The first thing we have to do is cross the road to the farm dairy and get some milk, then bring it back to our purpose built ice cream factory across the cobbled yard Wallings.
The milk is poured into a stainless steel vat called a batch pasteuriser. This has a big mixer attached which briskly agitates the milk, whilst the other ingredients (double cream, skimmed milk powder, sugars, etc.) are added. The batch pasteuriser also heats the mix as the mixing process continues.
Once the ice cream mix has been heat treated or ‘pasteurised’ it is quickly cooled down to the temperature of a fridge, and held in another stainless steel tank to ‘age’, for 24 hours.
The final step is when the ice cream mix is turned into what you would recognise as ice cream, using a continuous freezer. During this process the ice cream mix is turned from a liquid to a solid by freezing, and packed into tubs before being placed in a blast freezer (very cold) to harden.
Ice cream making at Wallings is a batch process, and in the dizzy heights of summer we can get very busy, producing up to 2000 litres a day!
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