Forum Activity for @mark4604

Tempering before and after kickstarter project

Thanks Sebastian, that's a really good idea i will look into that, ii was watching a video last night on you tube and I someone from using a pneumatic pump or something for loading molds have you  ever heard of anything like this? I will include the video. thanks for your feedback.  

Generally speaking sunflower lec will be less effective than soy lec.  If you've not been using lec at all, then it'll still give you a huge improvement.

You sure you want a wheel? I'm not a huge fan of them as they can result in lots of air bubbles getting trapped.  An alternative i might suggest would be a heated/jacketed kettle - something like a smith kettle or one from a company called the savage brothers.  Not sure what your budget is, but you should be able to find one for about $5,000 USD or so.  can temper and maintain temper as small as ~20 lbs and as large as, well, as large as you'll ever need (of course the larger units cost more money)

hey everyone my name is mark Anthony I'm located in Bogota Colombia and I am getting ready to open a boutique size bean to bar chocolate business but I have a few questions and I was wondering if I could get some opinions.

1. I need a tempering wheel or at least I prefer one because I am going to be filling bar molds and I would rather not ladle every mold. So I was wondering if anyone has bought any of the tempering machines from albibabaexress, I think there called known tempering machines which I believe is just an off brand? I have a very stretched budget for a tempering wheel, So I guess I have to frugal. Can anyone recommend another brand which has good prices? Also I have seen the warmers/tempers  with no wheel and a lot more capacity for a much better price and not from china but they have no wheel and that's very important for me. Does anyone  make wheel attachments or does that not exist?

 thanks.

Are there any other chocolatiers here with experience with this unit? How does it compare to a Selmi Plus? Are there any attachments to make it function as an enrober too?

Hi All!

I want to pan (with chocolate) some cashews. Possibly other nuts (Almonds come to mind) too.  I'd like to honey coat them first but I can't find any recipe online. Well, I can, but for domestic use with all sorts of ingredients!  I want to do this with larget batches - 20Kg or so at a time.

Does anyone know about this please?  Any thoughts or ideas?  The nuts are already roasted - I just have to honey coat them with real caramelized  honey - but of course I need them dry to pan with chocolate.

Thanks!

Colin

Hey guys,

  I'm looking into buying a 20L  wet grinder from Sri Lakshmi and I have seen a few users post positive things about them as well as there prices but I cannot get them to give me a quote on shipping. They give me a item price but never answer about the shipping. Is there anyone out there who has made purchases from them and  could  give me an idea  of what is the best method of communication? I feel a little nervous sending money  when I can't even get them to answer a question.

For Sale 2 Choco-Lution Bakon USA fully Automatic tempering machines.

Touch screen, 100 programs, vibrating tables.

Pristine and just fully serviced by Bakon USA.

2 Years old. Works great and tempering 20kg in 20mn.

I sell this machines because I bought a full automated molding line and the capacity of the tank is a little to small for our production.

Machines are in Las Vegas and can bee shipped.

Each machine new are at $19,500

I'm selling both machine at $13,500 or the 2 machines at $26,000

 Choco-Lutionclipped copy_1_be4373.png - 548KB

Great, I just bought some from a health store to run some test batches. I have never used emulsifiers as my bars are geared towards the health food crowd and even though I don't think soy is bad in the small quantities or even at all in chocolate most people in my target market do think that.  If I can use sunflower lecithin instead and get the same results then it will appease my target market. 

No difference in comparison to using soy lecithin.

In my opinion lecithin is a very important ingredient in chocolate making for a few reasons: ability to achieve best conching results and ability to achieve desired viscosity without adding too much cocoa butter which can make product taste unbalanced and too greasy (common to high cocoa content milk chocolates on the market where high cocoa content percentage is reached just by adding extra cocoa butter).

    best

        Victor

By no difference do you mean no difference in comparison to soy lecithin or no difference in comparison to using no emulsifier at all?

If I understand correctly you are talking about what is called reworking chocolate. 

Using chocolate as an ingredient to make another batch of chocolate.

In all factories chocolate batches fail from time to time (gritty, sandy or too low viscosity) and there are various methods for reworking the product.

All of them require calculations so finished product has the same composition as intended and lecithin content must be taken into consideration.

Side note:

We use conches to make chocolate and to achieve best results we add ~0.05% lecithin at the very beginning and 0.2-0.3% at the end just before final cocoa butter additions. With final content about 0.3%. This gives us the best conching profiles.

Taking above into consideration my rework recipe uses failed batch (which already contains 0.3% lecithin)  at 10% of the mixer recipe with no additional lecithin added and other ingredients adjusted. Mix gets processed in the refiners and loaded into the conche. This means that I will start with less than 0.05% of lecithin in the conche.

To sum up.

Chocolate can be reworked but only as a small part of new batch if one seeks consistency. 

We have done trials with using sunflower lecithin instead of soy lecithin. We have used liquid products with very similar specifications and there was no difference in results (taste, viscosity).

We have considered changing to sunflower lecithin to remove soy from the ingredients list but in the end decided not to go ahead. Too much effort required to change all packaging for practically no result.

Hi,

Thank you for your interest. You can come to check it out and we can talk. My phone: 416-492-0065.

Hey Tom - I didn't see the excel calc - can you re-attach or send to: bunkburger@yahoo.com? Thanks!

I use an organic liquid version - there a few on the market. I'd add no more than 0.5% as a rule and slightly less. As another poster commented - the taste is not fabulous - but then again it is for emulsification not taste, hence the small amount. I use because most soy is GMO. 

Hi, 

I'm living in Israel.

In a regular process I add no more then 0.5% lecithinm and add it in the last quarter of the grinding. As I mentioned just when I have no other choices I regrined it.

The question is: Regrinding is bad for my chocolate? or in other words: once you finish to produce chocolate, you can't just grined it again and again to see the difference?

LLY - 

Where are you located?

If I purchase a commercial couverture that has lecithin in it I can incorporate ingredients that need to be ground in (coffee beans for example). I would depend a lot on the ingredients to be ground in.

There is a maximum amount of lecithin that can be added to a recipe before it starts to have the reverse effect, and you want to add the lecithin as late as possible in the process.

Hi,
I'm now in a process of reaching to final recipes. So, many small changes are taking place.
I'm living in a very hot and humid country (almost 40 C outside - around 27 C inside), is it possible to regrinding the chocolate with the lecithin inside and combined with more ingredients?
I found that maybe the lecithin and the humid enviroment cause the chocolate to thicken (maybe more then usual and increase the lecithin from 0.3 to 0.5 didn't help).
Am I right, the lecithin trap the humidity inside?

Thank's

Hi,

I am interested in the Matfer temperer 20 kg. Am also in Toronto.

How could I contact you for details? Thanks.

Regards,

Omar

Hi, 

I am interested in some of the items.

email me codico.2007@gmail.com

I purchased some liquid sunflower lecithin to try in my chocolate. However, as soon as I tasted a small bit, it went into the trash. I was not going to even try it my chocolate. This is the one I purchased: https://www.mysunflowerlecithin.com/product/all-natural-liquid-sunflower-lecithin/

Perfect enrober 2, 20 kg; water heated Matfer temperer 20 kg, panner 2 kg, panner 10 kg, mould loader own construction, all best offer due to retirement. Excellent opportunity for a serious starter. Willing to train. FOB Toronto.

 20151225_052612.jpg - 1.9MB

Don't have much use for it. Was for a bulk program that didn't materialize.

Why are you getting rid of it?  Is hand filling easier?  

Has anyone tried using sunflower lecithin rather than soy? If so what would be the best option. Would one buy the powder or the liquid. Would the amount added still be the same and what is the ideal amount added. I've read 0.3% as a good amount for the soy version.

For sale

Ships from Champlain NY

Bought in 2013 used only a dozen times. Asking $ 3,000.00 This compact unit delivers accurately metered ganach fillings with tremendous flexibility. Stainless steel construction with eight adjustable depositing nozzles that can be easily positioned to your mould layout. Tank Capacity: 10 lbs / 4.54kg Power Requirements: 110V, single phase Dimensions: w: 15.75" x l: 20.5" x h: 22.5"

 A-1600-228x228.jpg - 24KB

Hi,

I tried to grind in the Santha black sesame (not whole grain) I add a little bit of oil. It runs almost 10 hours and it's still grainy, another thing is that is to bitter.

To make "raw" nut butters you need days of grinding? how come that the tahini is not as bitter as I get (by far)?

I planning to make unroasted coconut butter and I just want to know if and where I go wrong..

Thank's

Thanks, I'll take all that into consideration and figure it out. That's a great help. We both refuse to use soy and her current couverture has no lecithin in it already so no worries on that.

Based on your recipe and assuming 50% ccb in your liquor, your fat content would be 0.5 * 56% + 14% = 42% total fat. This is quite high and might actually be higher than a commercial couverture depending on what she is using . . . there might actually be more cocoa butter in your chocolate than her current couverture. Of course, you will have a different manufacturing technique (different roasting, refining and conching etc) which can all affect the final product. Also, you don't seem to have lecithin which the commercial product probably does.

It is possible to approximate the commercial couverture recipe assuming we're only talking about dark chocolate/couverture? Does her current couverture have a nutritional label with fat (in grams) per 100 grams of product? In Australia, we have that on the nutritional labels and that combined with the cocoa solids % of the chocolate will let you estimate the recipe for the chocolate. An example is (apologies for all the maths, but it's the only way I can think to try and replicate her exact couverture):

Assume at 70% chocolate/couverture that has 39g of fat per 100g serving size (so 39% Total Fat)

You also have to make an assumption about what % of the liquor is cocoa butter: I will assume 51% of the liquor is ccb.

So;

From the cocoa solids = 70%, we know [1][Liquor + CCB = 70%]

And from Total Fat = 39%, we know [2][51% x Liquor + CCB = 39%]

From the first equation: CCB = 70% - Liquor

Substitute that into the second equation 51% x Liquor + 70% - Liquor = 39%

Re-arrange to get Liquor = 63.27%

Therefore, CCB = 6.73%

So the chocolates recipe is estimated as:

Nibs/Liquor   63.27%

CCB   6.73%

Sugar  29.6%

Lecithin  0.4% (most commercial couvertures use lecithin)

We can check the recipe by using the first two equations above:

1: 63.27%+6.73% = 70% cocoa content

2. 51% x 63.27% + 6.73% = 39% total fat content

So then basically all chocolate over 70% dark is considered couverture? 

The reason I want clarification is that I am grinding my own chocolate and I am working with a local artisan and want to become her supplier for her couverture as she makes truffles but I make chocolate bars. I am having trouble finding out what proportions of liquor to butter I would need to grind in order to make a couverture that would be similar to what she is already using. It will be a 70% so 30% will be sugar but other than that I do not know. My chocolate bars have a ratio of:

56% Paste or Liquor

14% Butter

30% sugar

So basically I just wanna know how much more butter I should add to a recipe for her truffles. Are these only determined experimentally or are there any resources for me to find what commercial couvertures use for ratios?

I disagree. What about a chocolate made with 50% liquor and 50% sugar. That would have ~25% cocoa butter which would not meet the EU minimum of 31% (I'm basing that 31% on a quick look at the Wikipedia page linked above for chocolate standards, I haven't checked its up-to-date) - note, different countries have different standards as well.

Once again, I disagree. Couverture is supposed to have more cocoa butter than regular eating chocolate. Basically that makes it easier to work with when making moulded chocolates or dipped chocolates. 

I think the Wikipedia page linked above gives a good illustration (although I'm not sure if it is the latest in standards). For EU standards, both chocolate and couverture chocolate must have 35%+ total dry cocoa solids. But chocolate need only have 18%+ cocoa butter, whereas couverture must have 31%+ cocoa butter.

That can't be right though because then by that definition all chocolate made with liquor is also called couverture. If the definition of couverture is a butter content between 32 and 39% then just having a 70% chocolate made with liquor and no added butter is considered couverture and that just does not make sense because couverture is supposed to be more rich than just plain liquor on its own.

Don't forget liquor has cocoa butter in it (anywhere from 47-56%). If we assume the liquor is 50% cocoa butter then, as an example,

70% chocolate made up of 60% liquor + 10% cocoa butter

Total cocoa butter = 60% x 50% + 10% = 40% total cocoa butter in the chocolate

OR

70% chocolate made up of 65% liquor + 5% cocoa butter

Total cocoa butter = 65% x 50% + 5% = 37.5% total cocoa butter in the chocolate

When you see that couverture is a higher percentage of cocoa butter it usually states it's around 32% to 39%. Is this in relation to the cocoa liquor or is it a total including the sugar. Would a 70% couverture be?

39% butter

31% liquor

30% sugar

Or would it be?

39% butter

61% liquor

Then mixed with 30% sugar in the same proportion above.

The name of the game here is to be sure to try it on your chocolate before buying.  Everyone's pushing online calibrations (ie it reads your sample, and adds it to it's baseline calibration file with the argument that it makes everyone's stronger).  Because of the high matrix sensitivity of NIR, "Jimmys" calibration curve doesn't mean anything really to "Johnnys" actual chocolate - as Jimmy has different process, raw material sourcing, and formulation than Johnny does.

Their argument is sort of a 'wisdom of crowds' argument applied to calibration.  It just doesn't work that well i'm afraid.  if you've got a very similar type of chocolate and process it works fantastically well (in fact i've built networks of matrixed NIR nodes all around the world to do just that) - but as a general 'catch all' for anything chocolate - not so much.

HI, I want to buy a Used Firemixer 14 Table Top, I am Ohio, but looking all over for it, thank you for all replies,

Or can contact me at giveme153@yahoo.com

Thank you again, Brian

Spectral Engines has a new NIR instrument: http://www.spectralengines.com/applications/food-composition that has some interesting (at least to me) aspects.

Unity Scientific also has an NIR instrument - but importantly it has databases of characterized samples that could serve as baseline measurements. I think the machine is under $30k.