Humphry Slocumbe - Salted Caramel Cocoa Nib

Salted Caramel Cocoa Nib - Salted Caramel Ice Cream with Cocoa Nibs

Today is the last pint from my four-pint shipment from the San Francisco-based Humphry Slocumbe brand.  This flavor is called Salted Caramel Cocoa Nib.  This is an interesting twist on the salted caramel pint.  Some flavors add chocolate to complement the salted caramel.  This pint goes so far as to add use cocoa nibs -- the unprocessed part of the cacao plant from which cocoa is extracted.  They are kind of like the chocolate version of coffee beans.  I've reviewed two pints with cocoa nib mix-ins before.  This should be fun.

The top of the pint is a bright orangeish brown color.  I suppose brown is simply dark orange, so maybe I am being redundant?  Anyhow, there are a lot of cocoa nibs visible up top.  I've seen chocolate chips with that density, but not cocoa nibs.  Digging in, the caramel is quite salty.  I did a tour of salted caramel flavors earlier this summer and this caramel would rank as one of the saltier implementations.  It is quite delicious.  The cocoa nibs are quite crunchy and have a bit of a salty/bitter bite to them.  The coffee bean analogy works here.  There are quite a bit of them throughout the bit.  This is a crunchy pint.

This is a bold and well-done flavor.  The caramel is quite salty and flavorful and the cocoa nibs are abundant and crunchy.  After a few subtler-than-expected pints, I now see where Humphry Slocumbe's reputation for boldness comes from.  I eat a lot of ice cream, so I enjoyed the variation that cocoa nibs provide, but occasional eaters would note that the nibs do not actually deliver as much chocolate flavor as good old chocolate chips, flakes and chunks.  People who like their caramel salty and are enjoy chocolate in nib form will like this.

Humphry Slocumbe - Honey Graham

Honey Graham - Honey Ice Cream with Graham Crackers

The third pint in my recent shipment from the San-Franisco-based Humphry Slocumbe brand is called Honey Graham.  They sometimes refer to this flavor as "Harvey Milk and Honey Graham" as a version of the flavor was first introduced to commemorate Harvey Milk Day in 2010.  Harvey Milk was the San Francisco city supervisor and gay-rights activist who was assassinated in the 1978 -- Sean Penn won his second Oscar for played him in the movie Milk.  I like honey-flavored ice cream, so this looks like a promising pint.

Opening the pint, I see the off-white golden flavor of the honey base.  Several of the nugget-shaped graham cracker pieces can also be seen on top.  I can taste the honey flavor right away in the first bite.  It is pretty good and well-balanced but more subtle than I expected.  The graham cracker pieces are moist and chewy as opposed to crunchy.  I think they were allowed to steep in the milk and cream for a while before they churning and freezing process.  This is not a complaint, just and observation.  The graham cracker pieces tasted quite good.  As I continued to eat the pint, the honey flavor faded a bit or perhaps my palate got acclimated to the flavor more than I expected.  It was still tasty, though.

This is a solid pint of ice cream.  The honey flavor goes quite well with the graham cracker mix-ins.  As with the previous two pints in my shipment, the flavor levels were fairly modest and subdued.  This brand has a reputation for bold flavors!  This is a minor quibble, though.  The flavors are always well-constructed and balanced.

Humphry Slocumbe - Blue Bottle Vietnamese Coffee

Blue Bottle Vietnamese Coffee - Coffee Ice Cream made with Chicory and Condensed Milk

The second pint in my recent shipment from the San Francisco-based Humphry Slocombe brand is called Blue Bottle Vietnamese Coffee.  This is one of their original flavors.  What makes a coffee Vietnamese?  Vietnamese coffee usually contains sweetened condensed milk.  It reminds me a bit of Thai Iced Tea.  A quick check of the ingredient list tells me that the pint also contains chicory -- a 'coffee substitute' which became popular in New Orleans coffee.  I have written more about coffee, chicory and New Orleans in a previous review.  The 'Blue Bottle' part of the flavor name appears to come from a Bay Area coffee company which probably supplies the coffee used. This pint looks interesting, let's check it out.

Removing the lid, the base ice cream has a creamy tan color.  Digging in, the coffee flavor is very interesting and distinctive.  I can definitely tell there is sweetened condensed milk in there.  I am not enough of a coffee expert to know if the interesting and distinctive part of the flavor is the chicory, but it would not surprise me.  The flavor is surprisingly subtle at first.  This is not one of those coffee ice cream which hits you with dark-roasted coffee bean flavor right away.  That said, the flavor actually improves as I continue eating.  The sweetened condensed milk is never too sweet and I am left wanting more at the end of the pint.

This is a solid and interesting pint of ice cream.  As with the previous Humphry Sclocumbe flavor, it is a bit more subtle than I was expecting, but the flavor balance is very well done.  I am curious to know what fans of the Vietnamese beverage think of this flavor.

Humphry Slocumbe - Secret Breakfast

Secret Breakfast - Bourbon Ice Cream with Cornflake Cookies

I decided to try a new brand!  Humphry Slocombe is not available to be in local grocery stores, but I they have national shipping from both Amazon and Goldbely and they have gotten some good reviews.  Humphry Slocombe opened it's first scoop shop in San Francisco's Mission District in 2008.  The founder is Jake Godby who is a celebrated pastry chef in the Bay Area.  The shop quickly grew a reputation for having fun and eclectic flavors as noted by this write-up in the New York Times Magazine several years ago.  Where does the brand get its name?  I guess Mr. Humphries and Mrs. Slocombe were the main characters on the classic British sitcom Are You Being Served?.  That's fun.  Anyhow, the selection and shipping costs seemed reasonable the last time I looked so I pulled the trigger.

The first flavor I'm trying is called Secret Breakfast which is their most famous and popular flavor.  It is a bourbon ice cream with corn flake cookie mix-ins.  Checking my tags on the right sidebar, bourbon and whiskey are becoming trendy ice cream ingredients these days, but I think Humphry Slocombe was a very early entry on the bourbon bandwagon in the late 00s.  Their online menu still says "yes, bourbon" to note the novelty of the ingredient.

Opening the pint shows an off-white golden color to the bourbon base.  A couple of the cookie mix-ins are visible too.  Digging in, I immediately taste the bourbon flavor.  This is a sweet bourbon as opposed to the kick-in-the-back-of-your-throat bourbon -- I have noticed both kinds in previous reviews.  It is not too sweet though.  It tastes quite good.  Soon I encounter the cookie mix-ins and they are delicious.  Cornflakes and sugar make for a surprisingly potent combination.  I have had a few desserts with this combination and the first few bites are always amazing.  There are diminishing returns for it though.  As good as the few bites are, I often don't want a second piece.  For this pint, it looks like care has been done to deliver the cornflakes at a good frequency.  I am getting the occasional sweet corn flake and part of me wishes there were more, but I am also still enjoying them as I am finishing the pint.

I liked this flavor.  For a signature flavor, I was expecting something a bit more intense, but the balance between the bourbon and the sweet cornflakes is quite well done.  Check it out.