Gifford's makes ice cream with family recipes, vintage equipment

The Gifford’s Ice Cream processing plant is tucked into a hillside on Hathaway Street in Skowhegan, Maine. This unassuming little band box of a building gives no hint that inside, production workers are creating super premium ice cream that is sold in company-owned and independently owned scoop shops and by retailers from Maine to Maryland.

The company’s tagline refers to its ice cream as “famous,” a bit of hyperbole created by the owners when they established the company in 1980. But there is no challenging the claim that the Gifford family makes a “world championship” product. They have the hardware to prove it. Gifford’s is the first ice cream maker to win the Grand Champion prize two years running in the Wisconsin Dairy Products Association contest. WDPA honored Gifford’s chocolate ice cream as the “best of the best” in 2010 and 2011.

Brothers Roger and John Gifford started the ice cream company, having bought the dairy business from their parents. Today, Lindsay Gifford Skilling, one of John’s daughters, runs the day-to-day operations and is the head of sales. (See related article on page 52.)

The brothers Gifford grew up in Connecticut where their parents owned a processing plant and operated a home delivery business. Their parents sold that business and bought the Hunt’s Dairy in Skowhegan in 1974. (The milk receiving station dates to the 1920s. Previous owners were Hoods, Whiting Milk and Skowhegan Jersey Ice Cream.) The Gifford family operated the plant as a full-line fluid operation until1983 when they sold the milk business to Oakhurst Dairy, Portland, Maine. Then, the Gifford sons converted the entire facility to an ice cream plant.

Gifford’s started with one employee and a 10-gallon batch freezer in a room measuring 12 feet by 30 feet. Roger and John Gifford used some of their family recipes dating back five generations. Later, the brothers moved into a 60-foot by 40-foot room where they operated one 80-gallon Cherry Burrell continuous freezer with two employees.

“We would make ice cream for eight hours filling bulk can and plastic half-gallons by hand and slide them through a small door into a 60- by 20-foot freezer,” Roger recalled. “After that we would go in the freezer and put away all the ice cream we made that day. It would take about two hours.”

The next upgrade was a 300-gallon continuous freezer and then a second one. Now the Giffords own three 400-gallon-per-hour continuous freezers. All are Silver Star Cherry Burrells.

“We believe these freezers make the best ice cream. They are dual-barrel continuous freezers which make a lot smoother ice cream,” says Roger, who earned a dairy science degree at the University of Tennessee. He and John learned all they could about dairy processing and ice cream making from C.E. “Doc” Lawrence, who educated generations of dairymen.

Other improvements to the Gifford’s Ice Cream plant included a tri-tray hardening system and more freezer storage space. In the early days, the ice cream would be static-hardened overnight. Ice crystals are the bane of ice cream, and processors do all they can to limit their size and formation. The tri-tray system minimizes freezing time and contributes to the ice cream’s smooth texture. Gifford’s employees installed the system themselves.

Gifford’s has installed new ripple equipment and a fruit feeder, as well as two new screw compressors. The screw ammonia compressors and computerized controls with new variable frequency drives for speed control of fans and pumps provide electricity savings. A new clean-in-place system assures accurate cleaning and sanitizing. Plus, it saves water. Other improvements that reduce energy consumption include energy-efficient lighting and a new control system for the boiler.

Good ice cream starts with good ingredients. Gifford’s uses r-BST-free milk from Oakhurst Dairy which sources it all from Maine dairy farmers. Gifford’s accepts milk deliveries two to three times weekly. In the small, on-site lab, technicians perform a variety of analyses, including a stress coliform test, the Gerber fat test (to determine the percentage of fat in the product) and homogenizer efficiency. The facility is under the jurisdiction of the Maine Department of Agriculture, which inspects the plant and performs routine checks of the high-temperature/short-time pasteurization system. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration also has jurisdiction over the manufacturing process.

Before pasteurizing and homogenizing, the milk flows to the 500-gallon mix tanks, where liquid sugar, powders and stabilizers are added. New flow meters for batching ensure accuracy and contribute towards consistency of product. After blending, the ice cream mix is aged for 24 hours to improve the flavor, texture and body. New equipment includes a 7,000-gallon mix storage tank and a 1,200-gallon-per-hour homogenizer.

Gifford’s makes about 90% of its ripples and base, allowing it to control costs and quality. Bases include blueberry and ripples include fudge and fruit bases. The bases are cooked in two steam kettles. Gifford’s also uses natural vanilla flavorings for its branded ice cream and artificial vanilla in recipes for certain co-packed products.

The aged ice cream mix is pumped to four 400-gallon flavor tanks and then pumped to the three continuous freezers. The freezers have two barrels, which create a smooth texture, explains plant manager Joel Violette. The mix is pumped to the filling line. One filler handles 2 ½-gallon and 3-gallon bulk cans for scoop shops and foodservice customers. The second line fills quarts, half-gallons, and 56-ounce square-round or brick containers. Co-packed ice cream is packaged in bricks.

The packages are dated on the bottom as they come off the filler, then are assembled in shrink-wrapped bundles of six and conveyed to the freezer.

Every five minutes, Violette pulls a carton from the packaging line to weigh it. If necessary, he fine-tunes the hold-back valve on the freezer. He listens to the motors, too, and makes adjustments based on what he hears. On new machines, computers regulate filling. But the hands-on processing contributes to Gifford’s story of hand-crafted ice cream made the old-fashioned way.

Quality control includes daily product sampling. At the start of every run the production manager will take a container off the line and dig into it to check all ingredients and taste. Every day Giffords pulls samples off the line and lets them harden. Once a week the quality control manager and one other employee (a different employee each time) cut into the product to check ingredients, ripples, color, taste and other features. 

The onsite lab does microbiological testing on daily batches. Deliveries are inspected and recorded by the shipping department. Incoming and outgoing loads and less-than-truckload (LTL) shipments are sealed and locked upon arrival or departure.

With demand growing for the Gifford’s brand, as well as private-label accounts, the processor is looking to expand the size of the building to increase production space. It is adding a raw C.I.P. tank and taking out the raw C.O.P. tank.

Ergonomics and safety

“We still consider ourselves a small company and we take employee safety very seriously,” Roger Gifford said. Staff provides yearly safety training for production employees, and that is complemented by training from an outside vendor. Safety programs range from chemical awareness to proper lifting techniques.

Gifford’s uses a monthly self-auditing system, which covers everything from the grounds to good manufacturing practices. Its list of approved suppliers is made up of companies that have been required to show proof of a food safety system as well as a current third-party audit. Randolph Associates performs a third-party audit at Gifford’s.

“Being a small company, our employees may take just a little more pride in the product they produce every day,” John said. “That gives Gifford’s and the employees here the ability to really buy into a food safety plan.”

Gifford’s makes ice cream in a building that dates to the Roaring ‘20s and in freezers that date to World War II. The brothers are proud of the old-fashioned techniques they use. But they have looked to the future by upgrading equipment and planning for increased production. New customers will mean more ice cream. A new generation of Giffords is moving into management positions. This generation will take the company’s “ famous ice cream” to new locations,  far from the company’s roots in a little processing plant on Hathaway Street in a little town in central Maine.  N

Gifford's At A Glance

Gifford’s, Skowhegan, Maine

Age of plant: The building dates to the 1920s when it was a milk receiving station.

Size: 29,067 square feet

Number of production employees: Nine full-time, two seasonal

Products made: Frozen yogurt, sherbet, sorbet, ice cream

Total processing capacity (annually): 3 million gallons

Number of shifts: 1

Storage silos: 8 storage silos. Five 2,000 gallon, one 3,000 gallon, one 5, 000 gallon, one 10,000 gallon

Pasteurization: High Temperature/Short Time, 1,200 gallons per hour

Number of filling lines: Two filling lines, one for bulk cans and the second one half-gallons, quarts and 56-ounce containers

Warehouse: 4,323 square feet, two bays

     Storage capacity: Raw milk, 15,000 gallons; pasteurized 18,000 gallons