House of indulgence

Dairy Field, Apr 2001 by Bardic, Allison

Melody Farms' Detroit-based plant churns out hundreds of varieties of ice cream.

The dawn of Prohibition in Detroit resulted in an unlikely new business venture for Stroh Products Co. - ice cream processing.

Forced to stop producing beer, the brewer in 1919 found itself searching for other opportunities to stay afloat. In an innovative move that capitalized on its vast inventory of refrigeration equipment, Stroh chose the manufacture of ice cream, in addition to such products as ginger ale, ice and malt extract,

The first Stroh's ice cream was delivered on June 1, 1919, and to the delight of Stroh Products, these frosty treats helped keep the company active during Prohibition years.

Today Livonia, Mich.-based Melody Farms continues the tradition began by Stroh. In a multi-million-dollar deal, Melody in 1999 acquired Stroh's Ice Cream Co. and consolidated all of its ice cream operations in Detroit. Melody's ice cream previously had been co-- packed at Michigan Dairy in Livonia, a plant owned by the Kroger Co.

As a result of the buyout, Melody Farms also assumed ownership of the Stroh's, Mooney's and Nafziger's brands. All continue to be produced in Detroit, in addition to Melody Farms ice cream, and to this day Stroh's remains the number one ice cream brand in Detroit.

Today's Melody Farms ice cream plant churns out about six million galions of ice cream a year. Among them are nearly 100 varieties of bulk ice cream, 40 varieties of Stroh's and some 30 varieties of Melody Farms ice cream.

Upon arrival, the cream and condensed skim milk are unloaded from tankers and stored in two 5,000-gallon ammonia-refrigerated holding tanks and one 4,000-gallon holding tank. Sucrose is stored in an 8,000-gallon tank, while liquid corn syrup is held in a 6,000-gallon tank.

These ingredients are pumped into a 1,500-gallon blending tank before five hundred-gallon batches are forwarded to the pasteurization system.

Melody Farms' ice cream plant is one of the few remaining facilities to employ vat pasteurization, which requires that product be heated to 160 deg F for half an hour, as opposed to high temperature short time (HTST) pasteurization, which heats product to 175 deg F for 25 seconds. The plant houses three 500-gallon vat pasteurizers.

"The vat pasteurizer is a more costly method of making mix because it uses a lot more energy, but we believe that vat pasteurization produces a better quality ice cream product than HTST, and you can definitely taste the difference," explains Pat Calder, plant manager of the Detroit facility. "Vat pasteurization gives a better, slow-cooked taste, especially in the vanilla ice cream."

From the pasteurization holding tank, mix is sent to the plant's new homogenizer where it is homogenized, then cooled. "We blend 500-gallon batches, pump the mix into the pasteurizer and then send it to the homogenizer running at 1,000 gallons an hour," says Calder. "The homogenizer can run up to 2,350 gallons an hour, but we've idled it down to 1,000 gallons so we have room to grow in the future."

Mix is held in three 3,000-gallon refrigerated tanks and one 5,000-gallon refrigerated tank. It is tested for fats and solids and flavored with the required flavors and colors.

At that point, the mix is pumped into one of two ice cream freezers where it is frozen to about 23 deg F After mix comes through the freezers, it passes by an ingredient feeder where inclusions such as nuts, chocolate pieces or strawberries are added if necessary.

Melody Farms' plant houses two ice cream processing lines. Line #1 manufactures 1,200 gallons of ice cream an hour, while Line #2 tops off at 900 gallons an hour. "If you're running a Rocky Road or something with a lot of variegates, your line speed is going to increase of course, but if we max both lines out we can run about 2,500 gallons of ice cream an hour," notes Calder.

Line #1 packages half-gallon squares, while Line #2 fills half-gallon squares, three-gallon bulk containers, round half gallons and pints. A new print-and-apply labeler for bulk products employs software allowing the company to design many types of labeling. "If a customer wants us to do any co-packing for them and they give us their logo, we can easily put it on this label with the help of this system," adds Calder, noting that the plant also recently adopted a HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) program in anticipation of increased co-packing opportunities.

Ice cream is weighed, shrink wrapped and forwarded to a tri tray freezer where it is stacked on trays for hardening. The freezer is -40 deg F, and fans create a wind chill factor that drops the temperature to 100 degrees below zero. A complete overhaul of the tri tray freezer in 1999 increased the Detroit plant's production by 23 percent.

After about four hours, product exits the freeze tunnel and is palletized. Stacked pallets are stretch-wrapped and stored in Melody Farms' 60,000-square-foot freezer, built in 1998, to await distribution.

"Our goal is to continue to improve and automate the plant," Calder says from outside his small office overlooking the plant floor. "I could have had a bigger office," he adds, "but I'm a hands-on manager and prefer to be on the production floor."