Comments on: My Last Breyers Brand Ice Cream Cone

By: Maggi

Maggi — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 03:41:31 +0000

Sadly, Blue Bunny has joined the masses and started adding crap to their ice cream too. HFCS, gums, artificial colors, you name it. I couldn’t believe it so I checked out their website and sure enough, every flavor, even the venerable “Premium Vanilla” is full of crap.

Homemade is DEFINITELY the way to go.

By: Rusty

Rusty — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 16:34:00 +0000

An answer from an expert! Thanks for contrbiuting.

By: Robert Harrell

Robert Harrell — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 05:20:46 +0000

Sadly, I join the ranks of former Breyer’s aficionados. Breyer’s mint chocolate chip was by far my favorite flavor of ice cream ever mass marketed. I would devour HALF GALLONS (not 48oz) containers at a pace of seven or eight a month. Even with the occasional mishandled and temperature shocked purchase, which still had an excellent taste in spite of the degraded texture, I knew that I was consuming a product manufactured and distributed with integrity. Unilever has destroyed the brand, and obviously has chosen to ignore Breyer’s loyalist, not even allowing us to make comments directly to them via there website. Go to the Breyer’s website and click on the “contact us” link… You will find yourself locked in an automated response engine with no means to express your concerns or issues. Robert’s Love of Breyer’s Ice Cream; Born 1979, Dead after 32 Years, 2011.

By: Jorge Bermudez

Jorge Bermudez — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 01:18:31 +0000

Wow, this was super interesting. Thanks guys for your work. I “was” also a die hard consumer of Bryers Ice cream and absolutly noticed the difference in texture “and” flavor. I thought to myself how weird it was and just shrugged it off thinking of all the possibilities why it could be (shipping, thawed and refrozen, timing maybe it was just me etc) today I looked again at the ingredients and shure enough noticed that they added tara gum so I came and looked it up online and found you guys.
Same old same old. The world seems to be going to pots with these people that are so only worried about profits instead of quality and morals, and staying true to their original recipe. So me too may just start making my own ice cream at home like my daughter has for a few years now.
Hats off to you guys. We have to stand up for our beliefs and stop supporting, as much as possible, these corporate giants and make more effort to support our local, organic, home grown suppliers.

By: Mike

Mike — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 01:25:24 +0000

By the way, I wanted to add that Ben and Jerry’s ice cream also now contains gums and thickeners. For their Vanilla, the ingredient list is Cream, Skim Milk, Liquid Sugar (Sugar, Water), Water, Egg Yolks, Fair Trade Certified (Tm) Vanilla Extract, Sugar, Guar Gum, Carrageenan.

Guar Gum? Carrageenan?

No thanks.

Mike

By: Mike

Mike — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 01:18:06 +0000

Thanks for the comment, Bruce!

I haven’t had any Breyer’s ice cream since I posted my original post, and I am confident that it is their loss.

I don’t know if they have it wherever you live, but check out Blue Bunny (not Blue Bell) Premium All Natural Vanilla. Their ingredient list is longer than the Breyer’s of old, but there are no gums or syrups: Milk, Cream, Sugar, Skim Milk, Grade A Nonfat Dry Milk, Egg Yolks, Natural Vanilla Extract and Vanilla Beans. It’s not bad. Kind of sweet for my tastes, but at least the texture is pretty much right.

Take care!

Mike

By: bruce rowan

bruce rowan — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 23:26:55 +0000

I was also a true fan of Bryers Ice Cream and did not mind paying a premium price as I felt it was worth it because of the all natural ingredients. I was a little irked when they shrank the container size but let it slide, all the other companies were doing it also. I noticed something was wrong the last few times I ate there ice cream buy could not put my finger on it. I just happened to look at the ingredients and noticed they were adding something called natural tara gum. I felt ripped off, why mess with perfection. I wondered if it was added as some kind of filler to save costs. Either way I was not happy and returned the opened container to the supermarket and got my money back. I am not happy with Unilevers response for adding this new ingredient. Also, Bryers Cookies and Cream Ice cream contains hydrogenated oils and some other Bryers Ice Cream also contained Palm oil. How can they still claim to be all natural? I believe they are just trying to increase their bottom line at all costs. I hope everyone boycotts this product and shows them there deception will not be tolerated.

By: kathy

kathy — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 02:39:45 +0000

I was so upset when I paid 5.99 a 1/2 gallon of Breyer’s Peach Ice Cream, and
brought it home to serve on peach pie. The first bite told me that it now
tasted like all the other crap ice creams on the market. The kind that if you let it sit out over night,
it wouldn’t melt into liquid, but sticky gummy crap. I put the dish
down, went to the freezer to read the ingredients, and sorry to say that after being
a true undying fan to the ice cream, and always willing to pay even a higher price if I
had to, will never again, let that ice cream be put into one of my shopping carts.
I am so disappointed in the deceptions of greedy manufacturers. It is not all natural, so
they should take it off their label and let their ice cream join their counterparts of
icky sticky unnatural whatevers. It’s true , Breyer’s had sugar in
their ice cream and a lot of sugar isn’t good for you, but it is an ingredient that we
would recognize if we had to. Now our only option is to make our own, which might be better
anyway because we could at least use organic sugar. Kathy

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:47:36 +0000

Very interesting comment, ICMan. Thanks a lot! We have a close friend who comes to our Thanksgiving dinner just about every year. The tradition started back when we lived in Illinois, and now he travels 1,000 miles to Savannah to attend. In fact, he just firmed his flight arrangements on Saturday for this year's Thanksgiving. Anyway, last year before Thanksgiving, he asked if there was anything that we needed for our kitchen for Thanksgiving. I said no-- we've been making Thanksgiving dinner for over a decade, and our kitchen is fully stocked with just about every gadget that we need. In joking, I did mention that we wanted an ice cream maker, but not a freeze-and-crank model-- I mentioned the Cuisinart compressor model listed in my original post. Well, a few days later, a huge, heavy package arrived from Amazon. Our friend called and said not to open it until he got there. It sat in the box for a month until Thanksgiving arrived. We picked him up from the Jacksonville airport, got back here, and opened it soon after. Of course, as I am sure you can tell from all the setup, he bought us the ice cream maker. So now, we have a Cuisinart ICE-50BC Supreme Ice Cream Maker. This thing rocks! We make ice cream for every major holiday, much to the delight of our local relatives, and we make it about once a month otherwise... maybe more. In fact, I just polished off some coffee ice cream last night. It was so good! I've slowly been working on my recipes, using the Ben and Jerry's cookbook and another book called The Best Ice Cream Cookbook Ever. I've got my vanilla down pretty well. It's a cooked custard base with heavy cream, milk, eggs, sugar, vanilla extract, and vanilla bean. It is dense and rich, and is absolutely wonderful. I've made quite a bit of vanilla, but I've also tried some other flavors like butter pecan (failure, too gritty), maple walnut (meh... not enough maple flavor), chocolate (too pudding-like), coffee (good with instant coffee, better with real coffee). My favorite so far is Caribbean Coconut, which is from the second ice cream book I mentioned. I have hacked up their recipe, and improved it greatly. The recipe calls for shredded coconut, which I found too chewy, and for a lengthy process to infuse the cream with strong coconut flavors. I use toasted flaked coconut that I toast slowly in the oven at a low temperature, which gives a very nice coconut flavor while causing the coconut to lose its chewiness. The toasting imparts a wonderful flavor. I also skip the cream infusion, and instead use coconut cream from the Hispanic section of the grocery store. It is truly the best ice cream I have ever had. Maybe I'll post the recipe... maybe. Thanks again for the comment! Mike

By: ICMan

ICMan — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 07:26:09 +0000

I used to work for Breyers when Kraft General Foods owned them. The Northwestern US was the last (and most difficult) phase of distribution to complete full nationwide product placement.
It was a continuous process to educate grocers, employees, and consumers about the delicate state in which Breyers maintained it’s impeccable flavor and consistency, that is, avoiding “thermal shock” in which the product warms above 0 F, then is refrozen, allowing air to escape the unbound product, at which point ice crystals form as the product shrinks in volume, loosing it’s creamy texture and acquiring a gritty, unappealing appearance that actually looks and tastes like it has been melted and refrozen.
We partnered with many grocers having sub-standard refrigeration, to whom we would give copious credit dollars and remove shrunken product in the interest of developing repeat customers and solidifying core nationwide distribution.
As the Dairy Division of Kraft (Knudsen) we were a barely break-even prospect, and thus when coast to coast distribution was achieved and volume was driven to develop a sustainable base of consumers, the Frozen Desserts were sold off to Unilever, who promptly assessed a cost benefit analysis of product stabilization vs. loyal ice cream enthusiasts, and product stabilization won.
The gums in ice cream actually help the product retain air through thaw/freeze cycles, at a worse offense of poor, ordinary, & average flavor, lacking the intensity and just made freshnes of the prior recipe.
We were instrumental in the success of the public awareness campaign that made Breyer’s the No. 1 frozen dessert in the Northwest during the mid 1990’s, and I can say without a doubt the essence of the personnel from production through sales during that time was producing and promoting an all-natural product of exquisite quality, and it’s demise has been very disappointing.
Although Ben & Jerry’s may have Unilever as a parent company, they retain control over their product quality, and is the only mass-marketed ice cream to be made with rBGH free dairy, a cause worthy of supporting.
I have turned to homemade to recreate the tastes of fresh samples of just frozen product when being at the Breyer’s plant on tour.
This recipe is one of my long time favorites- I use 1 cup 1/2 & 1/2 and 1 cup whipping cream, (instead of all whipping cream) then 2 cups nonfat milk (instead of 3%) to have that clean, intensely crisp flavor, all stirred up in a Donvier Ice Cream Maker-

http://www.amazon.com/Donvier-837409W-1-Quart-Cream-Maker/dp/B00006484E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1283153080&sr=8-1

Fantastic! Enjoy!

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Easy-Mint-Chocolate-Chip-Ice-Cream/Detail.aspx