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We left quite early this morning and headed north. It took us about an hour & 15mins to reach Waterbury which is the home of the Ben & Jerry's ice cream factory. We arrived just in time to join the 10.30am tour. It was only a short tour which took us up to where we could view the production floor. They only make ice cream on weekdays which is why we waited until today. There were surprisingly few people on the floor considering the amount of ice cream they produce. Today they were making chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. They generally only make one flavour per day. The production floor works 24hrs a day. It takes 8hrs to clean out the machines between flavours. We saw one lady pouring cocoa into the mix, a man adding the chocolate chips at a later stage and the tubs coming down the shoot for lidding and quality control. Any tub that hadn't had a lid applied was taken off and any that were a bit messy were taken off and cleaned. The ice cream at this stage was surprisingly soft - it was soft serve consistency. From here it went into the Spiral Hardening Tunnel where it takes 8hrs to spiral through a 2 storey corkscrew to freeze hard enough for enough for shipping.
After hearing and seeing the production story, we were taken down to the tasting room. Today's flavour was Triple Caramel Chunk which is my favourite B&J's flavour! Everyone was given a small cup which was piled high for tasting. This was the end of the tour and we exited through the gift shop, as you always do. Outside was a scoop shop so we bought a few scoops each. Yum!! After scoffing ice cream we walked up to the flavour graveyard. It was done up like a cemetery and each retired flavour had a headstone. It was clever.
Not far from Ben & Jerry's was a Cabot's cheese tasting store. We decided to skip this as we had tasted Cabot's at Quechee Antique Mall. So we continued onto Cold Hollow Cider Mill. Here we watched a video showing how they make pure apple cider by pulverising apples, then place the apple pulp onto a board, cover it with a special cloth and keep stacking it up with about 20 layers. The stack is then raised up until it hits a metal plate which applies pressure. The apple juice pours out and is funnelled into a pipe. The juice is pasteurised, then refrigerated. Then it is ready to drink. The cider is pure apple. There is absolutely no additives. Whereas juice is made from concentrate and has added preservatives and sugar.
The remaining apple that has been squashed and had the juice removed is called the pomace. This is fed to the pigs so no part of the apple is wasted. We were lucky enough to see the men making the stack of apple pulp and then squeezing the juice out. It seems to be a very simple process. There was a massive tank of cider for visitors to taste. It was very nice!
Inside their shop was a huge range of jams, jellies, fudge etc to buy. They also make their 'famous apple cider doughnuts' which you can smell as soon as you walk in. We definitely had to try those!
Across from Cold Hollow was Grand View winery tasting room. We tasted a few wines here - nice but nothing spectacular.
After leaving Waterbury, we drove to a town called Waitsfield which had a covered bridge. It wasn't a pretty one but it was old - built in 1833. We drove around this area for a bit and found some beautiful old barns and farms. It was very picturesque. This area is a ski town in winter.
Driving to and from Waterbury took us through some quaint one horse towns, up and down mountains and through lots of gorgeous postcard scenery. We decided that Vermont had peaked with fall foliage as the mountains couldn't possibly pack any more colour in but our waiter at dinner tonight said it will get a bit brighter yet.
Vermont is very pretty with all the mountains, lakes and rivers. This is obviously prime time to come but I would love to see it covered in snow. I reckon it would be just as beautiful.
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