BilanciaLi Basic – Ice Cream Balancing Tool for Home

Description

Making good ice cream right out of the ice cream maker is relatively easy. The problem comes later: when the ice cream spends a few hours in the freezer and becomes too hard, too sweet, too cold, or just not pleasant to eat.

BilanciaLi Basic was created to solve this very problem.

It is an easy-to-use Excel file designed for those who make ice cream and sorbet at home but want to start thinking more precisely: not just “I’ll put in the ingredients and hope,” but real control of the recipe, its ingredients and final consistency.

With BilanciaLi Basic you can build your recipes from already balanced bases, modify ingredients, check key technical parameters, and immediately know if your mixture is within a sensible range.

You don’t have to be a professional ice cream maker to use it, but it is perfect for those who want to start really understanding what goes on inside an ice cream recipe.

What changes with BilanciaLi Basic 3.0?

BilanciaLi Basic 3.0 takes the place of the old Home version, but it is not just a name change. The new version includes a cleaner structure and some important functions that make balancing more practical and more useful even for simple workers.

Multilingual Version (Italian + English)

When you buy the product, you directly find two versions, one in Italian and one in English. You choose which one to use.

2 profiles: ice cream and sorbet

BilanciaLi Basic includes two balancing profiles, one dedicated to ice cream and one dedicated to sorbet.

This means that you should not use the same parameters for very different preparations. A cream ice cream and a fruit sorbet have different logics, different amounts of sugars, different structures, and different goals. With two separate profiles you can work more orderly and more consistently.

Configurable profiles

The two available profiles are also configurable, so you can adapt the benchmarks to the way you work, your habits, and the type of ice cream you want to make. If you are just starting out, you can use the parameters already set. If, on the other hand, you already have experience and want to customize your ranges, you can do so without having to change the file structure.

Balancing by serving temperature

One of the most useful new features is the ability to reason about the balance as a function of serving temperature as well.

Why is this important? Because ice cream designed to be eaten at a certain temperature should not be as balanced as ice cream designed for another. AFP, i.e., antifreezing power, is not just an abstract number: it directly affects the texture of the ice cream at the temperature at which you will eat it.

So with BilanciaLi Basic you can work more conveniently, looking for a consistency that is best suited to your freezer, your ice cream maker, and the way you serve ice cream.

Recalculation function

The new recalculation function allows you to quickly update the recipe when you change quantities, ingredients, or parameters. It is a simple but very convenient function: instead of having to fix everything manually every time, you can edit the recipe and let the file update the main calculations.

Balancing of sugars, fats, solids, NFMS (non fat milk solids), AFP and SP.

BilanciaLi Basic controls the main technical parameters of an ice cream mixture:

• sugars
• fats
• total solids
• SLNG (non-fat milk solids)
• AFP (antifreezing power)
• SP (sweetening power)
• Neutrals (correct percentage of each stabilizer)

These values help you know if the recipe is balanced or if it is in danger of becoming too hard, too soft, too low in solids, or too unbalanced.

Minima and maxima for each ingredient

BilanciaLi Basic also allows you to set minimum and maximum values for individual ingredients.

This is very useful because not all ingredients behave the same and you don’t always want to use them freely without control. You can decide, for example, how much cream to use at most, how much milk powder to include, or what is the minimum or maximum amount of a neutral, sugar, or specific ingredient.

This way balancing not only works on the big recipe parameters, such as sugars, fats, solids, AFP, and SP, but also helps you keep individual ingredients under control. It is a simple function, but very powerful, because it allows you to adapt the file to the way you work and build more precise recipes without going completely by eye.

Balancing alcohol

BilanciaLi Basic also takes alcohol into account, calculating its impact on the recipe.

This is useful if you want to create ice cream or sorbet with wines, liqueurs or spirits, avoiding adding alcohol “by eye” and ending up with a mixture that is too soft or difficult to whip.

Ingredients divided by category

Ingredients are organized into categories to make the work more orderly:

• dairy products and eggs
• neutrals and bases
• sugars
• main ingredients
• fruits and vegetables
• spirits
• chopped food

The ingredient table can be expanded and customized, so you can add new ingredients and adapt the file to your recipes.

Preloaded bases to get you started faster

BilanciaLi Basic includes basic recipes that are already balanced, useful for getting started without having to build everything from scratch.

You can start from a base close to the recipe you have in mind, modify it and adapt it to the taste you want to create. It is a much easier way to learn how to balance, because you start with a structure that already makes sense and learn by modifying it.

Indicative calculation of calories

The file also calculates the approximate calories of the ice cream from the recipe composition. This is not a laboratory nutritional assessment, but it is useful data to get a clearer idea of the final product.

Video Demo

In the video below I will guide you to discover all the new features of our ice cream balancer, a tool that has now become indispensable for both professional ice cream makers and home enthusiasts alike. We will explore together the three new versions available (Gold, Studio and Basic) and I will show you in action the more advanced functions of the Excel balancer, such as the innovative Freezing Curve , calculation of the optimal quenching point and new precision management for PAC and POD of dairy and delactose products.. Make yourself comfortable and click Play to find out which version is right for you and how to migrate your old recipes in a matter of seconds!

For whom BilanciaLi Basic is suitable

BilanciaLi Basic is designed especially for those who make ice cream at home and want to start balancing more consciously, without getting into too advanced tools right away.

It is the right version if you are just starting out, if you want to understand why an ice cream gets too hard or too soft, if you want to learn how to control sugars, fats, solids, PAC, POD, and serving temperature, or if you want to start with a simple but serious structure to create better ice creams and sorbets.

Basically, Basic is the gateway to ice cream balancing: simple enough to use even without professional experience, but built with the same technical logic as the higher versions.

Want something more advanced?

If BilanciaLi Basic is designed for those who want to get started, BilanciaLi Studio is the next step for those who are beginning to really have fun with balancing. With Studio you can save your recipes directly to file, building a small personal database over time, and you have 7 configurable profiles: gelato, sorbet, granita, vegan gelato, gastronomic gelato, gastronomic sorbet, and Pacojet/Ninja Creami gelato.

It is the version best suited for “geeky” homemakers, for those who want to not only follow a recipe but start building their own method of working.

If, on the other hand, you work in a lab, restaurant, or want maximum control even at home, with freezing curve, food cost, OQP (Optimal Quenelle Point), sandiness index, and advanced semi-finished product management, then the version to watch is BilanciaLi Gold.

Minimum Requirements

BilanciaLi is an Excel spreadsheet and requires no ‘installation.

Making use of “macros” and modern functions of Microsoft Excel requires that a recent version of Microsoft Office be installed on your computer.

• On Windows or Mac OS: Microsoft Office 2021 or newer versions

BilanciaLi is officially supported only by Microsoft Office (listed versions or newer) and will not work with Open Office, Google Docs, or other unlisted spreadsheet readers.

On tablets and smartphones the balancer is not fully functional because macros are not supported.

Update & support period of 1 year

Once the product is purchased, the user can access free updates for 1 year, should new versions come out (updates are not very frequent as the product is very stable).

Important Note: Upgrade is done by downloading the latest version available in the download section of the user area and overwriting the old version. The file remains available for one year, then disappears.

User’s Manual

The best way to understand how to use the software is to sign up for the free course on balancing, in which all the functions of balancing gold are shown in a practical way.

Find a written version of the manual from the support page.