Since the first one in 2004, the Beaver Stadium White Out has become an annual Penn State tradition and one of the great sights and atmospheres in college football.
Now Penn State’s Berkey Creamery is paying tribute to the color-coordinating event with a special new ice cream bearing its name. Days before Saturday’s White Out game against Ohio State, the Creamery on Monday is officially launching its new ‘White Out’ flavor.
It’s a popcorn-flavored ice cream with a vanilla base and white chocolate chips. The popcorn flavor isn’t overwhelming, but provides a balance of salty and sweet.
White Out ice cream, which contains no allergens, will be available in three-gallon tubs, half-gallon packages and by the scoop in the Creamery store. It also will be available for purchase online as well as for wholesale customers, but it won’t be offered in Beaver Stadium just yet. The stadium only sells pints, and Creamery assistant manager Jim Brown said those packages take about 12 weeks to design and put into production. It will be a featured flavor in campus dining halls this week, as well.
Brown said one reason the flavor is being launched the Monday before the White Out game is to give alumni and fans who won’t make it to State College a chance to order it and have it delivered in time for Saturday.
‘Penn State alumni … will still have Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday to get it shipped to their location to have it for their tailgate wherever they may be across the country,’ he said.
Brown said the Creamery regularly tries to come up with ways to complement different aspects of the university, such as earlier this year when it introduced Gold Ribbon Ripple, with a portion of the proceeds going to THON. For about the past year, the Creamery has been working on a way to complement athletics.
‘We sat down and came up with White Out ice cream,’ Brown said, noting that most Nittany Lion varsity teams have developed their own White Out tradition, in addition to football.
Production supervisor Naomi Minarchick said that most often the Creamery comes up with the flavor before the name, but this time had the White Out name and went in search of a flavor.
A wide range of flavors and ingredients were tested. Irish cream, coconut and various marshmallow varieties were among the options tried. Jalapeño was even in consideration.
‘We tried to come up with something that was going to be different and that everybody would like with the White Out,’ Minarchick said.
Intern and food science student Abigail Rule created the samples and every week she, Minarchick and Creamery manager Tom Davis would try them.
‘Some of them were winners and some of them were pretty bad,’ Rule said. ‘We settled on this one flavor we really enjoyed.’
Minarchick said Davis was skeptical that popcorn would work but that the flavor ended up working well.
‘It happened to really taste good after a lot of trial and error,’ Minarchick said.
Rule led some small-scale consumer testing as well. Those trying it weren’t told the name of the ice cream, but their feedback helped refine the flavor. Brown added that the Creamery can continue to adjust the flavor based on consumer comments.
Brown said that as a relatively small production plant, it’s important for the Creamery to consider logistics as well. The Creamery keeps about 70 ice cream flavors in stock and wants to be able to use ingredients in multiple ice cream varieties.
Minarchick noted, for example, that the white chocolate chips in White Out are the same used in Gold Ribbon Ripple.
‘We didn’t want to have something in this ice cream that I had to buy a whole skid of that we might only be making once a year if it doesn’t sell,’ Minarchick said.
Whether White Out will be a one-off special or a new tradition like its namesake is up to the customers.
‘We’re going to see how it goes,’ Minarchick said. ‘If it sells fast, I have no problem making it again.’
