How we start
Our family-run production process starts with the milk being poured into a stainless-steel vat called a batch pasteuriser which has a big hi-speed mixer attached to agitate the milk, whilst the other ingredients are added (cream, skimmed milk powder, sugar etc).
The batch pasteuriser heats up the ice cream mix as the mixing process continues. Once the mixture has reached the desired temperature (pasteurised) we send it through a homogeniser.
Homogenisation is where the mix is forced through a machine at extremely high pressure which breaks up all the microscopic particles so small that each particle doesn’t have enough surface area to join any other particle spreading them evenly throughout the liquid creating a smoother and more creamy texture.
Next stage of the process
Pump the hot, homogenised mix through a series of cooling plates to rapidly cool it down before it is stored in another stainless-steel holding tank for 24hrs.
The mix needs to “mature” during this time which helps to fully hydrate the dry ingredients and helps the final yield of ice cream we will achieve.
The final stage is the best bit – making it into ice cream!!
We put 5lt – 10lt of mix into stainless steel buckets and add and mix any flavourings in. Then we pour the mix into the batch freezer and start the freezing process. The batch freezer is a horizontal stainless-steel cylinder that has a beater that rotates inside it. Whilst the mix is being beaten the outside of the cylinder is being chilled.
The mix sticks to the cold walls of the cylinder and as it freezes onto the walls it is scraped off by the beater. The process of beating and freezing the mix takes around 8 – 10 minutes to turn the liquid mix into ice cream. At this point the ice cream is still soft and is around -8c in temperature.
We pack into whichever size tub is required and if there are any inclusions to be added such as a ripple, nuts or chocolate chunks etc this is when we add them by hand and stir them into the freshly made ice cream. Then straight into a blast freezer for each tub.
The blast freezer runs at around -40c as we want to harden the newly made ice cream as quickly as possible. Once set hard we move the ice cream into the storage freezer that runs at -20c
We use small scale batch production and package by hand, the milk and cream are produced just a few hours before we collect them – ice cream simply doesn’t get any fresher than that!!