Nothing says summer quite like a scoop of ice cream. This joyful treat might not count towards your five-a-day, but Rob and Iona Gore of Brickell’s Ice Cream believe it can at least be made with the very best ingredients. Their temptingly soft and silky craft ice cream begins with just four – milk, cream, eggs and British beet sugar – and contains no stabilisers, emulsifiers, flavourings or preservatives.
“I just wanted to make it as simple as I could,” says Rob. From this wholesome base, Rob and Iona build their deeply satisfying seasonal flavours. There are the classics, which are available year-round, including vanilla bean, salted caramel and a chocolate made with ethically sourced, single-farm chocolate and brown sugar for a richer depth. “It gives it a caramelly, fudgey taste,” says Iona. Every few months, the pair introduce a seasonal flavour, too – rhubarb, lavender or, in mid-summer, gooseberry. Their roasted strawberry was a bestseller last summer, but Rob rates their ricotta stracciatella the highest. “I think it is our most well-rounded flavour,” he says, “and I love that it includes ricotta made by the family business.”
That family business is Westcombe Dairy in Somerset, where Rob launched Brickell's in 2018, naming it after his grandmother Phyllis Clothier, née Brickell, who grew up there. He had been living in Hong Kong with Iona, working in digital marketing, and felt the pull back to his childhood home where he was keen to find a way to diversify the milk produced on the farm. Cheesemaking was already underway at Westcombe, famed for its clothbound Cheddar, so he turned to ice cream.
“I had absolutely no culinary skills or experience,” he says, “only happy memories of eating chocolate ice cream in Italy as a boy. I had never made it at home.”
Rather than making more traditional-style Italian gelato, Rob found inspiration in the American craft ice-cream scene, which he likens to the UK's craft beer movement: small, independent makers producing bold, imaginative flavours. This led him to enrol on Penn State University's legendary ice-cream short course. Alumni include Ben and Jerry (who did it as a correspondence course).
“I didn't really understand most of it because it was so advanced,” he admits. “It was 98 per cent science theory on the composition of ice cream.”
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It proved an excellent foundation, though, and, once home, Rob began experimenting with flavours using a basic ice-cream machine his mum bought him. “Getting good ice cream is about balance: every ingredient plays a role in the final texture,” he says. “Strangely, my ten years working with data and Excel were incredibly useful, as every new recipe starts on a spreadsheet.”
Developing new flavours remains his favourite part of the job, and is the time the couple's own ice-cream consumption peaks. “Rob's been experimenting with banana ice cream and it tastes amazing,” says Iona. “He was making a pot a day for a week and we would eat it in two seconds.”
Unlike many ice-cream companies, which buy in their pastes and ripples, Rob and Iona make everything from scratch. “Doing it all ourselves allows us to control the ingredients,” says Rob. It also creates more work. They make the caramel ripple for their salted caramel, for instance, and grow their own mint in a one-acre Georgian kitchen garden next to the farm for their mint choc chip. Gathering mint there sounds idyllic, but Iona offers a reality check. “Picking 2kg of mint takes two to three hours every week,” she says. “Great when it’s sunny, not so great when it’s raining.”
Once all the ingredients are prepped, whether a jam ripple, honeycomb chunk or roasted fruit, the mix is pasteurised before going into the continuous freezer. Then, after two hours of churning and freezing, the most hands-on and pressured part of the process begins. “We don’t have automated filling machines,” Iona explains, “so we have to hand-pack all the tubs. You have to work at 100 miles an hour to keep up with the machine, otherwise ice cream pours out everywhere. It’s a really messy job.”
Currently, Rob and Iona produce about 500 litres of ice cream per day, but demand continues to grow. Having started at farmers’ markets and local farm shops, they now stock around 400 independent stores nationwide, as well as pubs and restaurants. From June to September, they run a pop-up scoop shop in Bath and, having worked out how to post ice cream using dry ice, they sell online, too. “We have customers from Glasgow down to Cornwall,” says Iona.
You can also buy direct from Lower Westcombe Farm, where Brickell’s is made. Once a working dairy, it is now a thriving hub of artisan food, surrounded by fields grazed by Holstein Friesian and Dairy Shorthorn cows. There is a cheese cave sunk into the hillside, along with a charcuterie maker, brewery and Landrace mill and bakery, which supplies the bread used in Brickell’s cinnamon toast ice cream. “Karina, who runs the shop, is an amazing chef and cooks lunch for the whole site every Friday,” says Iona. “We all come together. It’s a lovely way to share ideas and feel part of something bigger.”
These lunches offer a welcome pause in a busy week. “We work well together because we have different skill sets,” says Iona, who joined Brickell’s in 2023. She looks after account management, sales and finance, while Rob oversees flavours, ingredients and production, as well as handling the occasional equipment breakdown. They also employ seven staff and juggle work with a young family: sons Alfie, three, and Milo, one. Life is busy, especially in summer, and the ice-cream van they once took to weekend events is currently parked up so they can prioritise family life.
But eight years in, Brickell’s is firmly on the craft ice-cream map. “I love how it’s starting to take on a life of its own,” says Rob. “It’s growing naturally, which feels incredibly rewarding.” Sharing plans for innovative flavours, or the excitement of being stocked in a new shop or restaurant, keeps the couple motivated.
Then there are the satisfied customers. “We get so many emails from people saying, ‘This is the best ice cream we’ve ever tasted,’” says Iona. “We’re always riding a high.”
And the boys? Surely they’re thrilled that Mum and Dad make ice cream? “Actually, they’re not that bothered,” says Iona. “Children their age are so excited about seeing the ice cream factory, but all ours want is a Twister from the shop.”
For more info, visit Brickell's Ice Cream or follow @brickellsicecream on Instagram.
