Forum Activity for @Makoto Takemiya

Why not just make a wiki page with bean suppliers, origins, and quantities available for purchase? Wikis were created just for tasks like this.

Are Meridian Cacao's beans organic (if not certified, do they use pesticides, etc?). Also, are there discounts for TheChocolateLife members?

If you are going to facilitate transactions between people, rather than stock the product yourself such as what John Nanci does, there should be some type of membership fee charged for this section.

I could easily write the software for this at a reasonable price.

Cheers

Brad

"due to inflation and the penny being discontinued, my two cents has now been rounded up to a nickel."

Roger -

It is a good idea - and it belongs in the Classifieds section.

Doing it this way requires that I "police" every post where someone asks to buy or sell beans outside that single post, point them to the correct post, and close down the one where the question is asked (unless it's a blog in which case there's nothing I can do).

I mention that because we tried to create a single "official bean-to-bar chocolate maker" thread and in the end it turned out to be too much work to force all new entries into the single "official" thread.

Blog/discussion software is not the best tool to this. If anyone has some programming skills and wants to work on some useful database tools I would be happy to work on this.

Clay, perhaps it should be a "one way" list, that is, posting only for those who have beans or a source for beans for sale. The lisiing would be updated by the providers as needed.

More like a reference thread than a discussion. Take the bean discussions to the regular posting areas.

I think it would provide a great service for sellers and buyers, win win for all.

It is of interest to me - buying small lots of cocoa beans. I saved this thread for future reference, but having it in one spot that makes more sense would be good.

Roger:

Interesting idea ... and one that I will think about some more if/as people chime in on this.

A generic "Where to Buy" category makes sense to me in a general discussion area.

There is a whole Classifieds section where an "I want to buy/sell cocoa beans" makes a lot of sense and it would be highly specific. I could close this discussion and point to one there.

A "Where to Buy Cocoa Beans" in the main discussion are seems redundant to me.

Anyone have any strong opinions one way or the other?

Thank you all for your help!

Imho, I would suggest that the mods make a new category specifically for those of us looking for beans to buy or sell. It would make these transactions a bit easier for all.

We have trinitarian cacao beans from Costa Rica you can contact me at daniela@chocolate-nahua.com if you're interested!

You can also contact Tom Sharkey in Hawaii- Direct from the farmer. He does small orders.

(808) 895-6600

tshark@hawaii.rr.com

Hey, i can get you the 10 pounds of cocoa beans from Uganda ( East Africa) for 14 dollars. Stephen Sembuya

Thanks Clay, any others you can recommend? I would like to have several in my "arsenal", to get a variety of beans to choose from.

Roger:

There are many sources for cocoa beans. One I recommend is a new sponsor of TheChocolateLife - Meridian Cacao .

:: Clay

Hi Everyone,

I am looking for a source for small quantities (less than 10 pounds) of raw cocoa beans.

So far the only place I found any is Chocolate Alchemy. Does any one know of another place that is fair priced?

Thanks!

You can pipe any buttercream into a mold, have you never made buttercream icing for a cake? Tasty experiments!

Just google buttercream icing and have a go at it. Worst case is you have something which you can throw on some brownies or a quick cake hehe.

It's not shelf stable but they are good and creamy.

You can store your bag of buttercream in the fridge but will need to allocate some time for it to "thaw" before piping.

While this isn't our recipe I just grabbed this one off Foodnetwork as an example of the ingredient breakdown, not rocket science--

1 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup milk, room temperature
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla or other desired flavoring
2 pounds confectioners' sugar

The package is just one ingredient, fondant sugar. It's just pre-portioned and I'm new at this.
However, I agree that fondant is too sweet.

Any recipes for buttercreams I can pipe into molds?

Or don't use a package, just look up buttercream recipes. We sell the hell out of some straight up old fashion buttercream filled products during easter and use a slightly modified version for a bon bon year round. Fondant is just way too sweet and in the end a really neutral product.

It's all on the back of the package. I don't have a pack near me, but I think it's one package, 3 tbsp of butter, 1 tbsp of cream and only a drop of invertase.

http://www.shop.partyshopga.com/Dry-Fondant-for-Candy-Centers-76-5501.htm?gclid=CKHyuv38v7YCFe5xOgodlycA_Q

Would you share your porportions on the dry mix, water & invertase you use?

I use CK brand Dry Fondant Mix in a bag with some invertase. You can't get any easier than that and it's good. I was going to develop my own recipe, or do something from scratch, but everyone seems to like these.

Just use a cream fondant. 4 cups sugar, 1 cup cream, 1/2 water, 2 tablespoons corn syrup or honey, pinch salt. Cook to soft ball (238 sea level) Pour out to cool. Stir when about 115 degrees. For chocolate, add 3 oz cocoa mass when beating. A bit of vanilla if desired.

I am a University of Utah student doing Marketing research for a chocolate project. It is a fun chocolate survey I have released so if you are an American that loves chocolate, please take the 2 minutes out of your day to take this survey. If you feel uncomfortable answering any of the questions, feel free to skip the question and move on to the next. It is 100% anonymous. The link below will take you to the Survey!

http://eccles.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_37zDED8IezRSmoJ

Thank You,

Andrew

Clay,

If you go through the website of Warrell Corporation, I am sure you will understand what I am looking for. ( http://warrellcorp.com/ManufacturingProcesses/HotP )

I was there for PMCA chocolate panning class. For Hot panning you need Copper pan with burners below the pan to caramalise the sugar. Those you mentioned are definitely the ones I am looking for. But it seems they can`t produce big batches. I needPan with 15-20 kgs (i.e around 30-40lbs) capacity. Any insight? Thank you so much.

Raji from India.

I don't entirely understand what you are looking for. A hot pan for nuts to cover with chocolate? Roast? Caramelize (that is, make pralin)?

Panning is the process of covering a center with chocolate or sugar, or some other coating.

Here's a site for a US company that sells machines for cooking nuts in sugar . Here's the web site of the company that makes them (they're in Munich, Germany).

Here's a site for a German company that makes machines for roasting nuts and cooking them in sugar.

I plan to buy a Copper hot pan with gas burners at the bottom. The one I already have is Selmi Comfit. It is very efficient in soft panning, chocolate panning and sugar panning as well. Now I want to add hot panned nuts to my product line. My plan is to buy a pan which can produce 30-40 lbs in a batch.

Anyone have the idea who manufactures this kind of Copper hot pans with gas burners at the bottom?

Raji from India.

Matt could you be a little more specific about the problems you've had with the chocovision?I've seen a few people complain about the smaller chocovision temperers, but the people who own the larger ones seem to really like them. Did you own one of the smaller ones? I am looking into the chocovisions myself, so any feedback from someone who has owned one would be helpful. Thanks.

It looks like a good machine. I have experience using a 6kg Mol D'art melter. The user must keep the chocolate in temper, but it is easily accomplished. This melter is great to get one started producing molded or dipped confections. Good luck to you!

has anyone used a matfer choco 15R?

http://www.matferbourgeatusa.com/catalog/part3.htm

http://www.jbprince.com/chocolate-tempering-machines/chocolate-temperer-machines.asp

It is listed most places as a tempering machine, but I understand that it has manual temperature controls, which makes it a dipping machine really

I have not had good luck with the chocovision machines, I don't find that it gives a good temper at all.

comments?

oh, ok. Can't have soy

we use soy powder

Yochy,

Do you use Rice Milk for your dairy-free milk chocolate or something else like soy milk etc.

Valerie,

How many lbs do you need? Let us know at info@premiumchocolatiers.com

I have spoken to a company that is allergy-free and thye have informed me that Callebaut will not sell it to them unless they can buy 10,000 lbs. at a time (I believe it was).

I use rice dream, which is dairy free (pareve) both in peppermint patties, creme centers and truffles. It works great and makes delicious centers for my semisweet dairy free chocolates. I even slowly cook it down and make dairy free (pareve) "evaporated milk" from the rice dream.

Valerie,

In what quantity are you looking to source this? Please shoot an email to info@premiumchocolatiers.com and we will quote it.

Hi Clay. I think Callebaut was using rice milk. I don't know if that classifies as dairy. I don't think so, because they are saying it's dairy free. I know that I use clarified butter at times, and although it's dairy, it is casein free and lactose free. I don't say it is dairy free or parve, just casein free. All I really care about is that I can make some casein-free products for my people. Now, while goat's milk does have casein, it's supposedly a different casein then cow's milk and some people can tolerate it. But it's way too complicated to get into that if you know what I mean. And I think the Askinosie bars would most likely be too pricey to use. But I think it's really cool that they are making it. Coconut milk would be awesome-but you are saying they just sell it for chocolate bars? Not couverture. Oh well.

So-it is possible to make? You mean like using cocoa powder, a dairy-free milk product, and clarified butter type thing?

One of the challenges is that in order for it to be called milk chocolate here in the US, it has to have dairy in it:

(4) Dairy ingredients:
(i) Cream, milkfat, butter;
(ii) Milk, concentrated milk, evaporated milk, sweetened condensed milk, dried milk; and
(iii) Skim milk, concentrated skim milk, evaporated skim milk, sweetened condensed skim milk, nonfat dry milk;

Callebaut might not be selling it here in the US for labeling reasons.If you import it from Canada you should be careful how you label it.Calling it "dairy-free milk chocolate" won't work - at least as far as the FDA is concerned. That's why some companies refer to "mylk" chocolate.

There are a couple of bean-to-bar companies I know that use coconut milk powder and it's really quite good. Not making it as couverture to sell, though. Askinosie uses goat's milk and while it is goat-y it's not too goat-y.

It is possible to make.