The Tillamook Creamery
The first time I ever heard of Tillamook was the first time we went to a grocery store in Portland. We were grocery shopping for the first time since we’d moved to the PNW about a year ago. I can’t remember if we were in a Safeway or a Fred Meyer, but we walked down the frozen food aisle, and there was a section full of Tillamook ice cream. I remember that it caught my attention because the name was so different. We didn’t try any Tillamook ice cream that day, but we did a few weeks later, and we were very glad we did. We liked it so much that we knew a visit to the Tillamook Creamery was in our future once we found out it was open to the public.
The official name for Tillamook is the Tillamook County Creamery Association, and its headquarters are located in Tillamook County, Oregon, near the city of Tillamook. It’s the 48th largest dairy processor in North America. Besides ice cream, Tillamook makes several other products, including cheese, which is probably what they’re best known for. They also make butter, yogurt, and sour cream. Located in the city of Tillamook, the cheese factory produces more than 170,000 pounds of cheese on-site each week. The factory houses a visitor center, the Tillamook Creamery. Before I visited, I didn’t know what to expect, and I wouldn’t have imagined that a creamery would be a big tourist attraction, but 1.3 million people visit the Tillamook Creamery each year.
The first time we went to Tillamook Creamery was May 2018. We actually went for my birthday. Not that a cheese factory is an ideal place to celebrate a birthday, but we’re new to Oregon and Washington, and we’re having fun exploring. We discovered Tillamook products shortly after we moved to the PNW, and we love them. The quality of everything we’ve tried is so good, so we were curious when we learned that the factory where this goodness is made is open to the public and that you could take a tour of it.
We didn’t do much research about the place, so we didn’t know what to expect. One question at the forefront of my mind concerned the logistics of operating a tour inside an operational factory. How were they able to maintain hygiene standards with tourists constantly moving around their operations, especially since all tours were self-guided? I imagined groups of factory visitors shuffling along elevated metal gangplanks while donning hairnets, full-body aprons, and those little coverings that doctors wear over their sneakers when they’re in the O.R. Well, it turns out that they used to give this type of tour back in the day, but the modern tour isn’t actually like this anymore. They used to offer tours inside the actual cheese processing area, but they stopped in 1967 due to health and safety regulations. We wouldn’t find this out, though, until our second trip to the creamery.
Because we hadn’t done much research before our first trip, we didn’t realize that they were remodeling the visitor center and that the factory tour wouldn’t be available until summer, when the remodeled visitor center was scheduled to re-open. Kind of a bummer, but it wasn’t a wasted trip. They set up a temporary visitor center in another building onsite. This building looked like a barn, actually. It housed a small walk-through educational exhibit, a gift shop, and an area where you could sample different varieties of cheese that the creamery produces.
And then there’s the ice cream. So, the temporary visitor center also featured a restaurant area and an ice cream shop. I had a burger from the restaurant and a scoop of ice cream from the ice cream shop. The burger was delicious, though, the recipe seems to have changed once the remodeled visitor center opened (I’ll go into that more a little later). The ice cream was delicious in both locations!
If you’ve never had Tillamook ice cream before, I highly recommend that you try it. I’d never heard of it before moving to the PNW, but it’s now my favorite brand of ice cream at the grocery store, overtaking my beloved Blue Bell. Why? I’ve probably tried four or five cartons (1.75 qt size) of it at this point, and even though I’ve liked some better than others, all had a rich flavor. They never tasted frozen, and they never came out of the freezer rock-hard, no matter how long they’d been in there. With all other brands, I’d have to take the carton out of the freezer and let it sit on the counter for a few minutes so that the ice cream would be easier to scoop. I’ve never had to do that with Tillamook. It’s always is soft, creamy, and good! I’ve never tasted a creamier ice cream that wasn’t soft serve. I know this is starting to sound like a commercial for Tillamook, but I’m just so impressed by this ice cream. This is some of the best-tasting ice cream I’ve ever had.
I do have one complaint about the ice cream, and it really is rather minor: My husband and I can’t finish an entire carton by ourselves. They do offer some of their products in a smaller sizes (15.5 oz) but they aren’t the same varieties that you’ll find in the larger size. You can’t, for example, find a 15.5 oz size of their Old Fashioned Vanilla. The smaller cartons make up their Special Batch line, where you’ll find unique varieties such as Pendleton Whiskey and Maple and Oregon Marionberry Cheesecake. It should be noted that the Special Batch line includes gelato and frozen custard in addition to ice cream — I guess that adds to its specialness.
If you live somewhere where Tillamook ice cream is available, I highly recommend giving it a try. The website has a tool where you can type in your zip code to see what products are available in your area. Products are scarce in the eastern part of the country, though. Perusing through the comments section of their blog post “Where, oh where, can I find my Tillamook?”, I think Chicago may be the farthest east that you can find Tillamook ice cream.
Return to Tillamook
We returned to Tillamook a few months after our initial trip. The new visitor’s center was open by then. It was a nice building, and it was an interesting excursion, but I was a little underwhelmed by the experience.
The Factory Tour:
The main reason we returned to Tillamook was to take the tour. At this point, I still thought we were going to go on a tour that took us inside the factory facility, so I was disappointed when I finally saw what actually comprised the tour. First, the factory tour is a short hallway with observation windows where you can see the different types of vats and machines make and package cheese blocks. Each window features an information panel beside or beneath that explains what’s going on at that particular area of the factory. It’s interesting stuff, but I was hoping there would be more. It’s a working factory, so I understand that operations might suffer if tour groups were constantly being led through the work area, and now I know that it was those concerns that led them to discontinue the type of tour I was hoping to take, but maybe they could expand the current tour to include the ice cream section of the factory. Cheese is cool and all, but I’m a big fan of the ice cream and would love to see how it’s made and packaged.
The Restaurant:
When we first visited the creamery in May, we had burgers from the snack counter, and I remember the burger being really good, like one of the best I’d had in a while. It was seasoned really, really well. Either they changed the recipe after the move to the new building, or they got a new chef, because the burger I had on our most recent trip did not taste like that first one at all. It was very bland and was made with cheddar cheese, which I despise on my burgers. If I can’t get American cheese on my burger, sometimes I’d rather just skip the thing altogether. And I get it — American cheese isn’t “real” cheese, and Tillamook doesn’t include it in their product line-up. I’m pretty sure they didn’t use American in that first burger I had, but they also didn’t use cheddar. I really wish that they’d used whatever cheese they use to use.
The Morning Star:
One really cool attraction is actually outside the visitor center. There’s a recreation of the Morning Star, a boat that used to transport Tillamook dairy products to Portland and Astoria in the 19th Century. You can’t climb onboard or anything, but you can walk right up to it, which makes for really good pictures. It’s not something I expected to see at a creamery.
The Former Temporary Visitor Center:
The building that housed the temporary visitor center is still being used. The walk-thru exhibit that was there the first time we visited remains. Just beyond that, there’s a new area where a few vendors can display and sell their products. The other half of the building, which had been used for the ice cream shop, cafe, and gift shop, was sealed off when we were there, so I couldn’t see its new purpose.
Go Visit!
The visitor center at the creamery is open daily year-round (except Thanksgiving and Christmas). The entire experience, including the tour, is self-guided (and free!). It isn’t an experience that’s going to blow you away, but it’s interesting and makes for a nice day trip if you know what to expect. You won’t get to see all the inner workings of the factory operations on the tour or spend hours on the site, but you’ll still have a nice time, and you’ll learn a few things while you’re there.
