Sweet Regards, Alexandra
Hello everyone,
I am new to this forum and hope this is the right place to post.
My name is Daniel Preston and together with Steve Chelminski have started a company to design and manufacture cocoa processing machinery.
Our mission statement is to design and build modern production machines for medium scale artisan companies which pay design homage to turn of the century roots of the chocolate industry.
The machines are designed to be show-pieces for artisan manufacturers. Unique designs coupled with visible and accentuated mechanical details intended to maximize the experience of visiting customers.
Steve and I are aerospace engineers with a background in automation. We collectively hold over 140 patents/pending patents and our work has appeared in the Smithsonian, Metropolitan, Cooper Hewitt, Wexlar and other museums. We recently sold our founding position in a defense company (we designed and manufactured satellite guided parachutes & UAVs), being too young to retire and while visiting my family in the Caribbean, lets just say I caught Cacao Fever (which seems to be very contagious). My family has been in agriculture & cacao in the Dominican Republic since 1899. The first machine we designed is our Vortex winnower. Its based on our inventive technology of separating nibs from husks using Vortex tubes. It has an Integreal two stage cracking mill and we designed it to be constructed in Pyrex glass design so that the process is visiable. 70 kg/hour production rate. There is a video posted on our web site which is pretty fun to watch
www.brooklyncacao.com
Other equipment we are working on:
Vortex Roaster
Cacao beans are levitated and roasted in a swirling hot air vortex. Pyrex design allows visibility into the process. The extremely efficient heat transfer and low thermal inertia of this design allow unique roast profiles not possible on other systems. The design also features a digital temperature profile controller, automatic PC data-logging, graphing and quality control report for every batch.
Melangeur
4 to 8 Large diameter spheres revolving in a toroidal track. More efficient than classic roller mlangeurs, while being very easy to clean and fascinating to watch.
Modern version of the classic Lindt linear roller conche. Available in single and twin systems. There is something mesmerizing about a slow moving longitudinal conche.
Ball Attritor Mill
Chocolate is quickly milled by grinding balls as the mass moves in a swirling toroidal motion pattern instead of a closed pot.
Daniel Preston
www.brooklyncacao.com dan@broklyncacao.com
I've only used the Chef Rubber colors so can't give an opinion on others. But, I did have a problem with the red colors for a while. Every time I used it, lost 90% of the molded chocolates. Very frustrating to say the least. I don't know if the batch was bad, but I tried several things to get it to work with no luck.
A couple of months ago, I ordered two new bottles of red and they have worked great.
I ordered some new colors and they were a little strange. They seemed thinner, and had a really strong cocoa fragrance. All the original bottles I ordered just had kind of a neutral smell. They have worked OK, so can't really complain.
It does take a lot of trial and error with this stuff. I've found that if they are overheated, it will mess it up. Just my experience. I melt them in the microwave on medium and shake the bottles a lot.
Chef Rubber is great for a lot of items, but they are a little overpriced on molds I've noticed.
Chef Rubberdid a custom design for me and I was not happy with the results. They should have told me the design should have been enlarged for a larger truffle so you could tell what it was.Their stock designs are wonderful! Great resource for lots of items.
