Forum Activity for @Captainofgoods

So... there's a situation about a great book based on the taste of one person. Aren't all food, wine, etc. books based on the taste of one or at least four persons? - and I don't even mention al the suggestions they make in their books. If I want to read a good book about some kind of product I can do two things: the first thing is enjoying a book about the product I love and ignore someone's taste and suggestions or take someone's suggestions and taste as a example to learn more about my favourite product. - In my own blog I also write about products based on my taste. Nothing wrong with that.

And than the grammar / translation: as a writer ( what I do next to blogging ) I also make grammar mistakes, this is what makes me human.

For me this book from Georg Bernardini is a masterpiece. I spend hours of time creating my own chocolate list. - till I found out about his book. Now I only look further for chocolate products that aren't in it. That's also why I ask him if there's another version coming up within 5 or 10 years. Unfortunately not... so, if there are
things people don't like about his book: here's a chance! - write it!

Good luck Georg with your chocolate... I'm still enjoying your book.

Tonny, Thanks for sharing, I'm excited for you. 

Just a quick update: I ended up ordering a Unox Mind.Maps and It's on its way to me - The Unox Sales & Marketing Director was very resourceful and helpful and in answering my questions and addressing my needs - Those Machines has outstanding controls and can be used almost anything beyond cacao and once you figure out your roasting profiles and store them, cacao roasting could be handled by unskilled personnel - Thank again Clay Gordon for the your valuable advice!  

@peterk, can you please share the your breakage discovery across the four different roaster types? Avoiding breakage during roasting is of importance to me.

The following equipment is for sale in the LA area. Pick up only. 

Robot Coupe R2N Commercial Processor

Used a handful of times only to grind chocolate

Like brand new

$700

Mol D'Art melter 12 kg, includes 2 additional 6kg pans

Gently used, like new $650

Commercial Drinking Chocolate Machine, brass finish

$250

Price Computing Electronic Scale, up to 30 Kg capacity

$150

Please contact Elizabeth at (818)639-2417

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We have 1,000+ lbs of organic, fairtrade, cocoa butter warehoused in Ohio.

Purchased from Atlantic Cocoa last year.

Packed in 25 kg boxes. Asking price $4.50/lb.

If interested email miles@perfectfuel.com

More molds still available.

Let me know if you are looking for some excellent molds, 0.5 oz cavities for a great price.

-Miles (email above)

Nino,

We did exactly that, the same beans on four different roaster types, tasted them off against each other as nibs and then as liquor. One of our conclusions was that the breakage has a greater effect than recognized. As far as " brighter" I prefer to think of it as complexity.

WOW, Brad and Clay agreeing on something? how long have i been away from this forum???  what is happening!? ha ha ha!

Good luck with the factory Brad! following the process on FB...

We have a fluid-bed roaster that we built locally (South Africa) together with our coffee roaster/engineer friends. 

Compared to the drum roaster i previosly owned, it is fast and it doesn’t break the cocoa beans while tumbling, meaning the beans roast evenly and no broken-burned nibs end up later in the chocolate mix.

Once I figured out the profile I want for my beans, the parameters are set and practically anyone can roast! Compared to the drum-roasting it is almost a walk in the park.

 I used to work with a drum roaster, and although is very difficult to compare (i use now different beans) I agree that the fluid-bed gives a “brighter” roast than the drum one. it has  enhanced the fruity notes of the beans and it is very consistent.

it would be fun to test the same beans in both type of roaster to see what really is the difference between the two!  

Cheers

Nino

Hi Clay,

thanks so much for clarifying, this is helping shed some light for me. We have access to a Selmi Legend and that's what we have been using. Regarding tempering by hand, we have done that at the beginning and never had any issues with it, which I guess means we were never challenged in that aspect. We have already looked into tempering curves and yes we do see some clarity from that. Do you have any advice regarding the Selmi Legend, or any other thoughts on what might help us get insights?

Brad/Clay

Thanks again for the advice. My background is organic superfoods so I tend to focus too much on taking care of a niche. I'll instead focus on making the best hot chocolate possible.

I'll start with the recipe Brad suggested and adjust from there. I didnt quite get how to take it from kitchen to mobile vehicle to hot chocolate in customers hands?

for coating cabin you can check also this link.

https://akaygam.com/belt-coater.html

Good to know, thanks!

OM foods is expecting a shipment of ecuadorian cacao near the end of the month. The price on the site is a lot lower on this shipment as well. Send them an email and inquire about it. The stuff on the site they are almost out of.

Also would you mind giving other advice?  

What width strings should i use?  

Can you recommend ganache frames?  Whats the highest I would want to go?  Are acetate sheets preferable to silicone mats?  I will be making two layer ganaches.  I also make pate de fruit.

Im thinking of buying the cart built for the cutter but its $300.  What I like is I have no room for the cutter and i can store my 5 frames underneath perfectly.  Any reason to get something else?

Here's some pictures.  Thank you.

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What tempering machine are you using?

Who in your operation knows how to temper properly by hand? Part of the issue is that you may be relying on the machine to temper and you are using a temperature formula that does not work for your chocolate. This is less of an issue with commercial couverture (but it is an issue). When you are making your own chocolate, the challenges are much greater.

BTW, I find semi fluidized bed roasters to be the most controllable and most precise roasters I ever worked with. You can get whatever profile you want out of these things, it really surprised me. That said bring a few checkbooks.

I agree with Clay.

OMG.... Did I just say that?  LMAO

Cheers and good luck with your drinks!

I think that´s a great idea Clay, and we would love to have you here. I think it´s possible to join this event prior to the Cacao de Oro Colombia, and Casa del Chocolate Colombia, so everyone could experience more of Colombian cocoa.

What are your recommendations in terms of ensuring the machine tempers correctly, do you have any insight on that?

Changes in humidty can affect temper. If the humidity is 55% one day and 75% the next then the temper points are likely to be different.

Just because you use a high-end tempering machine (what brand?) does not mean that the chocolate is in temper. The machines are not artificially intelligent - they only do what you tell them to do. The moisture in coconut palm sugar is particularly problematic.

David -

The whole idea of TheChocolateLife is open sharing. I hope people will answer publicly here - perhaps in addition to responding privately.

October is shot for many of us. There is a chocolate show here in NY the first weekend, then Chocolate Week in London followed by Origin Chocolate in Amsterdam and then the Salon du Chocolat in Paris.

In the US, anyway, you have the NW Chocolate Festival in mid-November followed by Thanksgiving. Trying to get most people out of their workshops to travel in December is going to be tough.

So that leaves September. After the 11th and then finish before the end of the month.

You want a mix of people to attend - buyers for sure (specialty brokers and small chocolate makers), but also people who can promote more generally ... writers, video production, and etc.

The organizers at the Salon del Cacao y Chocolate have done a great job of organizing these kinds of events/trips over the past five years.

I am interested in attending!

Grant -

Brad gives a lot of good advice here. 

Right now it sounds like everything is abstract. Actually make the products and try them and then give them to your friends and have them try them. Test them out. You won't know what works until you do.

One thing we don't know is where you are. Brad's shop is in Calgary, Alberta, CA, and that market might be different from other markets.

Using butter is a bad idea - there's already enough fat in cocoa. If you want to make your product thicker/richer just use less liquid or mix different milks. See the Wikipedia entry on this .

Why are you reluctant to use cornstarch? Have you tried it?

The most important take-away from what Brad says is that by trying to be everything to everybody you end diluting (pun intended) the brand and end up being ... without a viewpoint. You cannot cater to every potential food allergy or dietary fad out there.

Pick something and do it well. Own it unapologetically and do the best you can. Yes, you will lose some business ... but focus on the 90% who want your product and not the 10%. (Is there a vegan meetup in your area?)

If you want to do a water base and then prepare it with milk or water that's about as far as I would go ... but if you are steaming will you have to have two of everything (do you have room in your mobile environment?) to avoid cross-contamination -- the fraction of your customers who are vegans (research suggests that about 2.5% of the population is vegan - at the high end - but I bet the percentage of vegans in Omaha, NE is a lot less than in San Francisco) will require it.

But until you actually test in your market you can't know.

Grant;

I've been doing this for a long time, and have amassed such a loyal following that my customers have, in the past two months stepped up and loaned my company $300,000 to build a bigger factory.

Here are some words of wisdom to live by when you are trying to "keep your costs down".

1.  Garbage in.  Garbage out.  You can't take crappy ingredients and make great things from them.  Cocoa powder is the bottom of the barrel in the chocolate industry.

3.  If you use liquor, you don't need to add fat.  The liquor is +/-50% fat already.  Use a homogenized milk, or even a 2% fat milk.  That works best.

4.  Under $20, if the quality is there, nobody cares about price.  This has been proven time and again with movie theatre admission, theatre popcorn, wine, chocolate bars, and way overpriced cappuccino's.  Make a product that WOW's people, THEN figure out your costs and charge accordingly.  People will pay the price you ask.

5.  With respect to a "vegan option", I did almost 6 months of research on this one, and it's a total bust.  I made a drinking chocolate with Soy Milk.  Anti-soy vegans complained.  I made a version with Almond Milk.  Nut allergic vegans complained, plus it tasted nutty.  I made a version with rice milk, and an amazing whipped edible oil product for the top (or optional toasted marshmallow).  It seemed to pass all the "acceptability tests" from all the hypocondriac fair trade organic non gmo wingnut vegans out there, so advertised the heck out of it.   In fact I got FABULOUS feedback during product trials.  So.... I spent several thousand dollars on marketing, literature, signage, social media (vegan facebook pages, etc.), and sold.... you ready?  40 servings.  I also threw out a lot of pre-prepared drink bases, because nobody purchased.  If you would like to create a version that caters to the 6 vegans out there in the world at the cost of quality to those who actually pay your bills, well.... I think you are selling yourself short.

Well, I hope that helps.

Hi everybody, I would like to hear your opinion regarding a forthcoming cocoa event. We’ve been trying to make the arrangements since last year but we had to delay it several times due to severe drought.

It will be developed in a small town, named Garzón, in the central part of the Colombian department, Huila. We aim to asses several cocoa bean samples, from single farm origin, for their flavor profile to explore different flavors in this department and try to arrange the farmers who owns special flavor cocoa, with micro batch and small chocolate makers.

Some of you may have heard about other Colombian cacao origins such as Santander, Tumaco, Arauca or Sierra Nevada, but not Huila. Most cocoa around here is trinitario hybrids with criollo traits and some few criollos. Some farmers have clones, but the vast majority owns very old highly diverse cocoa plantations. This has been a barrier for development of Huila cocoa market since this variability poses a challenge for selling uniform cocoa beans in a significant quantity, every farm tastes very differently and even bean size varies greatly.

We would love to have some international clients and experts for this event, so I come to you for some advice.

First, the date could be somewhere between September and December of 2016 Our sensory panel is busy until September 11  and I’m aware that there are a lot of great cocoa and chocolate events on those dates so I’m open to suggestions.

About the duration, I’m thinking one day of a small public academic agenda and cocoa awards, and three to four days for the clients and experts to meet the farms and local cocoa production.

I´m open to every suggestion and I insist that it would be great to have some of you around here but keep in mind that this is a small event, focused on giving farmers a new horizon and meeting with possible clients. If you are a cocoa or chocolate expert, I would like to know your fees in a private message so we can discuss our budget.

We have support in English, French and maybe German. We would arrange transport and lodging from Neiva (Huila capital city) to Garzón. It is possible to reach Neiva in airplane (Bogotá-Neiva) but from there to Garzón there is only terrestrial transport (2 hours).

This event is organized by Fedecacao and Camara de Comercio de Neiva, and it is supported by Coocentral, Ministerio de Agricultura, Procolombia.

If you would like to contact me, please send me a PM and If you are interested in coffee, there is a lot to see around here too.

Thanks Clay and Brad. As per subject I was planning on pre preparing, a liquid choc, to cut down the time it would take to make it on site. Definitely no melting of chocolate.

I like the water ganache/syrup suggestion and that it would give me vegan/vegetarian options. Warm/hot milk could always get added to this to make it richer.

Ive been reading that water ganache tends to bring out the chocolaty notes better than standard ganache. Is this true?

Two weeks back I made a beautiful chocolat Chaud with chocolate and cream. This is the reason I was looking at butter to make it fattier/richer/thicker and equivalent to cream when I mixed the ganache/syrup with full cream milk.

I'm reluctant to use cornstarch but may consider it in the premixed water phase with sugar.

What can I do to increase the solubility of the cacao/cocoa?

So the suggestions is to use the best quality liquor which is basically ground nibs? I want to keep the costs down so would prefer not to use any components that are too expensive.

we do monitor the temperature at which we temper, which seems to be working just right for our chocolate, but not the humuidity. Whats your insight on humidity and its effect in tempering?

$6 drink in Canadian Dollars .... 99cents in US Dollars.

Advice from Brad ... Priceless.

Haha! 

Brad - $6 Canadian? What's that in real money? [ Tongue planted firmly in cheek - it's a joke everyone. ]

Grant - there's some good advice in what Brad has to say. One is that you need to take a look at how long it's going to prepare a serving. One of the fastest ways — if you are committed to a la minute preparation — is to steam/froth an already prepare liquid. You don't have to have a 100% prepared in advance mix if your concept is something else, but take into consideration preparation times. It shouldn't take longer than preparing a cappuccino.

Water and milk make very different products. One is not necessarily better than the other, they are different. Traditionally, dairy was not used, water was. Cornstarch is a pretty modern ingredient in hot chocolate mixtures and is great (in small amounts) for adding mouth feel and body. Keep in mind that it does take some extra time for the starch to fully hydrate and if you serve it too soon it can have a pasty texture whether you use milk or water. In Mexico they used (and still use) very finely ground corn flour in their atole (also called champurrado).

If you wanted a very "authentic" product then water and very fine corn flour are one way to go. A more modern take (and one that might appeal to more customers) would be dairy and cornstarch. Of course, they aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.

AND, if you are going to use dairy, use the absolute best — freshest and most flavorful — dairy you can source.

:: Clay

Hi Clay,

thanks so much for the response. I suspected thats what it was but I am surprised mostly that it shows up only several weeks after the chocolate is done. We use coconut palm sugar.

The strangest thing is we actually use a high end tempering machine. So if I wanted to prevent this using the machine, would it mean I'd have to make the chocolate heat up and cool down numerous times to ensure proper bonding of the molecules?

Sanja -

The chocolate is not tempered properly. What you have here is a classic case of fat bloom.

The best way to fix the problem is to hone you tempering skills. That said, what are you using to sweeten the chocolate? Some sweeteners have a lot of moisture in them that interferes with the tempering process - so it could partly be a recipe issue.

Also - ambient environment can have an affect. Do you monitor temperature and humidity where you temper?

I don't see any Ecuadorian cacao on OM foods website. Am I missing something?

You guys crack me up.

Dear Chocolate lovers,

I have been making chocolate the raw way for the past months, i.e. I don't heat anything above 42 Celsius in the process. I'm noticing with some of the chocolates I make that they look perfectly fine when they come out of the form and for the following couple of weeks, however, some of them after a while start to develop streaks. They seem to get just a little less visible as I go over them with my finger, but mostly the discoloration remains. Is there any way to prevent or at least mitigate this altered look in the long run?

I am aware that this sometimes shows up right after the chocolate  is done, but I find it strange that it becomes visible after lets say 2 or 3 weeks. What are some tricks and tips to prevent this?

Thank you so much!

Sanja

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I have tried many of giddy yo yo's chocolates and they don't make me high... If you eat raw chocolate and don't get high from it then I can almost guaruntee that its not fully raw. Chocolate in its raw form stimulates serotonin, and contains tryptophan, anandamide, and PEA as well as theobromine. These things all stimulate feelings of euphoria and excitement but Giddy Yo Yo fails at this. They are probably the biggest raw chocolate maker in Canada though.

Also if your looking for supply they are not a supplier, their prices are too high for raw chocolate ingredients. They are a chocolate manufacturer who also sells ingredients on the side which means you pay a premium to buy from them in bulk.

I would reccomend OM Foods now. They just got a new shipment of Ecuadorian cacao that is organic, raw, and fair trade certified, and their new price on this shipment is the best I've found in Canada.

Giddy YoYo is a company that provides Ecuadorian RAW heirloom chocolate. They are Very focused on high quality raw cacao products. They make bars and such and they also wholesale paste, butter, nibs ect. they are in Canada.

Here's a recipe you can try.  It's worked for me over the past 7 years, and I've sold close to 20,000 12 oz cups of the stuff at premium prices ($6 per cup).

4 litres of Homogonized Milk

450g of the best liquor you can buy (unsweetened chocolate)

890g of regular granulated sugar

60g cornstarch.

Shave the chocolate and set aside.

Mix the sugar and the cornstarch together, then dissolve in the milk and bring the milk to almost a boil.  

Remove the milk from heat, and stir in the shaved liquor.

Pour into a jug, and then portion out and use a steamer to reheat it as needed.

IF YOU WANT THE BEST FLAVOUR USE THE BEST INGREDIENTS.  Water isn't one of them.

Some people balk at the use of cornstarch, but it serves a couple of very important uses:  1.  It thickens the drink without making it too sweet or too bitter.  2.  It suspends all of the fats and particulate in the drink to create a homogenous beverage.   For a beverage truck type of service you are suggesting, melting chocolate and mixing it with liquid is not practical when there's a lineup of people impatiently waiting.  This beverage can be made ahead of time and quickly steamed with a miriad of spices to create different flavours.  One of my most popular is the drink with two tablespoons of hazelnut butter.  OMG!!!

It's also good to know that the use of corn starch goes back all the way to aztec times when maze (a traditional incredient) was ground with the cocoa beans to make the drink.  Back then the starches were introduced naturally.  Having said that, this recipe makes your drink closer to the traditional form than any of those you have described, and it tastes WAAAAAAY better.

Hope that helps.

Brad

Need more heat on the stones / drum?     I currently use a Robot Coupe to pre-grind part of the batch, once you have some liquid and frictional heat being generated then just adding nibs slowly works if everything is warm enough,   A s/h RC  would be around $700 - 1000

Looking for 2 chocolatier available immediatly for our Las Vegas Chocolate Factory.

Please send resume to jma@jmauboinechocolates.com