something that must be tasted to be believed. While many choose to integrate certain styles of beer into desserts like brownies to enhance flavor, you can also choose to enjoy some sweet ice cream alongside a beer like Guinness to experience a perfect pair in action. However, whether you're enjoying them side by side or by making an ice cream float with the beer, it's important to pick the right ice cream flavor for the job. While there are a few great choices, sticking with some good old-fashioned vanilla ice cream keeps the focus on the high-quality beer's flavor without overshadowing it.

We spoke to Rich Buceta, owner and creative director of Singlecut Beersmiths, about the validity of enjoying the most popular ice cream flavor in America with the highly ranked Guinness. "Dry Stouts such as Guinness and our Decibel Dry Stout are not sweet, so ice cream in general is a great pairing, and something simple like vanilla will allow the flavors of the beer to be expressive and be complementary," Buceta advised. With this in mind, opting for a brand of premium, high-quality vanilla ice cream with a higher fat content will slow the melt rate, ensuring your pint doesn't get diluted too quickly.

While nobody will fault you for sticking to vanilla due to its effective flavor contribution to Guinness, broadening your horizons ever so slightly can reveal additional ice cream flavors worthy of a try. We spoke to Guinness brand advisor Michael Reardon about top flavors to try, and he noted that his recommendation differs vastly depending on whether you're making a proper Guinness float or simply enjoying ice cream alongside your drink. 

"Eating a bowl of ice cream along with a pint of Guinness allows the Guinness to wash away some of the richer flavors, cleansing the palate and enticing you for more, but putting the ice cream in the Guinness Draught could easily overwhelm the flavor profile of the beer," Reardon explained. For this reason, his top choices for a Guinness float are vanilla and coffee ice cream — the latter of which works well because the beer already contains notes of coffee and chocolate.

As for picking an ice cream that is perfect to enjoy separately while you drink a pint, Reardon opts for chocolate since the semi-sweet notes harmonize with the beer's unmalted roasted barley. Other flavors like Heath Toffee Crunch, salted caramel swirl, and peanut butter swirl are all similarly great candidates. "The toffee or caramel would meld with the sweeter aspects of Guinness's malt backbone," he said. "With Heath Toffee Crunch, you would also have the chocolate harmony, and that little bit of salt acts as a flavor intensifier, making the perfect balance of roasted coffee and chocolate notes in Guinness really pop and reverberate off each other while slightly drying the palate and extending the long finish of Guinness Draught."