OSU Opens Creamery Giving Students Real Dairy Production Skills

OSU Opens Creamery Giving Students Real Dairy Production Skills

Hands-on training in cheesemaking and ice cream production is now part of OSU’s College of Agricultural Sciences.

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At most universities, students churn out pages. At Oregon State, they churn out cheese and ice cream.

The freshly renovated Tillamook Dairy Innovators Lab—reborn this spring after a four-year overhaul of Withycombe Hall—now gives OSU’s College of Agricultural Sciences a production space that looks and operates like a real dairy facility. Students don’t just practice techniques; they make high-volume cheese and ice cream sold at local retailers and farmers’ markets.

Front and center is the Beaver Classic Creamery, a polished new retail counter scooping cones, blending shakes, and offering OSU-made favorites like cheese, honey, and meat. A giant viewing window lets customers watch the action unfold as they taste the results.

That journey starts a mile away with OSU’s herd of 120 Jersey cows. Their milk heads to a 7,000-square-foot processing plant where student employees keep the operation moving under dairy pilot plant manager Brandon Riesgaard. Three 600-gallon silos handle pasteurization, homogenization, and storage before the milk heads into a make room stocked with a 30-gallon pilot cheese vat, a larger 200-gallon vat, a cheddaring table, presses, and even a mozzarella machine. Cheddar, swiss, and provolone age downstairs in dedicated rooms.

Ice cream gets its own workflow: small test batches start in a 3-gallon freezer, then scale up to an inline system capable of producing 10 gallons a minute—a pace most students only see once they’re in the workforce.

This isn’t a class; it’s an actual job. Most of the student workers come from OSU’s Department of Food Science and Technology, a tight-knit group of about 150 undergrads and grads. For them, the plant is a launchpad. Dairy production demands precision, strict safety protocols, and a deep understanding of how food gets made at scale. Mastering that environment gives students a serious head start in any corner of food manufacturing.

And there’s a nostalgic twist: When Withycombe Hall opened in 1952, it housed its own creamery and ice cream counter. The shop closed in the late ’60s—but the Beaver Classic Creamery brings the tradition full circle, now with stainless steel, big windows, and a student team churning out flavors daily.

A little history, a lot of hands-on science, and plenty of ice cream: OSU’s dairy program is delivering all three in generous scoops.

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