Milkjam Creamery - Saigon Nights

Saigon Nights - Vietnamese Coffee with Hennessey

I had not been to the Minneapolis-based Milkjam Creamery in a while, so I trekked over there to see if they had any cool flavors that I have not yet tried.  I picked up a couple of pints.  Today is the first of those pints which is called Saigon Nights.  It is a Vietnamese coffee-based flavor which is spiked with Hennessy.  Saigon is of course the old name of the capital of Vietnam -- and still the name of the river which flows through the city.   Hennessy is brandy manufactured in the Cognac region of France which makes it a "cognac".  I have actually had two pints with cognac before from Jeni's and Sweet Science.  Those flavors were more complex though.  One was a ginger bread caramel and the other was a pecan pie.  Here the cognac is simply to spike the coffee.  For the Vietnamese coffee, I have had one previous pint from Humphrey Slocumbe.  This should be interesting.

Opening the pint, the ice cream is a dark tan color.  I can tell right away that it is coffee and not chocolate, but it is a dark color for a coffee ice cream.  Digging in, I notice the coffee flavor right away, but it is not too intense.  I am wondering if there is condensed milk in the mix to mute the coffee flavor like in other southeast-asian coffees.  It is hard to tell because there is milk, cream and sugar in the mix simply because this is an ice cream and also because Milkjam does not post ingredient lists.  It tastes quite good though.  I shared it with a person who drinks coffee more than I do and they agree that this is a good coffee flavor.  The Hennessy/cognac I notice as the 'finish'.  Just a mild kick that lingers a bit in my mouth after I swallow.  As I continue my way down the pint, the effect of the cognac diminishes a bit.  It's still quite tasty as a coffee ice cream, but my mouth just got used to the flavor of the cognac.  Like many of Milkjam's ice creams, the texture is quite soft.  It is not quite soft-serve, but it is perhaps halfway between a soft-serve and a hard ice cream.

I liked this pint quite a bit.  The flavors are muted a bit more than one might originally expect, but it is still quite tasty.  If you are at Milkjam and in the mood for coffee ice cream, it's certainly worth a shot.  Do not be scared off by the Hennessy.  It provides just a mild kick.