The Variegater

The Variegater Did you ever wonder how the fudge swirl gets into your Vanilla Caramel Fudge Swirl ice cream? It's not easy. It's a real challenge to put these two products together. The ice cream must be kept at a temperature of 22 degrees Fahrenheit, and the fudge temperature must be between 15 and 26 degrees so that it will not melt the ice cream. Flubbing up the temperatures can turn our Production room into a gooey-messy-fudgy-melted-ice-cream nightmare. Luckily, that doesn't happen very often any more, but you should have seen us when we made our very first few batches of flavors with fudge swirls.... (we can laugh about it now).

At Ben & Jerry's we call a swirl a variegate. We use many kinds of variegates in our ice cream flavors. Caramel variegates, fudge variegates, and peanut butter variegates are just a few. For now, let's pretend we are making an ice cream with a fudge variegate.

We'll start with a list of the three basic steps to putting a variegate in ice cream:

First, we must get the variegate out of the barrels it comes in and into a pump called the sine pump.
Next, we pump the variegate to the contherm, where we lower its temperature.
Finally, we continue pumping the variegate to the variegater, which injects the variegate into the ice cream.

Okay -- now that you know the three basic steps to putting a fudge variegate into ice cream, let's get to work! At Ben & Jerry's, we get the fudge in big 55-gallon barrels. We store the barrels at a temperature of 40 degrees Fahrenheit. (That's about the same temperature as your refrigerator at home.) How big is a 55-gallon barrel? It is three feet high, over two feet wide, and when it's loaded with fudge, it weighs about 500 pounds.

When we are ready to use the fudge, we need to get it out of the barrel and into the sine pump. A 55-gallon barrel is way too big and heavy to lift, so to get the fudge out of the barrel, we use a piston pump. The piston pump has an airtight seal that fits into the barrel of fudge and pumps it into a big funnel called the hopper. The hopper funnels the fudge into the sine pump. The sine pump electronically controls the proper amount of fudge that gets injected into the ice cream.

From the sine pump, the fudge flows through two other machines. The first machine is called the contherm: it lowers the temperature of the fudge. The fudge goes in at a temperature of 40 degrees and comes out at a temperature of between 15 and 25 degrees. The temperature of the fudge varies depending on how thick it is. Some variegates are thicker than others. The thicker the variegate, the less it needs to be cooled down.

Finally the fudge reaches the Variegater, which actually (well, sort of) injects the fudge into the ice cream. The variegater is made up of two metal pipes, one inside the other. The inner pipe has holes along its sides and is blocked off at one end. The outer pipe does not have holes in it and is open at both ends. The fudge flows through the inner pipe and the ice cream goes through the outer pipe. Because the inner pipe is blocked off, the fudge squirts out the holes and into the ice cream that is passing through the outer pipe.

And that is how the fudge swirl gets into your ice cream.

Now that we've got a good swirl going, how about some chunks? Check out the Fruit Feeder next.