Forum Activity for @Sebastian

It'll be most effective if you use fluid lecithin, and added at the beginning of your conch cycle.

The answer is 'it depends' 8-) there's a great deal here posted already on tempering, so i'll not rehash that - you'll need to do some digging here to find it. But suffice it to say that due to differences in cocoa butter compositions (not all cocoa butters are equal), and the influence of other soft fats (milk fat, nut fats, emulsifiers, etc), and 'degree of temper' - you're going to end up with a range. Very sophisticated operations have the ability to control their raw materials streams and the knowledge to narrow down that range quite a bit, but for the average joe, that's just not necessary

You need to begin with cocoa liquor, and partially defat it somehow (most use high pressure hydraulic presses). That resluts in a very hard wheel of mostly cocoa solids that needs to be ground up into a powder. Adding cocoa butter back sort of defeats the purpose of taking it out in the first place. adding liquid sweeteners to chocolate is always a hard thing to do. adding a liquid sweetener to defatted cocoa powder - depending on how defatted it really is - can be much easier (think chocolate syrup)

I've never used them, but they appear to have been purchased by Duyvis, which is a very well established company i've used for decades. if you post the specific pieces of equipment you're looking at and what you'd like them to do, we could perhaps comment in greater detail.

I think that'd result in something very different than conventional alkalized cocoa powder as you know it today.

The details of how to perform alkalization, my friend, i'm afraid are going to be closely guarded trade secrets. Essentially it involves soluabilizing an alkalization agent in the presence of cocoa solids, variables include the alkali, concentration, time, temperature, state of the cocoa at the time of alkalization, pressure, moisture content, atmosphere, etc.

Be careful should you attempt this, as alkali can cause severe chemical burns if not handled properly or not effectively neutralized.

Most people prefer alkalized powder in their beverages over natural powder.

ADM's chocolate business for sale, again. This time they mean it 8-)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/15/us-adm-cocoa-deals-idUSBREA3E1ZK20140415

Actually, they meant it last time as well, but ADM was hoping to purchase a large grain business based in Australia, and the sale of the cocoa/chocolate business was meant to fund that. Australia decided they didn't want a non-aussie owner of that large of a business, so the deal fell through, creating a bit of an embarrassing scenario as they could no longer sell the unit, but already had announced the intent to do so. I'm guessing employee engagement's not at an all time high at those facilities. I suspect that including the cocoa elements in a sale - which is almost certainly going to have Cargill as the buyer - creates very difficult regulatory issues, so ADM's kept the more profitable cocoa sector and is peeling off their chocolate business, including the almost entirely empty (thanks to the BC outsourcing deal), but brand spankin' new, hazelton facility.

very common. ecuador's a terribly difficult place to dry beans properly, so a great deal of them mold. if you don't have the proper relationships and controls in place, those beans will find their way to you. there's a saying in the ivory coast that's applicable here - it roughly translates to " there's no graveyard for cocoa beans" - meaning all beans will find their way somewhere other than the trash.

Don't worry so much about surface mold - what's important is if the mold has penetrated the bean. cut 100 of them in half and if more than 5 or 6 of them are moldy inside, then you have a problem.

Well, i reckon there's many ways to do it, and there's lots of variables. if your centers are solid enough for you to handle, why not weigh out 20 of them before and after they've been enrobed to get an average weight? If you're using liquid centers, weigh the dispenser you use for liquid centers before and after dispensing to get the mass of the centers used, then weigh the finished product, and by difference calculate your chocolate use.

If you're asking, on average, what is the normal ratio of chocolate to center that folks use in general - that's pretty large range - i'd say anywhere between 30-70% chocolate

On it's own - no. It has the potential to, but only if your formulation is appropriate, and just as importantly, if you're materials handling procedures are appropriate. it's meant to minimize the amount of ambient air (and subsequently, ambient microbes) that encounter your product. You'll never eliminate them - that's impossible- but if your water activity is low, and you are careful not to re-introduce lots of ambient organisms post vacuum mixing, then the potential is there.

I'd say there are far more effective ways of helping increase shelf life - most notably via formulation.

Generally speaking, it's almost impossible for a single bar of chocolate to be 'defective' due to the way their processed.

Nope, wouldn't be the salt. Pictures always help, but if the starting color of the bar was the same as the others, there's not much else i don't think that could have gone wrong. You can always get the lot number and call Cargill Chocolate, ask to speak to Kim or Josh, and they can verify it's not a problem with production (but again, if there was, all bars would be odd, not just one)

Could be a few things. I'm assuming the tempered bar you started with was the same color as the rest of the bars in the batch. Temper is not a yes/no state of being - it's a range - quite a wide range, actually. Color of chocolate can vary significantly one one 'end' of the temper continuum vs the other end - so my suspicion is that you've simply got a significantly different degree of temper today vs yesterday.

Of course, it could be number of other things. If you're melting other ingredients (inadvertently) into the tempered chocolate, that'll obviously change things as well.

it tells you a great deal, actually, but the most relevant bit for this discussion is that those beans haven't been particularly well fermented, and their fat will be low. In addition to being more bitter and less chocolate flavor wise, you'll need to compensate for the lower fat of the beans by adding more liquid cocoa butter to achieve proper viscosity.

absolutely. I'll tell you right now however that adding lecithin will fix that problem. If you've got a philosophical against using lecithin, you're only solution is to add cocoa butter.

Can you cut 50 of your beans in half and count how many are purplish tinted in color inside? Can you post your formula you're using, and are you using lecithin? If your recipe is simply 70% beans and 30% sugar, i'm guestimating your fat level is approximately 32% (but that's why i asked you to count purple beans, to help understand how fermented they are, which impacts fat level). At 32% fat - regardless of how well fermented your beans are - if you're not using an emulsifier - such as lecithin for example - i'm afraid your chocolate is going to be thick (viscous). If that's the case, i suggest adding 0.5% fluid lecithin a couple of hours after you've added the sugar.

My question was actually to Mel 8-) but glad you asked anyway!

The way the moisture meters work that are above the one you linked to essentially look at the relative humidity that a bunch of beans create in a chamber. This is useful as you're interested in the aggregate humidity of a bunch of beans - not just a single one. Now, the unit you posted uses conductivity between the poles to calculate moisture - i have no idea if it'd work for beans or not - i suspect it'd not work so well for beans with shell on, but to be honest that's just a guess. If it did work, you'd want to perform that test on a hundred beans, and then take the average of them - as noted, knowing moisture of a single bean doesn't really help much. It might work - give it a shot and report back 8-) what you'd have to do is test it with the unit, then dry out each bean individually with an oven/weight loss method to assess how accurate your unit was reading. For $10 i'd say it's worth the trial. Heck, i might even try it (i'm not sure if i've got any cocoa beans around the house or not anymore tho).

The unit Michael linked to, while i have no direct experience with it, according to the video, reports with a +/-2% range - which is a huge range if you're looking to target 6-8% moisture (the vary range itself is 2%).

The best portable one I've ever used is the dickey john miniGAC plus. it comes with 2 calibration curves that are cocoa specific (you may have to download them, i don't recall any longer), and one of them is MUCH more accurate than the other. It's very durable, portable (I've carried one all over the world in conditions you couldn't imagine), and runs, from memory, about $500 USD.

Can you define what low cost means to you?

Natra tried to do this with a whole bean cocoa powder years ago.

Aweful, terrible idea for many of the reasons already listed. Also consider where the majority of mold resides on a bean, and thus where things like afla and ochra toxins subsequently reside...

Not even a little 8-)

ok, so we can probably rule out 1&2 (assuming you've got accurate calibrations and 'room temperature' is < 85F).

3 - wet - yes, similar to sweating. often times when you bring something (even chocolate) out of a fridge, the temperature difference between the refrigerated item and the environment is enough to trigger hitting a dew point, resulting in condensation on the item. When that happenson chocolate, the moisture dissolves a little bit of sugar, an when it evaporates, the sugar is redeposited behind, looking like bloom. it is, in fact, bloom, but it's different than fat bloom, and is called sugar bloom.

i would be very surprised if what you were seeing was the result of not adding additional cocoa butter.

1) are you sure you have an accurate thermometer?

2) the temperature of your inclusions should be about the same temperature as your tempered chocolate when you add them

3) does your chocolate get 'wet' after you take it out from the fridge? if so, you've go sugar bloom, and i'd simply not put it in the fridge.

4) what's the temperature of the room you're storing it in? does it ever get direct sunlight?

while there's a great deal of info here, i might suggest you identify a consultant to help, especially if this is meant to be your business and livelihood. there's is no 'full tutorial' describing everything i'm afraid.

Where in SEA are you going to be? Note that in much of that part of the world, it's not a part of their agricultural culture to ferment beans, and knowledge about things such as cocoa pod borer and bean maturity are very low. If you give a sense of where you're traveling, i can help you better understand what to expect and what to look for. Moisture and fermentation level may be the least of your concerns, depending on region...

Delcour, what is it you're looking to accomplish? If you're looking to understand if potential vendors are sufficiently drying their beans, the items you note could work for that - but i've never used those ones personally. I have had great success in working with Dickey John Mini GAC units - and it should be noted that the units you've posted (and the mini gac) will likely require a calibration curve to be loaded for it to correctly interpret the 'atmosphere' around the grain or seeds that it specifically is being used for - so you'll want to look closely at those units to see if they've got cacao specific calibration curves available. Alternatively, i know folks have also used aqua boy moisture meters - and i've tried them myself, but find them far too bulky and less accurate, plus i had to answer a lot of silly security questions when airport police scanned my luggage.

I'd concur with Brad on the value of a good knife. a guillotine may be useful for you to do an assessment at home quickly, but you'll find it very expensive and a knife will give you the same results.

Dave - a micrometer can be a very precise tool, but you have to know how to use it, and have to have one that is accurate enough. I can make any micrometer read 8um if i turn it hard enough (it'll crush whatever's in there) - adding a pressure gauge can help rectify that. Also, dispersing your chocolate in 3 parts mineral oil will also give you a much more accurate reading on it.

Regarding sugar, the biggest impact will be on the starting size of your sugar. Organic refined sugar is going to chemically be identically to non-organically refined sugar (almost always). The larger the starting granulation, the more problematic. The second most important element will be the color of the sugar -sugars are measured with what's called an ICUMSA scale. The higher that ICUMSA number, the more 'dirty' the sugar is, and the greater the impact on your product. White table sugar is somewhere between 20-50 ICUMSA, for reference. "Turbinado" and similar sugars may have ICUMSA ratings of over 400.

Assuming your block chocolate is already in temper, the easiest thing to do is melt the already tempered chocolate carefully so as not to 'break' its temper - that is, melt it and maintain it at about 90F, then add it to your other batch of tempered chocolate. an accurate thermometer is a very useful tool for chocolate work.

Alternatively, if you melt it and break it's temper, you'll still be able to add it to your other batch of tempered chocolate, but in much smaller quantities as adding untempered chocolate essentially 'dilutes' the temper, and will require time for it to regain it's temper.

Yes i know they are saying it's raw - i'd urge you to read the forums as it's been thoroughly covered. If there are still questions after doing so, we can cover any new ground.

I'd urge you to search the forums for raw chocolate discussions, and read up on them. You're not finding raw liquor for sale as it doesn't exist.

C. Botulinum - the organism responsible for the botulinum toxin - requires a VERY high water activity - well over 0.7 (many say as high as 0.95). Chocolate has a water activity somewhere in the 0.1-0.25 range. There's not nearly sufficient water activity for any organism to vegetate, i'm afraid. C Botulinum is an anaerobic spore former, and spores of course will remain viable for very long periods of time, but the toxin is only produced when the organism is in it's vegetative (i.e. growing and reproducing state). It doesn't matter how much oxygen can penetrate the chocolate if there's insufficient water for the organism to grow. It's a bit like saying humans require oxygen to live - which is true - but if there's no water in your environment, it similarly doesn't matter how much oxygen is present...

I know this as i've led global chocolate research for decades. The high oxygen permittivity of chocolate surprises most people.

Hi Lee - i've only seen cinnamon come from tree bark - not roots - so that's interesting. Anytime you're working with a raw agricultural product, but it from above the ground or below, there's a risk of unsavory microbiological elements. Bacteria will not grow in chocolate, but may remain viable, and yes, chocolate is a terrible oxygen barrier, but that's not really important for this. Usually cinnamon is steam sterilized prior to use to ensure a low(er) micro count, but even then spices are notoriously high in micro load. If i was making it for personal use and consumption i'd be less concerned about it, if i was making for my business and others to consume, i'd pay far more attention to it.

Are you certain it's bloom? I've seen moulds - when clean - have soap or mineral residue left behind on them that's invisible to the naked eye - but the chocolate pulls it off the mould and leaves surface discoloration. Could be a potential.

you'll need all the same equipment you need for chocolate mfr (as you'll still need to particle size reduce sugar and milk, and emulsify), PLUS you'll need something similar to a high shear mixer to get the cocoa butter and cocoa solids to 'recombine' - note you're going to have a difficult time recombining the cocoa solids and butter in a way that gets them to be the same as the original liquor from which they were derived..

Chocolate is made by grinding beans up to form liquor. You make cocoa powder by squeezing that liquor very hard until most of the fat comes out.

Not only will you find that trying to re-convert powder+butter into liquor will result in a suboptimal product, you'll find that the equipment requirements necessary to do so are likely more expensive than simply making chocolate; plus the product you end up with, legally, isn't going to be able to be called chocolate in most place i'm afraid.

"water marks" are #2 in my initial post - dissolved minerals left behind as the water evaporates. Best thing to do is to remove the offending minerals so they're not there to be left behind. If it is mineral deposits that causing it, i'm afraid warming up the mould is only going to result in warm minerals that leave marks - the minerals may be a little more comfortable if it's cold outside, but won't help you with your problem. Wiping and polishing will work for a short time, but what results over time is the minerals scour the moulds when you polish them, and will result in a permanently scratched mould.

It's one of two things:

1) Most likely it's what's called a 'pull mark', and is caused by the dynamics of heat removal between your chocolate, whatever material the mold is made of, the chocolate:mould mass ratio, and the cooling environment you're using. OR..

2) It could also be a mineral deposit, if the water you're using to clean your molds has minerals in it, those minerals will be left behind and can result in what you see. I don't think this is it, but it could be.

To fix #1, my guess is you're going to have to do a fair bit of work i'm afraid. i'd suggest getting a very accurate thermometer and ensuring you're chocolate, initial mold temperature, and you're cooling temperature(s) are very accurate/consistent. Then, slowly change ONE of them slightly, recording the results until you find the combo that is suitable for your formula, your mold composition, your mold:chocolate ratio, and your cooling environment.

It may be more work than it's worth 8-)

Any food testing lab will do it. Silliker, covance, etc. Many universities will have the equipment as well.

It's a compound coating, it's not chocolate.

We had a very thorough talk about focal distances to ensure my house didn't burn down 8-) she made sure to design it such that the focal point of the lens was 2" 'below' the bottom - that way it was still a pretty significant concentration of heat, but not enough to get anywhere near me needing to use my fire insurance!

my daughter actually just did her science project on improved solar dryers, incorporating inexpensive fresnel lens' as a way to inexpensively increase throughput. she saw a 42.8% increase in throughput as a result. she's writing it up now, but might be something to consider.

Sounds like an expensive proposition if you're doing in bulk. Much more so than air conditioning. I've frozen them in liquid nitrogen, and they were fine. as long as you can keep the freezer from minimal defrost cycles and manage the condensation upon thawing, you should be fine.

My strong suspiscion is that you're using small moulded pieces (callets), and that it was not freshly produced (it has some age on it i suspect). my guess is what you're seeing is the result of the callets picking up ambient moisture, and subsequnetly thickening. depending on how much moisture it's picked up, you may be able to com pensate by adding 0.1% fluid lecithin to it and letting it mix vigorously at 120F for 15 minutes. If that helps, but doesn't get you all the way there, you can try adding an additional 0.1% lecithin - however that may actually make it worse. lecithin works up to a point, after which it has the opposite effect.

Alternateitively, what you may be seeing is the result of heat abuse (getting it too hot). if that's what it is, i'm afraid there is no fix.