Fernet Sorbet

Fernet is an Italian liqueur very popular in Argentina too. It has a very fresh and intense flavour, and iconic if you're used to drinking it from a young age.

Now it's summer here, so I thought: why not turn the bitter we know into an ice cream?

I searched a bit online and found only a few gelato shops in Argentina that sell it, while serious recipes are few and all milk-based. Considering the flavour of Fernet, the idea of a milk ice cream doesn't really convince me. So I decided to try making a Fernet sorbet!

I analyzed the challenge a bit:

• Fernet is a complex ingredient. It has a high alcohol content (around 38%) and also contains sugars, with a PAC of 300. As a result, much less sugar is needed to keep the sorbet creamy in the freezer.
• I don't have neutral solids at home like inulin or maltodextrins, so I had to work only with the sugars to balance the recipe.
• To be able to eat it straight from the home freezer at -18ºC, a high PAC in the end is rather useful.
• I prefer using guar gum instead of locust bean gum, so I can work at low temperatures without evaporating the alcohol.

After some thought, I arrived at the recipe below. It's slightly unbalanced as regards total solids, but it still reaches satisfactory POD and PAC values.

Ingredients

For about 900g of recipe:

Preparation

Prepared for 500g using the machine Cuisinart ICE-100

1. Ingredient preparation:
   1. Mix the sugar with the stabilizer;
   2. dissolve the solids in the water (not heated this time);
   3. at the last moment add the Fernet.
2. Pasteurization and maturation: no, to prevent the alcohol from evaporating
3. Churning: 40 minutes of churning (500 g); extract and put in the freezer.
4. Time in the freezer.

Final notes and tasting test

• Serving temperature: −15 °C.
• Texture: a lot of free water formed ice crystals, hard to tame
• Aroma: light and fresh, recalling Fernet

Here's how it looks! The appearance isn't the best, because it has the typical brownish colour of Fernet. It's rather cold to taste, as you'd expect from a sorbet very rich in water.

The consistency is interesting: creamy thanks to the guar gum, and quite compact despite the negative effects of alcohol in ice cream.

The flavour is delicate and very fresh. I'm thinking of adding a bit of coffee and mint to the mix to make the taste fuller. I could also increase the amount of Fernet slightly, since in the home freezer the sorbet still turns out rather hard at -18ºC.

I'm curious to hear your opinions and suggestions!