Wine Cooler/Cabinet for Chocolate Truffles/Pralines Storage
Posted in:
Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, Techniques
Tim -
I don't have any connection with Thermalrite and from a quick glance at their web site all they are selling are the Desmon pizza prep tables so I am not sure there is a fit there.
Irinox is gold standard - very expensive, but they do the job very well. They are expensive like a cooling tunnel is expensive but the footprint is a lot smaller. The Desmon products are less expensive but not all of them have humidity control, which is important in most parts of the country for at least some of the year.
In the end it all comes down to airflow, cooling load, and "recovery time." Airflow is about the ability to remove what's called the latent heat of crystallization, the heat that comes off the chocolate as it cools. You want the chocolate in the mold to cool consistently and evenly to ensure proper crystal formation and to reduce the likelihood of de-molding problems.
Cooling load is a measure of the amount of heat that can be removed. Think of an air conditioner and a room. A small AC unit might be able to cool the room but it might take a long time. Put four or five people in the room (or a window) and it might not be able to keep up. So, you need a cooling unit that is sized to the amount of heat that will be added to the system (in the form of warm chocolate).
Recovery time is important for cooling units with doors on them. As most doors are hinged and swing open, that action extracts a lot of cool air from the unit that is replaced with warmer air from the room. The question is how long does it take for the unit to return to the set temperature?
There are many different ways to approach cooling and it all depends on throughput and space. If you have the room and you need to move a lot of product, cooling tunnels are very good solutions. Lots of people I know build cabinets or even large rooms. You can use household AC units (split systems are good) and the CoolBot [Note: that's an affiliate link] will enable you take the household AC units below 60F, which is normally their lowest temperature.
There are a couple of ChocolateLife customers who are also building "static cooling tunnels" that I came up with the idea for. These are enclosed wire shelves (e.g., Metro shelving) under positive pressure from a cooling unit. The nice thing about these is that they can buy wheels for the units and move them around as needed.
