Frozen Desserts Ice Cream

Ice cream is just ice, fat and air; the way these three main ingredients interact determines the ice cream quality.

Color, texture and taste are the main quality factors for ice cream. To optimize these it is particularly important to control process parameters including the temperature and time of heating and cooling the mixture. Over-heating and slow cooling causes changes to the flavor and color of the milk, whereas under-heating may lead to survival of undesirable micro-organisms, risking food poisoning from the product.

The rate at which ice cream freezes can greatly affect final product texture by determining the size of the ice crystals in the product. It is desirable to have much smaller ice crystals and lower sized fat globules and air cells in its structure. To achieve this rapid heat transfer rates are needed.

During the freezing process, heat transfer rate is mainly affected by:

• temperature of blast freezer,
• rapid circulation of air - increases convective heat transfer,
• temperature of ice cream as it enters the hardening freezer,and
• the stacking method inside the freezer.

The major storage requirement for the ice cream is to minimize the number of times and the duration the ice cream is melted and frozen again that causes the development of grittiness in the product.

Every day, frozen dessert manufacturers face the
challenge of delivering everybody's favorite frozen
treats with consistent taste, texture and quality.

Here is how we can help:

• Expedite process transfer from R&D to production

  Since the ThermoBiscuit™ can travel with products through conveyorized freezer lines and spiral freezers or be used in blast freezers providing real time display of air and product core temperatures, it is easy to measure thermal profiles and ice cream hardening rates in R&D and replicate the freezing process across production lines.

• Implement quality control

  With the help of thermocouple probes with depth stops, the production group can use the ThermoBiscuit to routinely measure key temperatures at consistent locations inside freezers and products to document process compliance and provide quality control data.

• Compensate freezer inconsistency

  We all know that not every freezer works in the same way. By using ThermoBiscuit to measure product core temperatures at the various stacking locations,the operators do not need to accommodate the freezer inconsistency. Control the process using the product core temperature in stead of freezer’s thermometer readings.

• Speed maintenance

  When it's time to check freezer performance, ThermoBiscuit collects accurate multi-channel thermal profiles easily. Real-time data collection and display allows immediate freezer diagnosis or, when used as a data logger, data can be downloaded wirelessly without waiting for the ThermoBiscuit to warm to room temperature. After line maintenance operations, it is easy to run the ThermoBiscuit again to verify freezer performance.

• Optimize line efficiency

  Many high-volume manufacturers run multiple products on the same line every day. ThermoBiscuit can be used to quickly provide a thermal profile during product changeover to confirm that the line is ready and reduce production waste. ThermoBiscuit can also be used to quickly find process inefficiencies where product is "over-frozen" and line throughput can be increased yielding more profit without any additional equipment investment.

• Monitor product quality during transportation

  ThermoBiscuit can be used as a data logger to simply collect temperature history during product transportation. Users can download data to a local laptop at the destination facility and share the record electronically.