Cone after cone, and one customer after another, the newly created Iowa State Creamery is scooping up a twist on an Iowa State tradition.
“This [Food Science building] was one of the second buildings on campus right behind the ag building,” says Ruth MacDonald, professor and chair of food science and human nutrition at Iowa State University.
The history of milking dairy cows and butter making is still etched into the outside of the building.
“Iowa was No. 1 in butter production in the 1920s,” says MacDonald. “Iowa was a very big dairy state.”
Creating a creamery has been a dream of MacDonald’s since she came to Iowa State 15 years ago.
“It’s something that we used to do,” she says. “It used to be part of our history. We used to process milk and sell ice cream and cheese, and then we kind of lost that over the years.”
A lost art, but one making a major comeback, by building a creamery from the ground up. The grand opening was just this fall.
“I wouldn’t to call it a heavy lift because it’s so exciting,” says Sarah Canoba, program coordinator at Iowa State University. “It’s something Dr. Stephanie Clark and Dr. MacDonald had been working on for many years, and finally this fall, we were able to make it happen.”
Once the doors opened this fall, Iowa State University’s Creamery immediately started churning out excitement, but the foundation of the creamery centers around education.
“The Creamery’s No. 1 goal is education for the students,” says Canoba. “We want to get them well prepared for the dairy food industry specifically, or wherever else they can take these skills and apply them.”
Students such as Paige Harverts are helping keep the creamery going.
“There are a lot more procedures that go into the ice cream making process than I thought,” she says.
The students not only sell the ice cream but have a hands-on role in the ice creaming making process.
“The first day we do pasteurization, and that’s more of like mixing in all the ingredients and stuff,” says Harverts. “Then the second day, we will go ahead and like freeze all of it and put it in the freezer. That’s my favorite part because that’s when we get to try the ice cream.”
The entire process is one MacDonald hopes will continue to grow.
“We process it in our dairy in our pilot plant, where we have a small little creamery set aside, and our big dream, of course, is to have a much larger creamery operation where we can actually use the milk we produce in the animal science dairy farm,” she says. “We want to process our own milk and use that in our ice cream, but right now, we’re not quite at that stage yet.”
While sourcing the milk from Iowa State isn’t a reality yet, expansion plans already in the works this spring.
“Ice cream is just our beginning point,” says Canoba. “We will get into cheese and then selling other products we produce in the store.”
From the minty winter’s green, to other decadent flavors at the creamery, the flavors were founded by students and faculty, as the creamery continues its quest to bring new flavors to live.
“We sent out a contest to get college flavors—one flavor of ice cream representing every college at the university, and that was open to students, staff, faculty and alumni,” says Canoba.
Those flavors will be introduced in early November.
Whether it’s in this creamery or in the middle of this food science lab, the department focuses on training and educating the next wave of food science majors.
“We would love to see more students coming into food science, we can’t fill the jobs that the employers want from our students,” says MacDonald.
A tradition of food science, derived from dairy, as success for the future meet lessons from the past.
