Empty barrels hang from the ceiling waiting to be filled with ice cream at the Cass-Clay Creamery.
"I never thought I would do anything else," says Al about the dairy industry. "I was born into the business...and developed a love to make ice cream in Rugby as a young boy."
Making ice cream today is a lot different from the early 1900s when A. M. Nielsen did it with crushed ice and a 10-gallon tub. Today, Cass-Clay does a great amount of testing and research just to get the right flavor. For example, Al can obtain flavors from different flavor houses and "play around with different flavor profiles" with the batch freezer. Cass-Clay can also ask a flavor house to send different examples of ice ream with various flavors and ingredients.
A flavor house manufactures flavoring for food products. Some make both the ice cream and the flavoring and some just make flavorings. For example, Fantasy Blankey Bear flavor house supplies Cass-Clay with different ice cream flavors.
Suppose Cass-Clay wants a new strawberry flavor for their ice cream. Different flavor houses will send a small amount of their strawberry flavoring for Cass-Clay to use in their plain ice cream mixture. Then there is a significant testing process to determine which flavor is most acceptable.
The flavors come in three categories: Category one flavor is all natural, two is a blend of natural and artificial flavoring and three is primarily artificial flavor.
Strawberry is an old-fashioned flavor and is nothing new to many people. If Cass-Clay, however, wants to develop a unique and exclusive flavor, the steps are slightly different. For example, Betsy Nielsen suggested a new ice cream flavor called "Banana Boat" to her dad. The ice cream would be banana-flavored with chocolate swirls and marshmallows. Al contacted different flavor houses and presented them with the idea. Since no one has ever produced this flavor before, the flavor house suggested different ingredients and flavors and some flavor houses even sent sample ice cream with the new flavor.
When Cass-Clay receives ice cream flavoring from various flavor houses, creamery employees mix the flavors with their own ice cream mixture and test the finished product. The flavor can change consistency with different types of ice cream. "Fat enhances the flavor," says Al, and "makes it full bodied." For example, vanilla ice cream becomes more mellow with less fat so it is important to perform several tests and research flavors before mass production.
Cass-Clay's research and development committee does the testing of all their ice creams. If accepted, the ice cream goes into the next phase which is the mass production stage.
Additional ingredients are often added during ice cream production. Al often talks about the "fruit feeder" and "swirling in chocolate" when discussing ice cream production. On plant tours, Al will show off the fruit feeder, which mixes in nuts, chocolate chunks or fruit sauces. He also loves to hear jokes about suggesting more chocolate swirls and doubling the amount of marshmallows.
If the flavor is a special flavor or a flavor of the month, the flavor house will provide cartons for the ice cream. Al is responsible for determining the nutritional information and calculating the values to develop a nutrition label for that carton. After developing the nutritional label, Al works on the ingredients list. Most likely the first ingredients will include milk, cream and sucrose.
Cass-Clay must put their slogan and logo on all of the ice cream cartons they use. If a flavor house develops the new ice cream, they will supply the pre-designed cartons. If Cass-Clay, however, develops an exclusive ice cream flavor such as the one Al's daughter suggested, Cass-Clay's designers would create the carton design.