Can boozy ice cream get you drunk?

Alcohol has long been used as a flavoring in ice cream, but eating a quart of rum raisin never got anyone buzzed. Until now. Enter the ice cream “barlour” — an ice cream shop that serves spiked scoops. The first question people ask: “Will this ice cream get me drunk?” The answer is typically no, although a four-ounce serving of 5% ABV ice cream may produce a modest buzz. From an operator’s perspective, the boozy ice-cream trend is attractive for several reasons. One, the check sizes — $12 to $15 for some popular chains, according to Nation’s Restaurant News. Two, it offers multiple streams of revenue: catering weddings and company parties, selling pints to go, and online ordering/delivery, where local laws allow. Three, alcoholic ice cream melds well with other concepts, such as coffee, milkshakes and dessert cafés.

Liquor-infused ice cream may taste boozy, but can it actually get you drunk. Federal law doesn’t consider products containing less than 0.5% alcohol by volume to be alcoholic, but other regulations vary by state. “In New York, our liquor-infused ice cream is considered a food as long as it contains less than 5% alcohol by volume,” Chitwood said, noting that Tipsy Scoop’s flavors all had to be tested to confirm they were below that threshold. Maryland-based Arctic Buzz, on the other hand, packs up to 9% in its ice cream. The average 12-ounce beer contains about 5% ABV. A pint of ice cream is about 16 ounces, so it would be quite difficult to reach that concentration of alcohol in ice cream. “You would have to eat a lot of ice cream to be the equivalent of two to three standard drinks,” Goff said. “Probably you’d get satiated by the fat before that could happen. So no, it won’t make you drunk.” But that doesn’t mean there’s no effect, and Chitwood said it’s a common misconception that the alcohol gets “cooked out.” You still need to be mindful about getting behind the wheel if you’re eating alcoholic ice cream. “I can definitely attest that I have gotten tipsy from taste testing boozier flavors, like those with whiskey or tequila, early in the morning on an empty stomach,” Chitwood said. “Like with the consumption of any alcoholic beverage your tolerance depends on body size, hydration and what you’ve eaten that day. If you’re a regular drinker, it’s unlikely that you will get more than slightly buzzed from consuming our ice cream.” Still, getting drunk was not the intended goal for the founders of Tipsy Scoop. “We’re often asked, ‘How much ice cream do I have to eat to get drunk?’” she said. “Getting drunk off of our ice cream is not actually the point, that’s why we call it ‘Tipsy Scoop’ and not Drunk Scoop.”

Some of them pack a kick, and I've always wondered how many of them it'd take before I felt any effects from the alcohol. Turns out you'd have to eat a traumatic amount of them before you felt any effects from the alcohol whatsoever. HuffPost took a look. Ice cream containing alcohol is nothing new, but demand for it during this past terrible year has gone up. New York State's regulation says that liquor-infused ice cream is food if it's less than 5% alcohol by volume. Maryland-based Arctic Buzz manages to pack up to 9% in some of its ice cream. Putting alcohol in ice cream does come with its technical challenges. "Alcohol depresses the freezing point and makes ice cream soft, so if too much is added, the ice cream will become too soft and have a very short shelf-life," An average beer contains about 5% ABV, so putting that much alcohol in a pint of ice cream would be a fairly technical challenge. "You would have to eat a lot of ice cream to be the equivalent of two to three standard drinks," So while the final answer is that you probably can't get drunk off of alcoholic ice cream, still, be mindful and enjoy it responsibly. Everyone's different. If you plow down a pint on an empty stomach, you might feel the effects, especially if you're not a regular drinker. So while the final answer is that you probably can't get drunk off of alcoholic ice cream, still, be mindful and enjoy it responsibly.