Elite Gourmet Old Fashioned 6 Quart Vintage Appalachian Wood Bucket Electric Ice Cream Maker Machine, *Bonus Classic Die-Cast Hand Crank for Churning, Uses Ice and Rock Salt Churns Ice Cream in Minute

Ah, Grandma's house, 4th of July, every year hamburgers, watermelon, etc. AND last but not least homemade ice cream. She had a ready workforce of kids excited about making (and eating) homemade ice cream. Rock salt, a few bags of ice, and about 40 min. or so of boredom, I think it was 3" of ice and then a scoop of rock salt. Over and over, finally, when the motor stops and you can smell those motor windings burning, that cool retro humming sound, it's time to unplug it. "Oh boy, can we have some now Grandma?" "Oh no, you've got to put it in the freezer to ripen." "How long does that take Grandma?" "Well best to let it freeze overnight, but at least an hour or two." Of course we always badgered her and she caved after an hour, still pretty "soft-serve" like, but we didn't care, we wanted it now! now! now!!!This trip down memory lane was to make clear to those not fortunate enough to have had the experience, or just don't remember as well, even the good ol' machines didn't pop out ice cream on demand. It always has "soft-serve" consistency right from the machine.I've had a couple of the old machines thru the years, always the same. But I think personally I like this cheap, plastic thing better. Much less mess, cost (ice isn't cheap) and hassle.It is a new learning experience. 1st batch, I forgot to buy evaporated milk, it was pure half & half and some vanilla. It was ok, consistency was off because I churned it too long, all pumped with air. 2nd batch was perfect, it was great, just like the good ol' days. Made with heavy whipping cream, evap. milk, vanilla, right out of the recipe book. 15 min. churn time was the magic, perfect. Now making my 3rd batch and I had problems. Being a bit more cost conscious than back then, I saved my evap. milk in the fridge for a few days. It and the whipping cream were very cold and that evap. milk is extremely viscous, I had to scrap it out of the container with a spoon. And that was a problem. It was too thick for the motor. Seen that video on these reviews of the dasher going back & forth rather than round and round? It's the motor protecting itself from a jam. I think pound for pound this tiny motor is more macho than the old electro-shock models, although I must grant they had a tougher job, as they turned the 1 gallon canister around in the ice jacket, while the dasher was held rigid. But anyway, this motor is fine, it's obviously heavily geared down, it barely even gets warm. But everything has limits. So I scraped out as much of the mix as I could back into my Pyrex measuring cup, nuked it for about a minute in the microwave and it began turning the dasher properly. But I don't know if we're going to overcome all the time spent fooling with it and loss of coldness. I'm ok with having a few learning trials with a new machine though, and I'm confident it's a winner in the end.Which brings up another point. I see many people worried about having everything as cold as possible. The freezer container has plenty of retained cold in normal use, and last successful time I used room temperature evap. milk, which I'll do in the future as well.MY errors notwithstanding, I can't find much to fault with this machine. The cheap plastic tabs for the motor concern me, but we'll see. Not fond of the retro turquoise, hey guys, back then everything was white, fridges, stoves, everything, what's wrong with white? It seems to be a generic recipe book that it comes with, but it's just for getting started anyway, you'll find the magic recipe you like eventually. Personally, I like any flavor, as long as it's vanilla. I do kinda miss that shocking dose of rock salt that always leaked inside though, guess I can just put my salt grinder on coarse and add a little.So cons, barely worth mentioning. Buy it, you'll like it, just be prepared to mess up a few times before you get it right.

We LOVE homemade ice cream! The taste is best, fresh natural ingredients, you control the sugar, and also all of the additions. The first thing I tried was homemade vanilla with tiny chocolate cacao chips straight from a farm that was purchased on a trip to Honduras. The texture, taste and quality was amazing! I did not overfill the container, but made just enough for three servings. My husband likes his creamier, so I scooped his soft serve right out of the container. I scooped mine into a bowl and put it in the freezer for about 5 minutes. The consistency was a little firmer and just right for me. I put the leftover into a plastic pint container, put the lid on it, put it in the freezer, and we shared it the next night. Much to my surprise it was not hard, and was still the perfect consistency! The instruction manual had quite a few recipes in it, and also a QR code you can scan for additional recipes. I have a larger Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker like this that I have had for years, and I use it when our children and grandchilder are visiting. I must say that this little gem had the same outcome, if not better, and on a much smaller scale., and the price was amazing! I can't wait to try several other recipes! It's also small enough for me to take with us in our RV. Extremely happy with my purchase!!

Looks like an ideal size.Was a gift.

I don't normally take time to write reviews, but this was bad enough that I wanted to spare others the misery of buying a piece of trash. I didn't use my choice words to describe this product for fear of censorship...I bought this as a family Easter gift and right out of the box I was disappointed with the quality; a surprising amount of cheap and brittle plastic in the hand crank, the churning rod, and the motor. Additionally, the metal bands that encircle the outside of the bucket were much too large, meaning that they were for a bucket whose circumference was larger than this one resulting in the bands not being flush against the wood making them integrally useless; I guess they are for looks, but they look ugly as they make it look cheap. I had the faint suspicion that perhaps the wood might expand when wet and thus necessitate their being oversized, but this was not the case; just ugly and too big. Now to the functionality...I'll begin saying I used this once and was scrupulous in adhering to the exact manufacturer instructions and it broke in multiple ways. The product description craftily tells you that the motor will automatically shut off when the thickness of the ice cream creates the necessary resistance; what high quality!...not. There is no sort of clutch in the motor or any design qualities for this purpose, it's just code speech for "when the ice cream gets too thick that the motor overheats, it burns out and can't run anymore!" I'm not kidding, this is actually how it's designed and if you detach the motor component after it burns out with it still plugged in, you'll find that it will not operate after you've made a batch of ice cream until it cools off because what made it shut off was it being overheated; this is an unquestionable recipe for a destroyed motor if used repeatedly in this fashion, which means longevity is out of the question.Let me continue in saying that when the motor did quit on me, the ice cream was NOT at the proper consistency (I'm saying this knowing that the manual says it should be soft serve consistency; it wasn't...more like slushy soup), so I pulled out the hand crank thinking that I could manually finish it. As I cranked for several minutes, it was thickening up more, but the crank's internal plastic components were making a racket (seriously, it was obnoxiously loud and annoying when cranking under resistance that I felt self-conscious that everyone inside eating lunch was annoyed while I was outside on the porch). As I went on, I suspected that the plastic churner was going to brake since it's so flimsy, but to my surprise, it was actually the cast aluminum-alloy handle that snapped off while I was cranking it (I see now that another reviewer has a picture of the exact same thing).Needless to say, at this point I wanted to hurl the thing in the trash can and be done with it, but my frustrations were mildly assuaged when I discovered that at least the handle snapped off right as the ice cream was a little less thick than soft serve consistency, so we were still able to eat it.It actually makes me mad how cheap this product is, I wouldn't "darken the doorstep" of this seller again if they can stomach selling junk like this to unsuspecting customers.