Forum Activity for @Clay

Sebastian -

The /reddit thread is spectacularly unhelpful in explaining how/why this works.

There is a lot of bandying about the word hydrophobic but the question remains, how are the gold powder particles selectively removed from the (cocoa? coffee?) to stick to the surface of the chocolate?

What's the chemistry of this, do you know?

Very neat. I'd not seen that before.

I thought some of you would be interested in this "trick".

I found the thread on reddit yesterday.

turning chocolate into gold

In the comments there are a few descriptions of how it works.

They say there are some gold flakes suspended in some kind of cacao or coffee powder and only the gold will stick to the bonbon because of some hydrophobic process?

just take a look at the link and you will see.

Ilya -

250kg week is 2500, 100gr bars or about 3500 70gr bars. If your mold has 3 cavities in it and you can process 3 molds per minute thats 3x3x60 or 540 bars/hour. So, molding 250kg would take 5-7 hours per week at those speeds. Tempered chocolate requirement is ~35-50kg/hr.

Cooling time is dependent on several things, with the thickness of the bar a key factor. A 7mm-thick bar is going to take a lot longer than a 3mm-thick bar (the time difference might not be a linear function).

If it takes 15 minutes to cool down a mold (a cooling tunnel will make this much faster, BTW), then you need to have a minimum of 45 molds at 3 molds/minute if everything went perfectly and there were no delays. To be safe you will want twice that number.

Throughput is going to be dependent on getting your molds into the mold loader, de-molding at the other end, and returning the mold to the mold loader.

One of the things people think is that going to a cooling tunnel eliminates labor. That's not strictly the case as you need people to operate the machine. A skilled operator and manual dosing can do a lot more than you think. It's about organizing production to be efficient.

A case in point is to consider that at .5 meters/minute you need at least a 7.5 meter cooling tunnel to keep up. And that's going to mean a lot of walking from one end of the tunnel to the other.

[ That's not the case with the Selmi bar tunnels because there is one fold. They go down to one end then move to another level, and return to the beginning. ]

A specialized crystallization fridge with 20 racks can probably hold 80-90 molds. It might cost you $6-7000 delivered. By the time you put the bottom tray into the fridge the bars on the top rack will be ready to take out. The operator can work at their own pace - it's not dictated by the machine.

When you need to double production, duplicate the line. It will be less expensive and require less space. When your production projections reach into the 1000 bar/hour range and you have to run at that pace for more than 5 hours/day, then go get a tunnel. And then consider a folded (vertical) tunnel not a linear tunnel.

$300 for 20 molds, each bar is 100gr or 3oz

Closing my shop Vancouver Island, BC. All seasonal packaging: Thanksgiving & Fall, Halloween, Christmas, Valentines, Easter

Unbranded boxes, ribbons, display decor, trays, etc.

 20160219_160621_resized_2 - Copy.jpg - 259KB

We are currently selling our FBM tempering machine! Excellent condition.

Suitable for those using couvature or for bean-to-bar makers who add cacao butter.

Includes belt and paper rolls.

Please e-mail chocolate@fineandraw.com for more details!

Many thanks!

FINE & RAW

ROSS 4 X 8 3 - ROLL REFINER WITH CORED ROLLS

MEASURING 8" LONG X 4" DIAMETER

COMPLETE WITH HOPPER AND SCRAPERS,

DRIVEN BY A 1-HP, 3 PHASE, 60 CYCLE, 230/460 VOLT MOTOR.

It's in great working condition.

Asking price:  $10k

http://www.unionmachinery.com/Product.asp?Number=76017

Please e-mail chocolate@fineandraw.com for more details!

Thanks!

 3 roll 3.JPG.jpg - 1.3MB

ROSS Rollmatic RAF machine
2-roll grain mill
2012.
We have an custom built additional hopper for it.
We are asking $6.5k

Please email chocolate@fineandraw.com for more details!

 2 roll.JPG.jpg - 1.1MB

How much for the bar molds, and how many gram bars do they make?

Closing my shop Vancouver Island and selling all molds.

Bonbons and pralines, magnetic, logs, golf balls, hearts, nuts, figurines, boxes, bars, Christmas, Easter, Valentines, Fall/Thanksgiving, etc.

Available detailed list with photos and prices.

Inventory List with pictures molds only.pdf - 722KB

I am planing on setting up a bean to bar Production starting at 250KG a week

so I'm looking for the right solution for molding my bars that is scalable and could see me producing according to demand.

I don't know how adjustable the cracker on the Selmi machine is. 

The machine I am talking about works more like a scraper/peeler. There is a stainless steel plate with holes in it and a paddle-wheel-like device that scrapes the beans against the plate, breaking them. Larger beans and pieces stay in the chamber until the pieces are small enough to fall through the holes into the chamber where forced air separates the shell from the nib.

There are three fractions - and the speed of the cracker wheel and the fan can be adjusted to fine-tune the separation. One fraction is fines and shell, another is usable nib, and the third is a combination of nib and shell. You can wait until you get a lot of this combination fraction (i.e., at the end of the day) and run just this fraction back through the winnower to get as much usable nib as possible. The 100kg/hr figure for the small machine assumes two passes to get below 1.75% maximum shell in nib.

I will get up-to-date pricing over the weekend and get it to you.

Rochelle -

I have seen one. They are beautiful (which is to be expected for Selmi products) but the winnower is expensive for the throughput they offer. If aesthetics are really, really important to you then I don't know that there is a better option in this price range.

If aesthetics are not as important, but throughput and budget are, there is a company in Peru that offers one for about 60% of the cost that delivers about twice the throughput.

Ilya -

You mention small production above - how large?

Because, before we go anywhere talking about any specific machine or approach ... it is very helpful to have an estimate of your bar production needs? Hundreds per hour? Hundreds per day? There is a huge difference in how I would recommend approaching this depending on the production volume you are talking about.

That said, one of the nice things about flood/scrape mold loaders is that you can fill different mold configurations without having to adjust anything in the line (assuming all the molds are the same size). The downside is that the method can be very messy and it does not handle mixed-in inclusions very well.

Pneumatic depositing options fill each mold cavity separately. They are more expensive, but the process is much cleaner. That's an advantage when going directly to a cooling tunnel as excess chocolate on the outside of the molds can get caught up in the drive mechanism.

You can DIY a cooling tunnel using a series of chest freezers bolted together. Remove the door (lid) and build a wooden collar (8-12 inches high) on top of each unit (this is done all the time for jockey boxes for craft beer to hold the taps), then attach the door to the top of the wooden collar.

Create openings in the collar for the conveyer to fit through. Put a PID control unit in each freezer to control the temperature of each unit separately. Put a fan in each unit to move the air around inside (you can build internal baffles to direct/control the airflow). If humidity is a problem, put a dessicant inside each freezer.

3, 7-foot chest freezers give you the base for a ~21-foot tunnel for well under $5000. PID controllers are going to be less than $100 each. I don't have a price for a conveyor unit but you want a surface that will allow air flow underneath the mold and you want the speed to be adjustable. You want the conveyor to be at least 18" longer on each end (3 feet overall).

21 feet is approximately 7 meters. If the belt speed is .5 meters/minute then a mold will spend about 14 minutes in the tunnel. If you are using 275x175 molds then the max throughput is just 3 molds per .5 meter so you're talking about max throughput of less than 3 molds/minute. If you need to work faster you need a longer tunnel.

With separate PID controllers you can set the temperature of each freezer differently. If ambient is 68F you could make the outside units 62F and the center unit 55F (I recommend an odd number of units for this reason). Of course, you can make this any length you need by selecting different freezers - though they should all be the same dimensions for obvious mechanical reasons.

Keep in mind that a cooling tunnel that is designed for enrobed items is not optimal for molds as there is no airflow to the bottom of the mold. So - a purpose-built tunnel for molds is going to be better.

If you are doing batches of 450 bars at a time, the question I have is how many batches per day and week are you doing. If the answer is one then a fridge designed for holding and crystallizing chocolate is going to be a better idea. It will be much smaller and much less expensive.

Hi Albert , this side Balpreet singh from Chandigarh, India near New Delhi. Let me know if I can help you.

If you plan to only do chocolate bars then i can suggest a tempering unit and  vertical folded tunnel as Clay suggested. It saves space and is very efficient.

However, if you plan to do other items (enrobing) an horizontal tunnel will be a good compromise. You just need quite a long one tho...

What do you think about one of  prefamac's machines paired with a second hand cooling tunnel 

Automatic tempering machine with scraper - How to use

Hi Clay,

Yes I was just using the picture to demonstrative the basic principal.

yes please share your opinions on the cheaper options,  the pneumatic Mould loader seams an attractive option paired with a tempering machine

and DIY Cooling tunnels, or reconditioning a second hand cooling tunnel. 

I only know how to make chocolate from scratch, the idea is that I want to set up a small production of chocolate bars.

Noel:

You can't take your experience with the various processes of batch tempering and apply them to continuous tempering.

The chocolate that comes out of the pipe - when it's in cooling mode - is the temperature set in the cooling cycle. 30.5C you say. That drops into a bowl of chocolate that is heated and whose sole purpose is to melt out all the crystals before it exits the drain at the bottom and runs through the tempering pipe.

When the chocolate is melted and before you turn the cooling cycle on, the temperature of the chocolate in the bowl should be fairly even. The longer you let it run, the more even it will be. There is a thermocouple on the outside of the bowl and that's there the temperature is measured.

When you turn the cooling cycle on, the temperature of the chocolate coming through the spout drops. (The thermocouple is right at the top of the tempering pipe.)

Eventually, you start pumping 30.5C chocolate into a bowl of warm chocolate whose max temp is 47C ... and you start mixing them together. If you put a probe thermometer in the bowl you will not get consistent temperature readings. This is to be expected. You don't really care what the temperature is anywhere in the bowl except at the very bottom by the drain. All you care about is what temperature ensures that crystals are melted out before the chocolate re-enters the tempering pipe. If there are still crystals there is the risk of a positive feedback cycle leading to over-crystallization.

From a consistency perspective you want to keep the working bowl at least two-thirds full while working. Don't empty the bowl. The emptier the bowl the harder the heating and cooling systems have to work. You'll quickly get into a rhythm where you fill some molds, then do some other work (moving molds to cooling, de-molding, etc). While you're doing this other work put chocolate into the bowl and allow the tempering cycle to re-establish itself. If you can put melted chocolate into the bowl and the chocolate is about the same temp as the cooling temp then you won't interrupt the tempering cycle and can resume work immediately.

But - the important take-away is that a probe thermometer inserted into the working bowl will not return any useful information. The temperatures will be different throughout the bowl. That's to be expected - it's the way it works. One thing to note about the geometry of the working bowls in FBM machines is that they are narrow and deep. This design reduces wasted heat - wide shallow bowls are less energy efficient. The design also provides more time for the chocolate in the bowl to melt out crystals.

The Selmi line you show is not for molds. That setup requires a TOP with mold loader accessory, Tank400, and cooling tunnel - plus room for the cooling tunnel. Last I checked it was in excess of US$70k.

You can get a new Unica from FBM with your choice of 50/100/200kg tanks, pneumatic depositor with mold loader, and CLIMA 50 folded/vertical cooling tunnel for less than the Selmi equivalent.

If you want to cool in a room or fridge instead of using a cooling tunnel I'd need to know how many molds/bars hour/day you want to produce and to think about the options. You can build a room (I know someone producing >10K bars/day that way) or get specialized humidity-controlled chocolate crystallization fridges.

I also know of a way to DIY a cooling tunnel using chest freezers and PID temperature controllers ... if you have the room.

Is this on the surface or all the way through? What's the texture of the bars that ar affected?

Do you have a recording thermometer/hygrometer? What's the temperature of the room ... and what's the temperature of the fridge?

Whats the most cost effective setup for the production of solid single origin Bars without hand moulding

and manually cooling them in racks in a chiller 

temper unit and a second hand cooling tunnel  and manually demould on the other end.

who has set up a basic straight through production line and for how much money

 tunnel_300_400.jpg - 39KB

Interested in some of your beans.  Send me an email to preston@hellococoachocolate.com for prices please.

Hi there,

We are in the process of consolidating our facility and have a bunch of great beans for sale. We are trying to focus on our main five or so chocolates and have a number of different beans that would love a new home. These are great beans we are just unable to use them at the moment.

Origins include -

Around 250 lbs of Dominican Republic, Del Eden Hispaniola

Around 150 lbs of Peru, Oro Verde

Around 50 lbs of Nicaragua, Momotombo

Around 400 lbs of Uganda 

Around 300 lbs of Guatemalan, Lachua 

Around 300 lbs of Hondorus, La Masica 

We can give a pretty good deal to anyone that wants some or all of these beans!

If interested please email us at - info@starchildchocolate.com

Hi there,

We are in the process of consolidating our facility and still have for sale a Rev Delta and brand new chocolate skimmer to go with it. This machine is in great working condition and has hardly been used.

- Chocovision Revolation Delta tempering machine. 2 Years old but only ever used a handful of times. Comes with an extra    bowl and both solid and wholly baffles.  

- Never been used Chocovision S10 chocolate skimmer. 

$1500 for the Rev bought new for $2300

$500 for the skimmer bought new for $700

Will take $1900 for both

Please inquire via Email or Phone   -   info@starchildchocolate.com / 1-707-671-5778

We are experiencing unheard of levels of fat bloom in our finished product, which we believe to be environmental. The relative humidity of the cooling rooms are below 50%, but at time the temperature fluctuates, as it did this weekend, when a batch of 450 bars were setting.

Pics below.

 bloomedmocha0815.jpg - 47KB

When you say "This is proving to be unsatisfactory" can you provide some more information about what ways? Throughput? Quality?

We are a small scale confectionery, still fine tuning our processes, and I am in need of a cooling tunnel or chocolate fridge. Any leads on small-scale equipment would be appreciated!

We temper 25# batches (often with inclusions), hand-fill molds and then vibrate with a small dental vibrator. Our current method is putting bar molds in the fridg for 15-20 minutes and then transferring to a speed rack with cover/AC unit - this is proving to be unsatisfactory, so we're ready to move on to the next step. 

Thanks in advance!

I have the 30kg melangeur from Kudvic which is being shipped to me. Hopefully  I will receive it in less than a month's time. Will let you know how it works

I wouldn't get too hung up on the % of a certain crystal form - you have no way of measuring or controlling it that precisely, and in a batch system such as i assume you are working with, that % will continue to change over time anyway.  Focus on controlling the things you can - your temperatures, your quantities, your environment, your cooling, and your agitation - and i think you'll be far happier than trying to guess what the quantity of a crystalline structure is w/o having a x ray spectrometer on hand 8-)  If you would like to get more technical about measuring your degree of temper, i'd recommend investing in a tricor temper-meter, which works on the principle of measuring the heat of crystallization generated/released when matter converts from a liquid to a solid (or reverse).  Far less expensive than a spectrometer, much easier to use, and tells you what you need to know without requiring a PhD to interpret the results. 

interesting... of course that I can shave cocoa butter and not to buy, I can try soon.

But is there still one point I don't understand: how come that you have 1% V crystals in properly tempered chocolate on working temperature, what about the remaining 99% cacao butter crystals?

AMF = Anhydrous Milk Fat (aka butter oil)

Hi Lly - i'll admit up front i didn't read the links in detail, but rather scanned them.  To be honest, i'm not a huge fan of mycryo - sure it works, but it's an absurdly expensive way of tempering.  Shaving in tempered cocoa butter can work just fine (actually, it can be tempered chocolate, it'll do the same thing) - as long as your untempered base is of suitable temperature.  If it's too hot, you'll just melt the seed butter/chocolate and it wont' do anything but lower the temperature just a tad, perhaps.  If your base chocolate is too cool, you've already got some crystallization going on, and it'll be a hot mess.

When i'm tempering small quantities at home, i'll use the 'bring the untempered chocolate temperature to 32C and seed it with tempered chocolate' approach - but as with anything, there is more than one way to do things.  If you're working with milk chocolate, you may need a little more seed; dark chocolate (w/o AMF in it) will require a little less seed.

Edit:  The other thing to consider would be an EZ Temper unit, which is a small scale cocoa butter precrystallizer.  Works great, and uses standard cocoa butter. I'm a big fan of owning the capability.  Down side is that it's a little expensive for some.

Hi Sebastian,
You have very useful answers, so thank you.
There is another aspect that I don't fully understand, it is well known that in order to properly temper you need around 1% of V crystals in working temperature in order to cause an cascade reaction during crystallization. What inhibit for the rest of the cacoa butter to form V crystals (I assume that I'm close to equilibrium)?
If there are to many lumps in low temperture (~34C in dark chocolate) so overcrystallization is unavoidable?
recently I saw this method of tempring with cacao butter:
http://www.callebaut.com/usen/techniques/tempering/tempering-with-mycryo
or other source:
https://www.google.co.il/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjFjKiX0L3OAhXHvBoKHcMQC3oQFggkMAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.chefeddy.com%2F2010%2F03%2Ftemper-or-pre-crystallize-chocolate-using-cocoa-butter%2F&usg=AFQjCNHaQzADb6p0Vcs8Fx1rgynkP2G7IA&sig2=at-gtBT1-QlqhmS8MhB9eQ&bvm=bv.129422649,d.d2s
What do you think about this method?

Thank's!

There are no books that cover the topics you ask about.

However, I can answer any questions you have about FBM continuous tempering machines. Do you have a 12kg Compatta or a 15kg Compatta?

About assessing temper. Learn to do it by hand. Even if you have a continuous machine - it will only do what you tell it to do. If you don't know what proper temper is you can't tell the tempering machine what to do.

De nada!

Sebastian - Thanks for sharing!

https://www.aucto.com/catalog/nriindustrial/auction-of-major-chocolate-making-facility-in-pennsylvania-day-2/5161

A Cargill plant has relocated, resulting in much of their equipment being auctioned off - including some lab equipment.  Some very good equipment here at firesale prices should you be interested.  Note, i have no interest in the sale - just ensuring awareness of it as some of you might find some of the goods useful, at prices you'd not otherwise be interested in 8-)

Does anybody have any experience with the Kudvic melangeurs?