Why is my soft serve too stiff?

Question

Is there an intelligent commercial machine soft serve calculator? I'm a noob at this, bag powder mixes taste like crap, can't find any fresh dairy mixes here in central Florida.
So far, the best I can find is 6% fat, 12% sugar, 14% MSNF, and 0.1% xanthan gum and .3% lecithin. And some vanilla. I made a spreadsheet to calculate it all based on a gallon of milk as a starting point, but what do I know? (very little...)  I'm using milk, evaporated milk, heavy cream, dry skim milk, sugar, and the rest.
I mix it well, put it in the machine. Texture comes out smooth & creamy, but stiff. It won't lay down and curl like soft serve should. It just wants to stick straight out and stack up.
Too much MSNF?
There seems to be a dearth of decent information on the internet for soft serve.
Any help out there?
I've got my calculator sheet on Google,  I can share it so maybe someone who knows what they're doing can help point me in the right direction.

Russell Gilbert · Accepted Answer

I'd suggest taking a look at the excellent book "Ice Cream" by Goff and Hartel (ISBN: 978-1-4614-6095-4). It covers all aspects of making ice cream commercially, and is very thorough. Chapter 8 is titled "Soft-Frozen Dairy Desserts" and page 252 has a table of example formulas for soft-serve ice creams.
For example, one column of the table shows the percentages to use for 6% milk fat:
Milk fat: 6.0%
MSNF: 12.5%
Sugar: 12.0%
CSS: 4.0%
S/E: 0.4%
TS: 34.9%

(MSNF: milk solids-not-fat, CSS: corn syrup solids, S/E: stabilizer plus emulsifier, TS: total solids.)
To take a guess at your actual problem, I'd say if it's not soft enough, you might try lowering the MSNF and xanthan gum first.

Why is my soft serve too stiff?

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