Pacojet 2

Ruben_Porto_435100

Hi Chris and everyone!

I'm thinking of getting a pacojet 2 for my small ice cream business and would be forever grateful if I could get some advice on a couple of points. Chris mentioned in a separate post that reducing the fat in a pacojet ice cream recipe will produce a better texture; does this mean that the pacojet doesn't cope well with super premium/high butter fat ice cream?

Also, can you make a large 5 litre batch in a large pan and then pour about 800ml into each canister? Does it affect texture if you split the batch as one canister may contain more butterfat or solids for example? I'm just wondering whether you would have to pasteurise each individual batch in a separate pan to ensure an accurate formulation, or whether a single large batch can be produced and then poured into individual containers.

Looking forward to your reply.

All the best,

Ruben

Chris_Young_80640

PacoJet's don't churn ice cream, the grind it, and that's a really important difference. When you churn ice cream you are whipping the milkfat into a foam that traps air and ice crystals, with some unfrozen sweetened liquid too (the less unfrozen liquid, the harder the ice cream is to scoop). With PacoJets, you freeze the entire mixture and then a spinning blade chips away at the frozen block creating very fine shavings that mimic the texture of ice cream. With low-fat ice creams, the texture is very similar, although it tends to melt much faster than a churned ice cream because a foam provides a more stable structure than fine shavings. But with higher-fat ice creams, the texture becomes less pleasant in my opinion as it starts to become more like a frozen mousse and less like ice cream.

So TL;DR PacoJets are great, but they don't actually churn the ice cream and so the result is different.

Second questions is simple, yes you can divide a big batch into lots of small canisters, you just need to make sure the base is well mixed before you start pouring it into the canisters.