Scottish ice-cream maker goes global with alcohol flavours

Kyle Gentleman from ICE of Redding in Falkirk makes WKD, Strongbow and Monster energy drink flavoured ice creams. Picture: Centre Press

Videos of the artisan ice cream being made have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times on social media.

Ice in the village of Redding, near Falkirk, needs eight cans of Strongbow’s Dark Fruits and a secret imported ingredient to make each batch of the alcoholic dessert.

The inventive gelato, which also include a luminous green Monster energy drink flavour, are the brainchild of 26-year-old Kyle Gentleman.

Calls and enquiries over the curious collection of desserts have come from the likes of the USA, Argentina and even the home of gelato - Italy.

But they will have to contend with hungry Scots who are travelling in their droves to the small village to leave the shop’s large Napoli tubs completely dry.

Kyle said that one customer drove 60 miles from their home in Largs, north Ayrshire, to sample his ice cream.

He said: “At Ice Falkirk we make all out own flavours from scratch, we pasteurise the milk, all sourced locally, and we do all the usual flavours, tablet, mint choc chip, strawberry, vanilla.

“But then we came up with a new idea a couple of weeks ago for the Monster energy drink flavour and that really kicked things off.

“It got a lot of attention, was shared on pages all over Facebook and clocked up thousands and thousands of shares.

“We decided to take advantage of that and got a new product that is alcohol-based from Italy and that allows us to make any alcoholic drink into an ice cream.

“My favourite is Strongbow Dark Fruits and it just went crazy.

“We did that on Thursday and sold out that day. On Friday we had to go to Glasgow and get extra ingredients and sold out again.

“Going on from that we did the Blue WKD and that hit a different kind of market and we were bombarded. Someone from Largs drove all the way up for some.”

Kyle has worked on ice cream vans since he was 14, but decided it was time to use his experience to open a shop and make his own artisan products in May last year.

Ice is also planning to introduce new beer and Prosecco flavours.

To purchase any of Ice’s alcohol-based ice cream, customers must be 18 or over and have ID if asked.

Kyle added: “We’ve got new plans now.

“Now we’ve done the alcohol flavours we’re going to keep it here because people have been coming from far and wide.

“We’ve been inundated with requests for the likes of Mad Dog, Prosecco, even beers like Corona, maybe a sorbet for example.

“That’s our plans, to keep doing new ones and do cocktails and stuff like that so the scope is wide.

“But we need to remember our other customers who want regular flavours like Mrs Tilly’s tablet, vanilla, cookie dough, Kinder for the kids.

“Plans for the future would be to develop new flavours, alcohol flavours, new special ones and hopefully we can take the idea further.

“We already supply the Beancross restaurant in Falkirk so we’d like to get the name out there a bit more and supply other restaurants here and outwith Falkirk with our name.”