Jim Sawyer, ice cream maker

The man behind the bar at Laconia District Court is also the man behind Sawyer's Dairy Bar.

"Only one of them," insisted Laconia City Prosecutor Jim Sawyer, who on Thursday evenings and Saturday mornings whips up the homemade ice cream that draws throngs to the Lakes Region landmark throughout the summer.

"I've been making ice cream for 20 years, since I was in high school," said Sawyer, who, dressed in a blue polo shirt bearing the Sawyer's logo, wrinkled khakis and worn sneakers could easily be taken for college student working a summer job. He said he spends between five and ten hours a week at the dairy bar producing 200 to 300 gallons of ice cream. "My dad makes the ice cream for frappes and the sherbets and I make the rest," he explained.

How he still finds the time is perhaps beyond understanding. Sawyer was honored as the Laconia Police Department's Employee of the Year in 2004 and Chief Tom Oetinger has often remarked there is no one in the department who works harder or longer.

Sawyer's grandfather George opened the dairy bar business 60 years ago. When Jim was a boy his father, Roger, joined in. "My dad worked for the post office," Sawyer said. "He would do his route between seven in the morning and two or three in the afternoon, come home and take a nap and then come to work here from four or five until ten or eleven at night."

Sawyer said he wound up making the ice cream because "my brother didn't want to do it and I was the next oldest." Although by now the work appears routine, he takes pride in his product. "Our ice cream has 16 percent buttermilk fat," he said. "Most others are 14 percent or less."

He begins by pouring two two-and-half gallon bags of ice cream mix into the machine that blends and cools the mix, then adds vanilla flavoring and salt. "I put salt in every batch," he said. "it brings out the flavor." Each batch amounts to ten gallons. The trick, he explained, was not to leave the mixture in the machine too long, because it would gather air and expand in volume, losing its body and richness.

"My grandfather's friends would tease him by shouting more air, more air," he said, explaining that more air meant more profit.

The ice cream is poured into five gallon tins and put in a freezer, set to 20 below zero, to set overnight.

Sawyer produces in a set sequence, starting with vanilla, then coffee followed by chocolate. "The coffee adds flavor to the chocolate," he said. Next he turns to the flavors with ingredients — Oreos, mocha chip, chocolate chips, walnuts, pistachios and so on — finishing with the strongest flavor peppermint sticks before rinsing the machine. "Each flavor adds a little something to the next," he said.

Sawyer confessed to mixed feeling about the prospect that the dairy bar will be sold. "I won't miss this, put it that way" he said of making ice cream. "But, I'll miss the dairy bar. Not the labor of making ice cream," he continued. "People say it's a cathartic. It's not. But, it's not ditch digging either."