I was lucky enough to be a part of a select few bloggers to get the inside SCOOP & visit the Graeter’s Ice Cream Plant (in Bond Hill, Ohio) to learn about the French Pot Process. Here we are all scrubbed up and ready to check this place out!
The below video will give you some history on why Graeter’s still uses the French Pot Process today. We were welcomed with open arms to take pictures and were told that they were not afraid of anyone duplicating the French Pot Process because it is in fact the HARDEST way to make Ice Cream! As you know, the result, well there is really nothing better than Graeter’s Ice Cream, in my opinion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmWmNhOLC9Y
Nick Whitney, Marketing Director & Andy Connolly, Manager of Manufacturing were great tour guides! You can tell they have a passion for Graeters and love what they do!
The Ice Cream making process Starts With ONLY The FINEST INGREDIENTS
Only the highest quality ingredients from across the globe make it into Graeter’s ice cream. From fresh local dairy, select fruit from the Pacific northwest, the most rare and best Vanilla Extract, to the most gourmet chocolate. Only the best, finest, and freshest!
FORMULATED & COMBINED
All ingredients are pasteurized, cooked, and combined in a flavor vat. The rich mixture is ready to be frozen in 2½ gallon batches in a historic process that has been a part of Graeter’s ice cream for over a century.
ONE BATCH AT A TIME
This is what makes Graeter’s unique. They use 2½-gallon French Pot Freezers; keeping the same process Louis started making ice cream with centuries ago.
HUGE CHOCOLATE (or various ingredients i.e. truffles, or OREOs) CHUNKS
They call them chips, but lets face it sometimes they’re chunks! They pour gourmet chocolate over the now creamy ice cream leaving an incredibly delicious shell of chocolate. Graeter’s skilled artisans break this up and mix it into the ice cream, resulting in totally unique and one of a kind chunks of chocolate that are still soft when you devour them!! My mouth is watering!!
The ice cream comes out of the French Pot ready to eat. We were lucky enough to be there on COOKIES N CREAM Production day! They were kind enough to let us sample some right of the production line! These pictures are making my mouth water thinking about the creamy deliciousness!! YUM!!!!
HAND PACKED
While delicious, the ice cream is too thick to pump into pint containers like most ice cream makers. So they do it BY HAND! On a typical day employees hand pack nearly 20,000 pints, with the fastest packers average up to 15 pints a minute! All the employees were very friendly and happy to show us around and let us take pictures!!
To learn more about the process and how the Ice Cream is made watch this video:
To Order your own Graeter’s Ice Cream to your home click here!
