Love the Loughry Dairy!

Date published: 17 June 2016

Summer can mean only one thing for Loughry’s final year students – Graduation. Where would a Loughry Graduation be without our delicious real dairy ice cream? Loughry ice cream is manufactured by students on the campus using locally produced milk. This is particularly relevant since June has been designated the month of ‘Love Dairy’ in the Year of Food and Drink.

Recently Loughry students had the opportunity to learn all about ice cream and its manufacture. They quickly realised that making ice cream was not as simple as it seems...Over 80 litres of the Loughry real dairy vanilla ice cream was produced for the awards days across the three campuses.

The ice cream contains quality ingredients including locally produced milk, cream and butter, along with sugar, flavouring, emulsifiers and stabilisers. Each ingredient has a very important role to play in the manufacture of the ice cream.

The ingredients are carefully measured and weighed and mixed together, then the ice cream mix is pasteurised. The mixture is then frozen in a special continuous freezer adding air, which gives the ice cream that delicious light and easy to scoop texture.

This is one of the very popular practical classes at Loughry, especially when students get to complete a tasting at the end of the session!

If you’re interested in doing the same and starting your journey towards an interesting and well paid career in food and drink, see the CAFRE website for details.