Forum Activity for @Skwerl

Resulting chocolate flavor quality from ball mills

Posted in: Opinion

  Thanks so much for your take on this, Sebastian.  I realize there are specifics involved and it's hard to generalize broadly when there are so many variables involved in machine operation and engineering, but I imagine the presentation's chart was made targeting either general characteristics or those specific to the company's offering.  The latter I find hard to believe, especially since their ball mill has "separate heating and cooling circuits."   I presume they have decent temperature control and thus their ball mills, as you say, should be quite wonderful.
  Thanks for the chart.  That's interesting that it appears the ball mills yielded less fat.  I would have liked to see what the resulting particle size distribution curves looked like.  That's about the only way I can think the resulting fat content could differ.  Although, with n=30, would the outcome have been different with n=300?  There was a lot of variation in the results!  And even if not, I can't imagine being able to discern a difference between the averages of 54.96% and 55.43% fat.  The conclusions I'd draw from this study is that differences in resulting fat and moisture are irrelevant. 
  You mentioned there were measurable differences in other compounds, though.  A question just for fun:  If we just assume that a melanger produces better flavor and attribute it to the slower volatilization of flavor compounds (not saying this is the case!), do you think careful temp and air control during a subsequent conching program could yield roughly the same results?
  The size of the target is always important in real life:  People would notice if I went sky diving and landed in the wrong field, but no one would see if I failed to depress a blade of grass I was aiming for.  This is theoretical and purely because I'm interested.

Resulting chocolate flavor quality from ball mills

Posted in: Opinion

Thanks, Clay.  I've sent you a link to the source video via e-mail.  There wasn't a lot of context around this part of the video, but I don't know how else to interpret it.  It was filmed as part of one of their bean-to-bar classes.  I don't recognize the instructor, but maybe he's not part of the company and this is simply his opinion.

Resulting chocolate flavor quality from ball mills

Posted in: Opinion

What you say is what I suspected, but you'll be surprised to note that this was indeed in a marketing video for a manufacturer (and a very well- known one!) who sells both melangers and ball mills.  This marketing video depicted a bean-to-bar class the manufacturer offers.  I imagine no one else even noticed the details written on the pad in the video since it was present only fleetingly.

I intend to purchas a ball mill and conche from this company, but before I take the plunge, I thought it wise to see if these were just the opinions of the instructor of that course or if this was an undercurrent in the industry.  Thanks for your insight, Clay.

Resulting chocolate flavor quality from ball mills

Posted in: Opinion

  Below is a capture I took from a brief shot in a marketing video from a manufacturer of both melangers and ball mills for commercial chocolate production.  I was a bit surprised to see "Better taste/quality" and "Details (+) Aromas" under the melanger column and "Metal taste" under the ball mill.  This is clearly stating that there's a flavor quality discrepancy between ball mill and stone ground chocolate.

  This is not something I've heard before.  When I asked the manufacturer about this, I did not really receive a direct explanation.  Is this a commonly held (if not necessarily factual) opinion in the industry that I've simply not encountered?

Odd mealy cocoa butter- Has this bee doctored?

Posted in: Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, Techniques

Thanks, Sebastian.  I've decided to send the whole lot back and ask for a refund.  I'm 90% convinced it's not pure cocoa butter and malfeasance is involved.  I don't know whether it's on the part of the vendor I purchased from or (probably more likely) their supplier.  I took a chunk of it to the Big Island Chocolate Festival and showed it to some veteran chocolate makers and a fellow who's sold literal tons of cocoa butter and they all said they'd never seen any like it and they wouldn't use it.  So, I'm not going to risk using something fishy in our chocolate.

Here's a few additional details that helped me come to this decision. 

• I also ordered a bit of deodorized cocoa butter from them just to try, wondering if it might make better CB silk.  That stuff has a light, pleasant benzoin/vanilla scent.  I've never used deodorized cocoa butter before, but I would think it would have almost no scent (it's called "deodorized), and any scent it has shouldn't be vanilla.
• I thought I'd try making an experimental batch of white chocolate with some of the deodorized stuff, and after a few hours of only sucrose and CB in the melanger, it made a surprisingly tasty, fluffy icing.  Never seen cocoa butter go fluffy or taste good by itself.  I'm guessing a fragrance was added to mask a scent that would give away the fat's true constituents.
• A few weeks ago, my partner and I noticed how an earlier shipment of cocoa butter from them smelled when I melted it.  It had a faint coconut scent.  Like idiots, we found that amusing, never thinking it might actually contain coconut oil.  I think we're so accustomed to our bean flavors changing with every month's harvest that we just shrugged it off as natural product variation.

This has been a good learning experience.  I need to scrutinize every shipment of ingredients as soon as I receive them, because now I'm the fool with no cocoa butter in the middle of nowhere and only two weeks out from another festival with low inventory.  Lessons are always best learned the hard way.

At any rate, thanks so much for your help on this.

Odd mealy cocoa butter- Has this bee doctored?

Posted in: Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, Techniques

Thanks, Sebastian and Clay.  I really appreciate your thoughts on this. Regarding the photos:

1. This is what happened to the thin film of CB left in the bottom of the pan after melting and allowed to sit and cool on its own for a while.  This was after being scraped pretty well with a spatula, so there wasn't much left in the pan, which is why it surprised me that it was able to fight gravity and draw itself up into little balls.
2. This is a partially melted chunk that I pulled out while I was melting a some of it.  This shows how the continuous phase melted and turned transparent faster than the spheres.  Observe the air bubbles, too.  This is something else that suggests to me that it there was a vigorous attempt to mix it and air got incorporated as a result.
3. This is a shot of the CB as I received it.

None of the above photos shows the result of melting and resolidifying, but it essentially goes right back into the same mealy state I got it in.  The only difference is that there was a bit of liquid, like cooking oil (not water), at the bottom of the container I let it set up in.  This was well stirred as I melted it, so I wouldn't think it was just an issue with different origins of cocoa butter not being mixed well.

I procured this from a small online store that sells various plant butters for body products and food additives.  They claim it's sourced from Ghana.  I'm small potatoes and can't afford to ship a pallet of cocoa butter to Hawaii let alone use it in a year, which is why I've been trying to do business with this shop where I can buy 30-lb quantities every couple months for under $20/lb.  It's always looked like any CB I've used up until this last order, but I'm thinking I might need to look for a different supplier now.

Ask TCL: Should You Install a Dehumidifier in Your Workshop?

Posted in: Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, Techniques

Thanks for the response, Clay.  I appreciate your insight.

• The beans look just fine inside and out save for some occasional light "white dust" surface mold on the shells.
• I don't notice the flavor in the nibs at all, and not during the first part of refining, even after most of the acetic has been driven out.
• No odors present in the room with the refiners, either.
• My hygrometer usually reads in the low 60s for sunny days and WAY higher on rainy ones, naturally.  We usually havce a mix here, so I'd say any one batch of chocolate would happen with an average of 65-70% RH.

The thing that really makes me think it could be humidity-related is that the musty scent is only slightnly noticeable when removing chocolate from the melanger, but it is highly noticeable the next day when I go to clean the chocolate-covered machinery. My guess is that while that residual chocolate is sitting there, now cool, it's happily absorbing moisture and giving the source of the mustiness exactly what it needs.

Ask TCL: Should You Install a Dehumidifier in Your Workshop?

Posted in: Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, Techniques

I don't think those rotary desiccant devices work very well, and I went poking around and found this video from Technology Connections that goes into it a bit.  Your best bet for efficiency is probably still the old fashioned compressed gas heat pump style. 

Desiccant dehumidifiers are fascinating... but not for everyone

I've been having some musty flavors creep into my chocolate with long times in the melanger, so I'm about to experiment and see if I can tame the humidity a bit (air conditioning is rare in Hawaii!).  I'm hoping that's what's causing the problem rather than a fermentation/storage defect.

Odd mealy cocoa butter- Has this bee doctored?

Posted in: Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, Techniques

Hey, folks.  I received a shipment of cocoa butter from a new vendor and I've never seen a texture like this.  It's a mealy aggregation of a bunch of little spheres.  I thought perhaps it had just cooled in a weird way, but upon melting and cooling, it forms the same texture.  I noticed that even the film left in a pan I melted some in had retracted into little balls overnight.

I'm thinking maybe this has been cut with another fat, but perhaps this is just a type of cocoa butter I've never seen before.  When partially melted (see photo), there appears to be clear continuous and dispersed phases, which seems to support that.  The continuous phase seeems to melt at a slightly lower temperature.  Any thoughts?

Thank you,
Josh