What a scoop! We go behind-the-scenes of Northern Bloc Ice Cream on North Street in central Leeds as they celebrate a decade of ice cream innovation.
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00:00We're doing something, I still think, to the basis of what we were trying to do right from
00:05the beginning, which is make ice cream centre plate, to make it a product that was progressing
00:10on from what was a second thought for a dessert, to not just an accompaniment to a piece of
00:16apple pie.
00:17Dirk Michendal and the team at Northern Block have been reflecting on a decade of ice cream
00:23innovation.
00:24July may be ice cream month and the third Sunday of July may be National Ice Cream Day,
00:29but every day is ice cream day here, within the walls of this unassuming Leeds city centre
00:34venue.
00:36The Northern Block name isn't about being northern, it's about this idea that when Industrial
00:44Revolution in the 1800s, property was too expensive in London, all the innovation, all
00:48the newness, all the sort of furnace of ideas was up in the north, particularly Leeds, and
00:53Leeds has got a huge heritage of ice cream, running from ice coming up on the canals and
00:59they're putting flavours in it, to the Italians, the big Italian community here, who have had
01:04a massive impact on ice cream, so we love being in the city centre as well, so we're
01:10not trying to save the world scoop by scoop with rolling hills and fluffy cows, we're
01:15experts on what we do, we make ice cream.
01:18Let's now take a whistle-stop tour of the Northern Block production line, which is fair
01:23to say is pretty cool.
01:25Everything comes in, gets checked by our team to make sure it all meets the approval
01:31of the BRC accreditation, starts off by getting into the mixing area, there's a 1200 litre
01:39mixing plant there, which continuously goes and does 7-8 mixes a day, of which you could
01:46end up with anywhere between 20-25,000 litres of finished product, and then they get pumped
01:53through to the high care area, where the machines are basically getting ready to make
01:59the ice cream, so they get stored in the tanks for a minimum of 4 hours, because you need
02:04a certain amount of maturing when you're making ice cream, and then they get pumped into the
02:09machine, and the machine is a very simple machine, it's just a giant freezer, basically
02:13you're running ice cream mix over the top of a very cold barrel, and then it's pushed
02:18out and it comes out at minus 6, and then that gets packed into trays, gets put into
02:23the blast freezer, the blast freezer takes it from minus 6 to roughly minus 12, minus
02:2815 in 45 minutes to an hour, and then it goes back into the freezer, gets packed first,
02:35and then goes back into the freezer.
02:37The song Ice Cream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream was coined in the 1920s, and
02:42it would seem ice cream is still in the same demand as it was 100 years ago.
02:47I think the great thing about ice cream is that it's very rare that you meet people,
02:51you go to shows and things and you say, would you like to try the ice cream, you never get
02:54someone going, or you get a very occasional, oh I don't want to try it, they're always
02:58like, oh yeah.