I find the coconut oil / butter handles very differently at different times of the year - but we are in Australia. In summer it's very easy to separate from coconut cream and milk as it's liquid, similarly in winter its easy an its hard. There are transitional temperatures where it appears grainy and is like sludge. Maybe your working at some transitional temp. From memory it melts at about 27 degrees centigrade.
We make a variety of flavoured chocolate smoothies, (aka the poor man's truffle). We use a microwave to soften the coconut oil.Originally, wejust softened it enough to whip it to a mashed potato consistency, and it worked quite well, and set fairly quickly.
Then, even though we did not change coconut oil brand, it seemed to be grainier at whipped potato texture and we had to heat it longer, and now, unless it is melted completely, it still has a grainy texture, which shows up as white spots in the finished smoothie. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
just a note cheebs - cacao will grow much higher than 2100 feet in the right conditions. I have seen it at 4000 feet before, although it appears that this is not the norm. but where he is it may very well grow up higher than 2100
i totally agree that sales focus should come before even planting to get an idea of what potential buyers would want in terms of variety and post harvest processing. this will inform every decision you would make about what and how to plant Dr. K, and thus the cost structure.
saludos
brian
Um, Costa Rica is 9 degrees NORTH of the equator, so you might want to re-check your coordinates.
It really depends what type of land it is. Cacao grows between 0-2100 ft in altitude, in very wet conditions. Naturally, the flatter the land the easier it is to grow/harvest cacao. Most of the plantations in Costa Rica are using the 4x4 scheme, which means a tree planted every 4 meters in a grid pattern.
As far as required investment, it really hinges on the extension of the land, how overgrown the land is, how hilly or flat, and how much infrastructure is already in place. Plan on spending easily 50% more than originally budgeted, that's just the way things are in Central America. Time frame for first harvest from clones: ~4 years.
As far as selling the cacao, remember that to be useful to the chocolate industry it must be fermented and dried. Only if it is of exceptional quality will you get people to make the trek to you, so the best plan would be to actively market the product internationally and line up your buyers well in advance.
Dear Chocolatereres;
My dear friend in Red Hook has some property, along with a group of American Ex Pats,
in Western Costa Rica, just south of the equator.
He and I have been thinking about what to do with it. He wasafter me on Solar Farming, and selling power to the other techies there. I suggested growing Caco plants.
Or perhaps both. There are a few plants are on the property, but not thriving. The word is the junglehasencroachedtoo much and the plants are very fusy.
It also takes a few years to bring production up; and seeding / cutting / launching a new plantation is a big project. Even if it is an old abandoned plantation. It is in the foothills by the coast, and gets monsoon rains daily. We would have to redo-drainage and were even thinking of micro hydro power.
I would love to discuss/partner with someone on this endevour. I'm a PhD but not a biochemist, like my dear friend Prof. Murphy. Your thoughts on this potential project welcome. How much seed funding is required, and how long to recover the investment ? Can we sell the raw Coco in Red Hook or broker it out ?
Cheers!
dr. K
Hello,
I am very new to the chocolate life and I am looking for a contract manufacturer (preferably in California) that can make and package my very unique chocolates for me.
Please let me know if anyone comes to mind, or even information on where to find such a manufacturer would be very helpful.
Thanks so much!
-Jonathan
In San Francisco I used to buy it at Mercado Brazil:
http://www.yelp.com/biz/mercado-brasil-san-francisco
No info on southern CA, but with the large Brazilian communities in LA and SD I'm sure it's around.
Hey Seneca, where have you found it in California?
I've found frozen Cacao and Cupuacu(T. Grandiflorum) juices at Brazilian groceries in California and Hawaii, and I'm sure from there you could find a distributor. Or, if your Portuguese is decent, try this site:
Count me in for a couple of litres 
~
Some fiends here do fresh sugar cane juice and sell it at markets and in various shops. Boy do they have problems with it fermenting. I left a half bottle of it on top of my home refrigerator one day and by the time I came back from shopping it had exploded literally covering the kitchen.
What they do for shops is hard freeze asap after juicing and deliver frozen to shops refrigerators (which is quite common for many products here). Even then their longevity measures in days and they monitor shops fridges replacing fermenting bottles. They don't pasteurize as it spoils the taste in their opionion. Guess there must be some volatiles that are lost at 72 degrees C.
Oh I see now you are in Equador... must be some local farms there you can find who can treat this nectar the right way and pasturize or freeze...when you find, let me know... amazing stuff...we can drink it and will live forever
This is a great idea. When I was in Hawaii, we drank some Cacao nectar that Sharkey had made from his harvesting. WOW, what a great juice, incredible I must say. I had the same idea. There is certainly a market for this stuff. The issue will be capturing this pulp or juice before too much fermentation, as in fact it is actually fermenting off the seeds and making itself into juice. The process of capturing this juice or pulp, and pasturizing or freezing it to keep it safe for consumption of further processing is the biggest problem. We buy fruit puree from a fruit coop in France. The fresh fruit is delivered daily to the coop for processing. If it is not able to process, they place the fruit in a huge warehouse air tight room, suck the oxygen out of the room and drop the temp to around 1 dec C, suspending the fermentation process until they can properly extact and process. I dont see any cacao growing regions having even an Igloo cooler let alone a setup like this, so other than nectar made on the spot on the farm, and consumed almost immediately, this is going to be a tough one to find. BUT PLEASE I WISH SOMEONE COULD DO IT, as it is great stuff going to waste.
I do know there is a chocolatier or baker in Hawaii that is making Cacao Nectar ganache, although I have not tasted, I bet it is great.
Our best bet would be to find some farmers in Hawaii willing to setup a small process treatment plant, and get it from there.
I can only imagine this nectar would be the most exotic juice in the world if made by someone.
When I was in Aftrica, the locals distilled it into home made moonshine cocktail.....not bad after a hard day of harvesting.
dear Sirs,
I need to buy immediatly frozen cacau pulp frozen to do rich juices in USA.
Can you help me ot find it?
lartecsa@gmail.com
Thanks for the response. I am really too small and unknown to get rated usually, although here and there I have, as for ex someone was rating Israeli chocolate- a chocophile, and she was neutral to begin with so I agreed. The rating was very good.
But really the discussion was not about my business.
I guess it does depend on who and what kind of review-you are correct.
I get annoyed when newspapers here, online and not, do exactly what you wrote-some Italian or French chocolatier who has the business of his great great grandfather etc, rates chocolatiers here along with other un named local judges. How can one know if PR people didn't pay for the article for some business? And then the local food or chocolate forums discuss the results and sometimes are a bit nasty. Fine to be neutral, fine to praise, but why get nasty and try to hurt someone's business? Not that I have any connection to such a business, but the issue just annoys me as I would never deliberately try to hurt someone's income and livelihoodand I thought to see what other people think. SOmetimes the responses to this topic on other forums are almost mean (not here).
Ilana;
Youaddress a very interesting topic - one that I have debated with people for a long time. Unfortunately there are many food blogs (urbanspoon.com, chowhound.com etc) which allow people to post freely. Add to that the exposure via twitter and other social media vehicles, and we as business people really don't have any control over what gets posted about our businesses over the Internet - good, bad, or ugly.
Prior to getting into chocolate, I was an internet expert who even went so far as to takeone of mycompanies public on the NASD . I'm very aware of the damage that negative internet publicity for a business can create. Google "Choklat", and you will find a miriad of posts on us - some being terribly negative - calling us arrogant, over priced, etc, right through to "Oh my God! I've just found Heaven on Earth!".
As the Internet becomes more ubiquitous, people read the reviews, and many take them with a grain of salt. In fact, I've even had people come in specificially because we've been attacked in a blog post. (I chewed out a snotty customer, and she posted my reply. A few people read it and came in just to spite her! Haha!).
One thing I DON'T subscribe to, is contests, where a few high visibility, well respected community members judge a business's products, and then rate them. A lot of business is conducted on a trusted referral, and to have a trusted member of the community criticize a business for whatever reason, and have that criticism made public, that WILL have a damaging effect on the business. The bottom line for me, is I don't care about contests, or competitions where my chocolate is "judged" by a select few. God only knows what THEIR agenda's are!!! I care about what my customers think. After all, some hoity toity french chef with a name I've never heard, nor can pronounce, who's studied under another hoity toity chocolatier with a name I can't pronounce in a Belgian town I've never heard of, will never buy enough chocolate to keep my doors open. However the thousands of customers who already DO buy our chocolate will. My customers are more important than Mr. Hoity Toity.
Cheers.
Brad
For those interested, I ended up emailing Keller directly and they have a tray for their truffle shells and they are shipping to Qzina for me.
I wrote the above post before having tried filling the shells, but I just did so and I know why a filling tray would be used! It is not easy to fill a truffle completely without an air pocket. The tray would presumably allow you to force filling into the shell with the weight of the tray holding the shell in place, allowing you to fill it without air and to clean excess filling from the top of the tray rather than the sides of the truffle shell. I am sure that with practice it is doable, but after this experience I would definitely like to find a filling tray that matches the Keller brand.
I spoke with Tamara who said she was going to refer me to a company in Montreal (she was headed into a meeting), which I'm guessing was Chocolat Chocolat. I contacted them and they don't sell them, but it raises another question regarding the advantage of using them. BTW, Albert Uster sells metal trays for their truffle shells (looks like at least $400 for filling and sealing trays, excluding shipping) and Pastry Chef has a plastic one ($60) for their truffles (Dobla brand), which are a different brand than that sold by Qzina, which has an office in Vancouver where I live.
The only other reference on the net that I found was a comment by someone who suggested that the trays were difficult to use. However, the book I have says they are major time savers. So other than locating trays that match the Keller brand, I was curious to know whether people who make truffles with premade hollow shells use trays or why they don't use them.
Jim;
The person at Qzina I would start with is Tamara Fusick. Great service. Her contact information is below:
Tamara Fusick
Gourmet Account Manager
Calgary & Southern Alberta
Qzina Specialty Foods, Inc
CELEBRATING 30 YEARS OF INSPIRATION
FOR CHOCOLATE, DESSERT AND PASTRY PROFESSIONALS.
12547-129th st.
Edmonton, Alberta
Cell: 403-585-3488
Toll Free: 800-563-4315
Telephone: 780-447-4499
Fax: 780-447-2499
Jim -
Richard Foley mentioned that Qzina was selling the Keller shells. I would start there. Qzina also has operations in Canada if I recall correctly.
Does anyone know who sells filling and sealing trays that match the Keller made truffles? I've read that there is variation in truffle hole openings and trays have to be matched to truffle shells.
Hi - I've purchased the 32 impression round truffle molds from JB Prince. They are about $50 each. It's a 2-piece magnetic mold. You fill the bottom sphere up, place the top part on (a half-sphere w/hole), and if you are doing it old school, hit the table a few times on each side of the mold to make sure it covers the whole thing, (but I would suggest the vibrating table), then place it upside down on a cooling rack so the extra chocolate drips out of the hole. Put parchment paper underneath to capture the extra chocolate to use again. With 10 molds I can make about 320 molds at a time. The investment is about $500.
The thing is this - I'm tired! And it is an investment of time. I have to use the same molds for my white, milk and dark chocolate, so it's kind of a 1-2 day investment if you need them ASAP.
I spoke with my chocolate distributor and he said he can get them pre-made for me from Callebaut, but he thinks they are made with "covering" chocolate, which I do not want to use. I'm waiting to hear back to confirm.
So my question is - would anyone know of a company that sells the pre-made shells made out of pure, good old fashioned, cocoa butter only, couverture chocolate?
Thanks!
Patty Medina
medinachocolatier.com
ok, first of all: yes, fill the truffle shells almost to the top and let them rest over night before cap them.
by the next day they should have shrunk enough to leave enough space to close them.
Pre-made truffle shells are very expensive.
Now, here is a way to make truffles (shells) as cheap as it can be, without having to buy a spinner.
Chocolate World in Belgium are selling a filling machine called "Easy Fill" which I have used for many years.
Not cheap, but a far cry away from a one shot machine/spinner.
And now the trick:
they are selling a 2pc truffle mould (magnet/series 2000) which you can use to make either only truffle shells or in "2 shot" way, the entire truffle with filling.
I have the moulds, but still have to find the time to use them.
You can of course also fill the moulds by hand but the easy fill machine will make it much faster and more equal in weight.
Make sure to get the machine for truffles as there are 2 types.
Check-out their website.
Thanks for the advice, everyone. It's hard for me to go from completely hand made EVERYTHING to using shells, but my research has shown they are extremely common. I even ordered some truffles from a French guy in the states, and he was using them. So I figure, if it's good enough for a French guy, it's good enough for me! 
My next question is: what's the best way to fill/cap the shells? When I was making molded chocolates (where I made the shells myself) I would let the fillings set overnight before capping. Is this recommended for truffles too? I've read that people cap them right after filling, but my concern would be that the filling would contract as it sets, leaving a gap for air, which could result in mold.
For anyone interested in learning a tiny bit more about one-shot, try this page on the A w ema web site.
CL,
Premade truffle shells are the way to go, as you need to make extremely high volumes to justify doing it yourself.
And with truffles, the sweet, creamy center is what counts the most!
Good luck,
John R.
Since your main concern is consistency in size, I'd suggest you buy a guitar. Different arms will produce different size squares, and from that point you only need to roll them into truffles. The end result will be size uniformity, you'll save yourself the cost of having to always purchase premade shells, and then in good conscience you can continue to say your truffles are handmade.
Have you ever walked into a chocolate shop and seen perfectly round (except for a flat bottom) truffles? They were done either using a one-shot machine or by filling shells.
You identified the key issue for you - if there was any negative impact on taste or texture you would not use them. As there is not, then why not? A long time ago I learned that it was important to understand what I was "willing to fall on my sword" for when it came to production. Yeah, I know I could make my own puff pastry, but, there are so many good ones that are frozen, by using those I could concentrate on what really set my work apart and allowed me to increase production (or reduce the number of hours I spent in the kitchen).
One of the most famous chocolate companies in Chicago (whose name also starts with a V and is not Valrhona though the name is French) used shells from the very beginning - although they may be doing them on one-shot machines now for production and shelf-life reasons.
The only problem that I see is representing them as one thing (100% hand-made) if they are not.
BTW - just because you start using shells doesn't mean there is no longer room for a 100% hand-made product - a real truffe nature au chocolat.
Hi,
Have you thought about Chocoflex by Laghi, from Pavoni.it? Is an alternative to the already made shells, it gives you consistency in weight and shape.
I have used the shells for long time, nothing wrong or bad about that.
but if you wish to do everything from scratch, you could either trying piping, let dry and then hand roll (you could easily pipe about 200/300 every 15 min.) but you may have problem with size consistency. I decided to switch to Pavoflex mainly because the cost of shells is too high where i live.
regards
Nino
Truffle shells are standard in the industry and are designed thin so you dont really notice them, and they should not be impacting flavor, but more used as a tool for your production. Although I would not suggest using bad chocolate truffle shells, I think spending the money on expensive truffle shells is not worth it, again as you likely will not taste the impact of the truffle shell in the finished product.
Qzina sells a truffle shell made in Germany, with Callebaut Chocolate, made by Keller. We stock these in Chicago, well priced, that should increase your profit vs more expensive truffle shells. Keller is probably the biggest producer in the world of truffle shells, top quality. They also have a number of shells in unique shapes by special order. We import direct from Keller in full containers and are very competitively priced.
Also Truffle shells allow you to manufacture very soft fillings, which is not possible without them. We also can get you liquor shells, smaller hole in the top, designed for liquid filling. There are also filling machines, and plates available for truffle shell trays that dramatically speed up your production, and make covering or topping the shells easy, consistent, and fast.
IF your production gets very high in volume, you should then consider the only machine that can truly deposit thin shell one shot, truffle shell and filling in one shot, the Avema Depositor. We have many customers who for example, have the round truffle shell molds, and fill the chocolate and filling into the round ball shape, in one shot, still maintaining a thin shell and liquid filling. That machine however is around 100K. But just for future reference.
Hello friends,
I own a small chocolate company which has been slowly growing over the last 4 years. I mainly sell wholesale to small gourmet shops, and am really looking to expand out of my city and to a more national basis. With that in mind, I really need for this business to become profitable. My sales doubled in 2010 and I did see a profit (for the first time) but I have yet to pay myself (or any employees). In other words, I need to start making money.
My biggest selling item are my truffles- they make up about 25% of my total sales. I have been doing everything by hand- making the ganache (though I have started using a food processor to help with this), scooping (#100 ice cream type scoop), rolling, dipping, everything. I can personally scoop, roll & dip about 200 truffles/hour. However, I have problems with consistency of size, as well as shelf life (I typically get a very thing shell). I am considering using premade shells, but I have always been opposed to them in the past. They seem like a copout to me, a shortcut, etc.
I got some samples from my local distributor (who does sell the Valrhona shells, though these were not V's) and tried it with one ganache, and I don't really notice a difference. Obviously if the shells made a difference in taste or texture, I wouldn't consider them.
So my question is, does using premade shells make me a bad person? I've never been one to take the easy way out just to make a buck, but to be honest, if I don't start making money soon, I won't be making chocolates at all for much longer!
My advice is to purchase a true and tested winnower, you will save money vs testing and trial and error.
I just visited Cacao Cucina in Tampa, great winnower for 11,000 USD so for 8000 Euro, you have never to worry about it...
But on the other hand, I visited a farm in Hawaii winnowing with a small vibrating table, and a modified Shop Vacuum from the hardware store.
Nice thing about buying from Cacao Cucina is the machine breaks, winnows, and results are very good, very low shell content.
Hello !
Firstly, thank you for this site and for this forum ! It's so useful for us!
We are new to making chocolates and we would like to create our factory for handcrafted chocolate in a small european country.
We learned from internet, that tomake1 kgofchocolate, about300-600beans ( 500-700gr) are processed. Is this true ?
We would like to build our winnower. Do you have some advices ?
Thank you in advance for your help !
On the same topic you may also want to check this short but well written opinion piece :
[Edited to add: The study, "which followed hundreds of Nicaraguan coffee farmers over a decade, concluded that farmers producing for the fair-trade market are more often found below the absolute poverty line than conventional producers.
Over a period of 10 years, our analysis shows that organic and organic-fair trade farmers have become poorer relative to conventional producers.]
Is being "smug" a part of the challenge that needs to be overcome?
Earlier today, Equal Exchange posted the following table on their Facebook page:
and then bragged about the fact that their pay ratio (the ratio between the highest-paid and lowest-paid workers in the company) was only 4:1.
I asked them if their computation of the pay ratio included what growers got paid.
They poasted no, but then tried to justify their position in a very long reply by saying that, when they included an estimated annual income for an average grower at US$3000 that their pay ratio was still "only" 33:1 - a much more "egalitarian" figure than companies whose CEOs would have pay ratios of thousands:1 or more if the wages of foreign farmers were considered in the mix.
Is "egalitarian" "fair?" Is that the measure of the success of these programs?
For me, trumpeting the pay ratio is a symptom of an attitude that is prevalent in programs like FLO, and reminds me of a shell game where our attention is deliberately distracted so we can't see what's actually going on.
