Episode 139: Takin’ Our Licks

UConn is known for many things – great academics, championship sports …. and the world’s great ice cream (in our humble opinion!). Joining us on this edition of the podcast is Bill Sciturro, who is the manger of the UConn creamery that is responsible for making the ice cream that is sold at the UConn Dairy Bar. Bill tells us a little bit about the history of ice cream making at UConn and what flavors are the most popular. He has an interesting background himself as he grew up working in ice cream shops in Rhode Island and started his career in health care before returning to his ice cream roots. The process of making ice cream, and the other products produced at the creamery is not an easy and sometimes unglamourous task and Bill goes through the whole process. He also talks about what preparation is done to prepare special favors like the Senior Scoop and the ones that honor basketball championships. Finally, he brought us some ice cream and we got a chance to have a taste. If you want to visit the Dairy Bar this summer, these are the hours.

Link to Episode 139 at Podbean

Mike: Hello everybody and welcome to the UConn 360 Podcast. It’s Mike Enright from University Communications, along with Izzy Harris from University Communications. Hello, Izzy.

Izzy: Hey Mike.

Mike: So, we started doing this podcast about a year ago.

Izzy: Yep.

Mike: And this is one of the episodes we talked about doing, but we didn’t want to do it too soon because we didn’t want to make it look like we just did the podcast to eat ice cream.

Izzy: Right.

Mike: But it’s pretty close to why we did the podcast.

Izzy: I mean, I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.

Mike: So, UConn’s known for a lot of things. Great academics…

Izzy: Right? Great podcasts.

Mike: Great podcasts. We’re getting there on that. Basketball, puppetry… but a lot of people, when they hear UConn, think ice cream.

Izzy: I totally agree. In fact, that’s what I’m thinking of right now.

Mike: Exactly. So, without further ado, as they say, we have today the creamery manager here at UConn, Bill Sciturro. He is the manager of the creamery that supplies the ice cream for the world-famous UConn Dairy Bar. His interest in ice cream dates back to the 1980s when he grew up in Rhode Island and worked at a small mom-and-pop style ice cream shop, and he’s going to tell us a little bit about that. He had a 17-year career in healthcare and then decided to go back to ice cream.

And there is so much more to the creamery than actually making Dairy Bar ice cream. It’s used for dairy foods research, outreach, and teaching activities. His space is used to conduct research into food safety, assist with cheese making, and conduct student labs. In fact, we did the cheese episode. You missed the cheese episode.

Izzy: I know. That’s why I’m so looking forward to today because it’s my first taste-testing episode.

Mike: Jacie was with us for the cheese episode, which was terrific. Yeah, but you get the ice cream.

Izzy: Yeah, it’s true. It’s true. We love dairy.

Mike: So, Bill, thanks for joining us today.

Bill: Great, thank you. It’s great to be here.

Mike: So, tell us a little bit about your background. Seems like ice cream’s been a part of your life for a long time.

Bill: Well, it has, but before we start, I should say that this has actually been a long con for me. I got into ice cream making just so I could do your podcast.

Mike: Well, see, there you go.

Izzy: Oh, my goodness.

Bill: Which is impressive since I started in the eighties.

Izzy: You knew it was coming.

Bill: I did. I did.

Izzy: And to kind of add on to that too, I’d love to hear how you went from ice cream to healthcare, from healthcare to ice cream, when you talk about your background.

Bill: I will try to make it simple. Okay. I’m a high schooler in Rhode Island and I’m looking for my first set of jobs, and one of them was an ice cream store. I’m a high-energy person, and I fell in love with just how friendly it was. But at the time I had my sights set on a career in healthcare. So, for seven years throughout high school and college, in the summers, I worked at this ice cream store. I even became manager of one of the small franchises. He offered me the store; he offered me the business. He said, “I’ll sell it to you.” I said, “I gotta go to college. I gotta get my degree. I gotta go work in healthcare.” And I did. And I did that for a decade and a half before I decided it was time to make a change. And I got really lucky ending up here at UConn.

Mike: So, tell us a little bit about the history of ice cream at UConn. I was a student here in the eighties, and I remember the kind of the old Dairy Bar, which was kitty-corner from the new Dairy Bar. But how long has UConn been making ice cream, and where is it sold besides the Dairy Bar?

Bill: So, they’ve officially been making ice cream since 1953 for sale to the public. But what we’re not so sure about is when in the early 1900s we started making it for education. I have personally talked to the grandson of a man whose class syllabus from 1908 was shown to me,taking dairy education. So in 1908, we were doing dairy education for sure. In 1953, we started selling it right here at the Dairy Bar. And right now, 97% of the ice cream we make is sold right at the Dairy Bar. The other 3% goes to Bear’s Smokehouse BBQ and to Travelers. They’re the only other wholesale accounts that the university has supported.

Mike: What does Travelers use it for?

Bill: They have a really beautiful, big new dining facility at their campus, and when they built it, they said they wanted to showcase our ice cream there. So they pick up ice cream every month and serve it. I don’t know if they sell it or give it away, but they have it in their dining facility.

Mike: That’s awesome.

Izzy: I mean, no matter what, they eat it, right? They have it.

Bill: Yeah.

Izzy: So I’d love to hear a little bit more about how the ice cream is made. Is it here on campus? Does some of the milk come from the cows? I’m intrigued, how do we use our resources here on campus to make the ice cream?

Bill: All of the milk we use comes from our cows. The day starts with us going up in the morning. We sanitize the systems, we go up, we pick the milk up directly,it’s raw at that point. We bring that raw milk down, we put it into our pasteurizer, we add in our sugar, our cream, our other ingredients, and then we pasteurize it. We age it for one night, and then the next day we run it through our ice cream system, add our flavorings and our ingredients, and turn it into ice cream. It ages for another night, and the Dairy Bar comes and takes it for sale.

Izzy: How do you decide what flavors to put out? I mean, there are so many options. I can’t imagine settling on just a select few. How many are there, like 15?

Bill: Twenty-four.

Izzy: Oh my gosh, I was off.

Bill: There are 24 standard flavors, including two seasonals,like pumpkin in the fall, peppermint stick in the winter, and Senior Scoop in the spring. So when there is an open space to make something new, it’s sort of done by committee. Maybe there’s a trend, like when red velvet was very popular, we wanted to latch onto that trend. Otherwise, we look at what we have available, what we can get, and what we want to make. Like the basketball championship flavor, we have such a short window from when they win to when people want to buy the ice cream to celebrate. We had to use what we had in stock, and we had cookie dough and chocolate, so we made chocolate cookie dough.

Mike: So you kind of plan in advance for the special flavors?

Bill: We can’t buy stuff in advance because that’s brutal. But with something like Senior Scoop, we have months. They put the contest out in the fall, and they decide around Thanksgiving. We buy the ingredients in December, we make it in January for One Ton Sundae, and then it gets released for One Ton Sundae. So we do a lot of planning for that flavor, but some of them are a faster turnaround.

Izzy: Yeah, it sounds like some are spontaneous, you use your kitchen sink ingredients,and others you can plan out.

Bill: Absolutely.

Izzy: Alright, this might be a hard question to answer, but what do you think is the most popular ice cream flavor at the Dairy Bar?

Bill: That’s not hard. I’m going to turn it back, guess. You each get a guess and then I’ll tell you. Easiest answer ever.

Mike: Easiest answer ever?

Izzy: Vanilla?

Mike: Yeah, if it’s the easiest answer, I’ll go chocolate.

Bill: Number one and number two, vanilla and chocolate.

Izzy: Oh wow.

Bill: On campus, number three is Husky Tracks, number four is Salted Caramel Crunch, but they flip-flop.

Mike: Interesting. Yeah, interesting. And there is a difference between the creamery and the Dairy Bar, correct?

Bill: There didn’t used to be. And I think the change is for the better. The Animal Science Department ran both the creamery and the Dairy Bar from 1953 to 2012. In 2012, the university separated them. We sold the Dairy Bar to Dining Services, and Dining Services has run it since. They do a very good job of running it. In fact, it’s grown quite a bit under them. So, the difference is that the creamery is part of Animal Science in the College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources, and the Dairy Bar is run by Dining Services.

Mike: So, everybody kind of has their expertise.

Izzy: Talk to us a little bit about the academic and research aspect of the creamery. I know we talked about the cows before, but what else is there that we might not know about the Dairy Bar?

Bill: Well, we have our roots heavily in extension. Extension is taking our specialties and our expertise and helping the community. I have my hands in every ice cream brand in Connecticut that gets compared to us, even if the comparison says they’re better than us. I’ve helped design… I won’t name names, but it’s just the truth. We give this stuff away for free. We help the dairy community learn how to be better dairy producers.

So, we have our hands in Arizona, Rhode Island, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, people call us from all over the place and say, “Hey, I’m trying to figure this recipe out.” And we do the same. If we’re trying to develop a new flavor, like our old cheese we used to make, we got that recipe from Wisconsin. So, we all try to help and teach each other how to do the best practices for dairy.

Mike: And I think it’s great you bring up extension, because I think extension, along with the Dairy Bar and athletics and some other things, it’s a great way that the university extends to the general public in a… I don’t want to say in a non-academic way, but in a non-classroom way. It’s a way a lot of people have contact with the university who aren’t necessarily students.

Bill: Absolutely. UConn got its roots as an agricultural college, and we recognize that our role in this community is to teach dairy foods best practices, or dairy feed best practices, or animal welfare best practices. And so, the creamery part of that is to make ice cream, make the public happy, help the community with education, and support the community in dairy processing.

Here on campus, whenever there’s an opportunity to collaborate, with grad students looking to do research projects, capstone projects for engineers looking to do materials handling, processing flow rates, novelty products, extrusions, etc., all little things we’ve done over the years.

Izzy: Speaking of students, it seems like a lot of the workers at the Dairy Bar are students. That’s got to be like the world’s best job.

Bill: There are two parts to that answer. Yes, it is a great job because there’s always an opportunity to eat a little bit of ice cream. But you’ve got to like washing dishes, because there is a lot of cleaning in food manufacturing. A lot. On the average production day, our kids will spend two hours helping set up, two hours making ice cream, and four hours cleaning.

Izzy: I’ve also heard that ice cream scoopers have insane biceps because of that.

Bill: They do. Those years in my previous scooping life, I had a very large… my buddy calls it “Dairy Bar hands” because you do have very strong biceps from scooping all day long.

Izzy: But then you’ve got to do something for your non-dominant arm too.

Bill: Eat, I don’t know.

Izzy: True. Eat ice cream with it.

Bill: There you go. Perfect. Scoop with the right, eat with the left.

Mike: So, we’re talking a lot of ice cream right now, but we did have a cheese episode, which is also made by the creamery, correct? So, besides ice cream, what else does the creamery make?

Bill: Well, now I don’t know which cheese you talked about or when it was, if it was before or after the award, but one of our cheeses…

Mike: It was right around the award, about six months ago, I’d say.

Bill: So, we’d already won. We make a cheese, an aged, cultured cheese, that won its category nationally.

Mike: That was what we had.

Bill: Quite an impressive feat. We take the milk from the cows, we bring it down, and we’ll turn it into a couple of various kinds of cheeses. One is a queso blanco. It’s a hard cheese, not a soft cheese, not a dip. It’s essentially a fresh cheese. We make it, it can be sold the next day. It’s got a good shelf life. We put peppers in it, chipotle peppers, green chili peppers. We put olives in it. We put black pepper in it.

And the other cheese we make right now is a cultured cheese. One gets aged on a certain path and is for sale in 12 weeks. It tastes a lot like a Monterey Jack with a little bit of nuttiness. The other one gets aged for much longer and becomes 1881 or UConn Gold, which has a much more complex flavor.

Mike: Is it just ice cream and cheese? Are there other products?

Bill: Right now, we’re focusing on ice cream and cheese mostly. We make other products occasionally, usually when it’s around research. But for the most part, we know what we do well, and we stick to it.

Izzy: One of UConn’s most iconic events is One Ton Sundae. How do you prepare to bring out that volume of ice cream? The lines are insane. There’s got to be a lot of work that goes into that.

Bill: Well, I hate to be automatic with the answer, but we’ll sell to 225,000 people a year who come to the Dairy Bar. Last weekend, we sold 285 tubs of ice cream at 50 scoops each. The One Ton Sundae is not really a strain on our resources because we do that every Friday and every Saturday and a lot of Sundays all throughout the year.

People tend to think that we slowdown in the summer, summer camps, summer activities, summer housing, summer schools, but our busiest season is actually September and October. That’s when the cool season is coming on, but there are basketball games, homecoming games, and lots of alumni activities. So, we’re busy pretty much the whole year through.

Izzy: I must admit, I have a bit of an ice cream addiction during the summer. It’s definitely like a daily occurrence for me, especially when we’re in the office Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. I am pretty much at the Dairy Bar Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday on my lunch.

Bill: Nice.

Mike: Who are the most famous customers to ever come to the Dairy Bar? Do you know?

Bill: Oh boy. I’ve got to filter the stories I can tell here. Well, President Biden didn’t come to the Dairy Bar, but he was able to take our ice cream back with him. Jim Calhoun used to come in all the time and get his two scoops of pistachio on a cone. President Herbst loved coconut and mint chocolate chip. I’ve met the governor a few times, plenty of legislators. So yeah, we get the public coming through.

Mike: So really, like I said when we started, it’s ice cream, but it’s also such great goodwill for the university.

Bill: Yeah. I was told yesterday, and I don’t know from where, so you can’t quote me on it, but someone approached me and said, “How does it feel for the Dairy Bar to be in the top 25 tourist destinations in New England?” I said, “I hadn’t heard that.” He said, “Yep, I read the article yesterday.” So apparently someone put out that we are top 25 in New England for destinations.

Mike: Sounds good to me.

Izzy: Mike, can you hear my stomach rumbling?

Mike: I can’t, but I’m guessing where you’re going with this. Yeah, there are some ice cream samples here, and we’ve talked ice cream for way too long now. Now Bill’s going to give us some ice cream.

Bill: Let me tell you what we have, and you can choose what you want. We have vanilla, my personal favorite, I always have to bring a vanilla. We have black raspberry. We have a peanut butter cheesecake ice cream that we made in the fall. We have a coconut, one of President Herbst’s favorites, and a brand new one that I only have one cup of, so you’ll have to fight it out. It’s a milk chocolate salted caramel crunch. That’s a milk chocolate base with a salted caramel swirl and Nestlé Crunch pieces.

Mike: You can pick first.

Izzy: I was going to say, you should pick first. I’m horrible at making decisions.

Mike: Well, I’m going to go black raspberry. It’s my all-time favorite.

Izzy: Are you seriously? I was actually going to do the black raspberry.

Mike: Oh, well then you have the black raspberry.

Izzy: No, it’s fine. I’ll do the coconut.

Bill: Alright. Okay. Yeah, it’s going to make a lot of noise.

Izzy: That’s okay.

Bill: Coconut.

Izzy: Thank you.

Bill: Black raspberry.

Mike: Oh, these are big cups too. These are not like minor cups here.

Bill: I know. We have two here. Someone else take one.

Izzy: Alright.

Mike: He even brought spoons.

Izzy: Oh my gosh.

Mike: Here, Izzy. Have a spoon.

Izzy: Thank you.

Mike: Black raspberry.

Izzy: I haven’t had the coconut before.

Mike: Which one’s this? Is this coconut?

Bill: I’m pretty sure that’s coconut. It does tend to look… I think that’s coconut.

Izzy: I won’t be upset if it’s vanilla.

Bill: I don’t think so. I think I’ve got the vanilla.

Izzy: Oh wow. These are packed.

Bill: Well, I actually had to temper these this morning. You can’t even get a spoon into the ones that come out of our minus 20 freezer.

Mike: This looks so good.

Izzy: Oh yeah, it’s coconut. Coconut. Excellent.

Mike: Go ahead, Izzy. Tell us about the coconut after you try it. She’s about to sample it here. What do you make coconut ice cream with? Does it start with real coconut or coconut flavoring?

Bill: That’s got shredded coconut in a coconut-flavored ice cream mix.

Izzy: That’s what I was going to say. I really like the shreds of coconut in it.

Bill: Here comes the black raspberry.

Izzy: Alright, here we go.

Mike: Boy, that’s really good.

Izzy: Yeah.

Mike: Yeah. I could live on this. Well, I couldn’t live on it, but I could try to live on it.

Bill: I could live on it.

Mike: Yeah. How do you not have ice cream every day in your job? And how do you, I mean, again, this is an audio podcast, you look like you’re in great shape. You’re not eating ice cream every day?

Bill: I lost 50 pounds.

Mike: Oh, congratulations.

Bill: And I changed careers.

Mike: Wow.

Bill: This job is so physically demanding.

Mike: How about that? I would’ve guessed the exact opposite.

Bill: I wore a pedometer for those first couple of years just to see. I was doing 23,000 steps in an average shift.

Mike: Wow.

Bill: Just in circles around the plant. Now I’m more of a manager, so I have to work a little harder to lose the weight.

Mike: Well, Bill, as we enjoy this ice cream, thank you for bringing it over and thank you for coming to the podcast today. Tell our listeners, what are the summertime hours at the Dairy Bar? When is the ice cream available?

Bill: Typically, they’re open from 11 to 9. Something to know about the Dairy Bar is that we take the safety of the public and employees seriously. They tend to close as it’s getting dark. So, as it gets dark later, they stay open later. As it gets dark earlier, they’ll start closing earlier. If you’re not sure if the Dairy Bar is open at night, just think about whether it’s getting dark out, because that’s typically when we try to close, so no one’s in the parking lot in the evening.

Mike: And there’s a Dairy Bar website. We’ll put the link in the description.

Bill: They open every day at 11, and I believe right now they go until 9.

Izzy: Ice cream at 11 in the morning.

Mike: You go to the Dairy Bar when it first opens?

Izzy: Yeah. Sometimes I’m one of the first people in line.

Mike: Wow.

Izzy: Like if I’ve had a day and it’s… why not 11 o’clock?

Mike: Why not?

Izzy: Sometimes I don’t eat breakfast too. I mean, most of the time I do.

Mike: Nothing in anticipation of going to the Dairy Bar?

Izzy: No.

Mike: Oh.

Izzy: But just sometimes you need ice cream for breakfast.

Mike: Why not?

Izzy: I mean, you can have ice cream at any time of the day, right?

Mike: Absolutely. I have a good friend who said he only has soup in the winter, but the opposite is untrue of ice cream. He’ll have ice cream all year long.

Bill: Oh yeah.

Izzy: Yeah. It’s just one of those things.

Mike: It makes you feel good.

Izzy: It’s a happy food.

Mike: Yep. Well, Bill, thanks for coming today. We’re going to eat some ice cream, and for those of you listening, you’re missing out, because we’ve got Dairy Bar ice cream. We’ll catch you next time on the UConn 360 Podcast.

Izzy: Bye!