When choosing the ice cream maker, know what you’re investing in, a critical item and heart center of the batch freeze process.
The kitchen ice cream freezer for fun as well as making test samples
As you are considering making large amounts of a plant or dairy-based frozen product, testing in sample batches will be necessary. Sample batches to develop flavors and determine product make-up is vital before going large scale.
There’s what I term home freezers and then there’s lite commercial. The primary difference between a small home ice cream freezer and a lite commercial one are blade style, churn RPMs, and the process to freeze the barrel.
Typically the small home freezer like the Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker comes with small plastic blades that are fairly flexible under thickening product pressure. This model freezer is designed for family fun and makes frozen treats that are served within a couple of hours.
Blade Type:
As the batch freezer sizes increase, so will cost and enhancements. Expect thicker blades, that are more ridge and possibly made of stainless metal.
Dasher blade and spin:
As the batch freezer trends towards the category of commercial, opposed to home, the ability for sample products to be closer to representing a commercial product will increase.
Dasher RPMs in high-grade commercial freezers increase and just as important remain at a constant spin speed as ice cream thickens through the freezing process.
Barrel Temperature:
There are two ways to freeze the barrel that contains and freezes the base mix. In a small home appliance, the barrel needs to be placed in the freezer section of your home refrigerator.
The second type is the barrel freezes by a compressor or termed electro freeze. Electro freeze offers more convenience in steps while keeping a more consistent temperature to freeze bases faster, that when finished makes a smoother product.
Freeze Time:
In a smaller batch freezer, freezing time can range from 30 – 60 minutes, depending on the size and features of the batch freezer. Lite commercial to larger industrial freezers can typically achieve draw or completion temperature in 8 – 10 minutes.
To make the perfect ice cream or plant-based desserts it includes many critical factors:
- Ingredients
- Temperature of the liquid base
- Churn consistency and blade type
- Barrel temperature
- Accurate length of time & temperature of the finished product
- Hardening temperature & time (not covered in this article)
When making frozen desserts for family and fun there’s really no need to spend more than $100 on a small 1.5 Qt batch freezer. It’s designed to freeze tasty desserts to serve right away.
When making test batches that are intended to eventually scale for commercial sales, a medium-grade commercial model will better represent the finished product.
Here’s a list of batch freezers for fun at home to serious commercial grade.
Home freezer – won’t hurt the wallet, kids can use, slow churn with the barrel pre-frozen in the home freezer
Cuisinart Ice Cream to Sorbet Maker 1.5 Qt
Hamilton Beach Ice Cream Maker 1.5 Qt
Home batch freezer at a slightly heftier cost, makes a more consistent product, with faster freezing time and electric freeze barrel.
Breville Electro Freeze 1.5 Qt
Batch freezer for lab samples and small shop production, commercial-grade, more consistent product, fast freeze time, small workhorse
Coldelite Compacta 4 – 4 Qt – countertop, stainless
Emery Thompson CB 200 3 Qt – countertop, stainless
Batch freezer to supply products for a small to medium-size business, thousands of dollars, most consistent production, making 40 plus gallons per day
Stoelting VB35 24 Qt – electronic controlled time and temperature with discharge assistance with reverse spin dasher
Compacta Vairo 22 Qt – electronic controlled time and temperature with some models having a pasteurizing capability
Emery Thompson 24 Qt – manual time and temp, toggle switch on/off, workhorse
A client will often bring up the subject of samples they make in the kitchen and the positive feedback received from friends and family stating, this is excellent and should be sold at the grocery store.
My response, products made in the kitchen, rarely or slightly represent products made on a commercial scale. First, because of the type of equipment, and second, temperature restraints of a home batch and hardening freezer.
A home freezer for family fun to make and serve wonderful desserts is great, but to base results from using home equipment and believing it will represent the same product made at a larger scale that may be sold over 1 – 6 months, represent a false positive in both flavor, texture and most of all business plan.
If you are serious about making frozen products to sell in the commercial space, then put down the apron and schedule time with Darryl. He will walk you through the steps from home kitchen to scaling production for commercial customers to prepare for a successful business.
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