Wow, this is great news Mark. A few hours of conching I can do. Depending on how noisy the process is, I might be able to let it run a day and get those conching effects too.
One more question: Does the machine have a heating system to keep the chocolate warm?
Thank you again!
Sorry, no, what I meant was, you don't have to pre-grind the sugar. Add it to the chocolate, right out of the bag. Where I live, the sugar is even more coarse than the sugar in the USA, but I still just add it straight...to the chocolate.
Conching aside, you can refine the sugar to a smooth texture in a few hours, but I usually let mine run for a day or two, in the garage, to try and accomplish a "conche".
Hi Mark, thank you for replying. I had never considered just putting the only sugar in grinder. I want to make sure I understand what you are writing. I think you are saying I can put sugar in the grinder, dry, and let it run? That would be fantastic. If on the other hand this is not the case, then my next question is how long would I have to run a batch of chocolate (in other words wet) before the sugar crystals would become undetectable?
What I am trying to avoid at this point is running the machine for 48 hours. I work out of my home, and that would be disruptive.
If you are looking to keep your investment low, try a wet grinder from Premier. They are sold on Amazon for just north of $200. I have used the "Wonder" table top grinder for about a year, with no problems, even after a lot of abuse. That version is 1.5L and I have made as much as 8 lbs at once with it. They also have a tilting, 2L grinder for about $25 more. My guesstimate is that the 2L could make 10lbs at once. I can run tell a difference in texture between six hours and 48 hours after I grind, but I also don't notice any coarseness. The only mod I would make is to make some kind of window screen enclosure so that you can keep the lid off and get some airflow going.
Final note, I just dump table sugar in the machine and let it do the milling. You will a little crunching for a few minutes while the wheels crush the sugar, but not for long.
if need any table top or small customized machine im ready to do one for you
t'm specialist chocolate machine more than 150 models designed till today
Well at first, we refined the sugar ourselves with a good processing machine, it worked but the chocolate needed a looong time to decrease the particle size due to the sugar crystals.
Good luck 
!
Hi Daniela, yeah, I bet the starch had a big impact on the conching machine! I tried using a confectioners powdered sugar with tapioca starch to see what would happen. It became very thick and I had to increase the cacao butter to make it useable. The product itself tempered and molded well though, and I am considering using it temporarily until I can resolve my next step. It tastes great, and has a velvety mouthfeel. I also tried the coconut nectar which did not seize up the chocolate but it had a strong flavor that I don't prefer.
I work out of a licensed home kitchen, so the conching is not practical yet, but is clearly the right solution. I read on the internet that there is confectioners sugar without starch in Europe, so maybe I will need to source that from there.
I read the conching article, very interesting, thank you. As I read the article it made me wonder if I can find a way to refine just the sugar, but by the end it seems like I would run into the same problems.
Thank you!
We're tried different brands of refined sugar, unfortunately we did had an accident once with one brand of sugar that contained starch (even though they said it was "pure sugar") and our Santha basically overheated and created a big smoky mess and the machine was, of course, unusable after that. About the noise, it's not that bad, we conch the chocolate in the shop, right in front of the customers so they can see And well, the sugar we're currently using it's made in Costa Rica.
You can read this article on Chocolate Alchemy about conching, if you haven't already. http://www.chocolatealchemy.com/conchingrefining.php
Hi Daniela,
I apologize for the long delay in answering. I would love to know the source of your "fine sugar"!
I am going to try making some bars with Coconut nectar and see how that works. I am worried about moisture issues, but will find out if this works. My research on sugar mills is that they are either very expensive in the $5K and up but available in the USA, or are $600 and available in China or India where I guess they still have cottage industry and thus supply this kind of equipment. I still hesitate, I know sugar is gummy, and will it gum up the machines? Conching seems a good answer, but I am not in a situation where I can do that due to noise and such.
Thank you!
Mack
Hi Mack, we use the Santha for conching small quantities of chocolate (3.5kgs/batch aprox), it homogenizes the mixture, lowers the particle size and I have noticed changes in flavor and texture. We recently came upon a very fine sugar so we were able to lower our conching time but we're looking for a sugar mill to make it ourselves
We have made chocolate from an already conched chocolate (like 70%, just to add different flavors) and chocolate from fine powder and the Santha works fine.
Hi all, first I want to really thank you for all the wonderful cacao wisdom you share here. I read your blogs, and have slowly figured out how to make my chocolate bars thanks to you. It is time to get some more advice as to next steps in my chocolate bar creation.
I am currently selling my bars in one local natural food grocery. I sell about 10 dozen bars a month there. I wish to add more retail outlets, and need to send samples. Before I do this I wonder what "the next step" in making them more delicious and more marketable might be?
So, first off, what I am doing is making them out of "raw" powder (debatable I know), cacao butter and coconut sugar. My first concern is the texture is somewhat coarse because the coconut sugar is so granular. I do grind it in a magic bullet first, but it is still too coarse, especially in the 75% where the sugar makes up so much of the volume. Is a conche the best next item to buy? If I understand the blogs here, the conch will grind down the sugar and other particles, and in that process also volatize off some undesirable flavors?
My system of melting and tempering is ok, though it is manual. Still I can make and temper a 4 pound batch easily. Is the conche the machine I need??? And if so, I need one that can deal with at 4 pounds at a time. That volume will grow. So suggestions as to what brand and model would be appreciated? On the other hand, perhaps that is not the machine I need? Also, I wonder since the powder is so fine, it is almost dust, am I conching basically just the sugar? If that is the case, would I do better finding a mill for the sugar? What else will the conching do for my chocolate? Also, I am still a small business, run in my home kitchen, with a state license, etc. Still, if it is noisy and running for days, that is a big impact. What would be the quieter brand of conche, assuming conching is the solution.
So, the coarseness is an issue. Is it pointless to conche chocolate that is made from fine powder, or will it improve the taste as well as the sugar texture?
Thank you!
Mack
Grinding for a long time is just that. To conche you need to apply heat. A heat gun at 65-70 degrees for about 8 hours removes any volatiles and so improves flavor. I think there is video of this on this site. You may want to think about the end result ie. what is your desired outcome ? Then choose the right variations of temperature and time as well the actions you would need to get the right flavor and texture [mouthfeel] you desire.
Using a fridge to cool is a not advised as the temperature is too low, try a wine cooler. Maybe try to cool for a longer period.
Clement
Hello dear chocolatiers!
So our venture with chocolate is well underway and we are now in the process of dialling in our recipes for our final product.
Question #1
We are using a Cocoatown ECGC-12SL (which is running great!) and we are wondering; How long we should be grinding it?
We are using raw nibs and grinding for 24-28 hrs with great texture results but there is still quite a bit of bitter (tannin??). From my research after grinding many manufacturers would now conch for up to 4 days to let some of these bitter compounds evaporate. If we just kept grinding for an additional day or so would we come up with a less bitter product? We like some bitterness but we need to reduce it a bit.
Question #2
After tempering (which we do by hand on granite). We then pour into our molds and place in the fridge (because we seem to get untempered chocolate when we just leave the molds out to harden, any advice on if we can do something so that we dont need to refrigerate would be great). After about 15 minutes in the fridge we pull them out and remove them from the molds. This is where we are having some trouble keeping the bars from breaking. Is it because we are trying to remove them while cold? How can we make sure the chocolate comes out easily from the polycarbonate molds??
Any and all advice greatly appreciated.
Gratitude.
Evan and Brianna
Thanks Jon. The amount of time seemed normal and I usually do check the temperature manually - it was right at 88 (Dark Chocolate). I've used it a few times since then and the problem hasn't recurred. I now use a portable air conditioner that I locate right next to the Delta so I'm hoping that it was either a humidity or an over-seeding problem.
When this next happens, could you double check the chocolate temperature with a different thermometer? When this happens, does it seem like the melting stage reached its final temperature more rapidly than normal?
I've seen my (very old) Rev II machine sometimes show strange temperature readings and then go to the next steps in the tempering process on the basis of what seem to me to be transient measurement errors. I've seen my system declare that tempering was finished because of a transient low reading, caused by a bad connection to the temperature sensor.
-Jon
I tend to get the same problem with the delta but only after being in temper for too long. Four or five hours. Raising the temp to 89-90 f takes care of it pretty well. We have very low humidity here.
I was noticing the humidity level in my work room this afternoon and it's around 65% so maybe it is a moisture problem.
if it is moisture, add 0.05-0.1% fluid lecithin to help address it
Thanks Sebastian. I'm careful with moisture but I will up the temperature a few degrees. John
Could be. Is there any chance moisture is getting into it? if not, warm it up 1-2 degrees.
Hello All. I know this is something I should already know (probably have forgotten it a few times over!). When tempering chocolate using my Delta machine, occasionally it becomes very thick just as the machine says it's in temper. Whenever that happens I just start the process over again because I know it will just cause me blooming problems if I continue. Is the thickness being caused by over seeding, or something else. Thanks for the help, John
I believe the mistakes came from putting the casted shells overnight and the next day only I started to do the filling. the fridge temperature at min , i could easily obtain about 10-12 degree celcius fr the thermometer read out.
I shall try again , Stu Jordan. tq
Or 5. Your chocolate was not tempered correctly
And you need to tap the mold onto a surface, hitting it from above won't really work - what you describe in 3 could be part of the problem.
How long are you leaving your chocolate to retract after casting the shells? What are you doing with the fridge? Try putting shells in fridge after you have made them for 12 minutes, that may get your retraction process started, then fill them and leave them before sealing.
I have a question about the problem i've just encountered in dislodging those chocolate praline from the polycarbonate mould. First of all, let me explain the problem ..
I removed the praline mould from the refrigerators at the temp of about 10-13 degree celcius. The room temperature in my country was about 30 degree Celsius. I hit at the back of each single chocolate in the beginning and nothing came out of it. A couple of knocks before one of it dislodge by itself.
The overall process took sometimes and i knock on each of the praline to take it out . In you tube video, we saw how easy it was with one knocks and everything just came off like that.
Here I suspect some of my mistakes and i wonder if any of them were the problem.
1) during the sealing, i did not use heat gun to melt the top of the praline before sealing it with temper choc.
2) The chocolate shell could be too thin? could it be one of the cause?
3) Imnot knocking on harder surface and not enough of shock to dislodge all the chocolate. Im hitting with a steel spatula at the back of the polycarbonate to dislodge single piece instead of knocking it down on a hard surface with full force.
4) the chocolate is still too cold .
Thanks in advance .
those logistics aren't really all that different than most other regions, to be honest. the life cycle of the typical cocoa moth is about 25 days (mas o menos), and you hit on the main source early on - almost all of the infestation will occur in the warehouse and storage. if he's got beans that are 25% internally impacted, that's occurred over the course of many months (potentially even years) - OR someone's scalped off the 'worst of the worst' to clean up a lot of beans - assuming the beans are bagged and palletized, the majority of they impacted beans will be on the outside facing surfaces - to prepare a bulk shipment for someone else. There's a saying in the ivory coast that roughly translates to 'there's no graveyard for cocoa beans' meaning ALL beans find their way into sale-able streams - diseased, infested, moldy, or not.
Thanks for the reply! That puts it into perspective a bit. As someone who has made a few of them journeys, unrelated to cacao, I could understand completely how difficult it might be to get anything out of there at all... I have yet to try them as a finished product but do look forward to seeing what comes of them.
its nothing inherent in the beans, its a warehouse or transport issue. you're probably talking about polilla moths, they can have strong or weak years depending on weather and humidity patterns. polilla levels are also affected by the condition of the warehouse, whether they've fumigated recently, how long the beans are stored, and how and when they were transported. For Beni wild beans they have to go for days along river routes, then days in trucks up over the andes, then on a boat, the logistics are horrendous and polilla can multiply at various stages along the way. Its frankly a miracle that any of those beans make it to market without major damage, a true testament to Volker Lehman's prowess.
Yea thats pretty much what I was thinking and fortunately didn't get the larger order I was going to place. Thanks
well, there's really no such thing as a domesticated bean.. so...all beans will have bugs. if you are finding them on the inside at 25% level, that's a sure sign that they weren't taken care of properly post harvest, and someone's just offloading them to get rid of them.
I just acquired a order of wild beans from Bolivia and was wondering, as I have never used wild beans before, if they tend to have more bugs or if its just a bad batch as there is at least 25% insect damage. Definitely smaller and not the best job of fermenting but a decent enough looking bean aside from the insect damage. Thanks
I only did this once, but actually had very good luck using a robocoupe with a shredding disc, the sort normally used for making things like shredded vegetables.
The shreds break up into a relatively fine (if irregular) powder.
I was planning to use this as seed for tempering, but then found out that I could use mycryo, so I did not develop the process past one attempt.
-Jon
you can try an urschel mill. note almost all mills generate heat when grinding. grind slowly to generate less heat. or add dry ice.
Many ways to do lot coding. Often times it's done julian style. an example (stolen from the net) could look like:
Sometimes, rather than a specific day of a month, the "Julian date" or day of the year is given --for example, January 1 would be "1" and February 1 would be "32." These two illustrations by the Canned Food Alliance show how this might work:
Can code:2061(February 6, 2001); 2=month, 06=date, 1=year
Can code: 0195(July 14, 2000); 0=year, 195=Julian date -- July 14th is the 195th day of the year
If you run multiple shifts, it's prudent to amend the julian code to include a shift designator (-1/2/3, -A/B/C, etc)
Hi Everyone,
Anyone care to share their process regarding batch no's displayed on packaging ?
A lot of retailers require.
Thanks in advance,
Louie
It really all depends. Once our dark chocolate comes to temperature(88.7f in our case) we wait 10 minutes, and then test by dipping a piece of parchment paper in the chocolate. If there are any issues with setting up (streaks, etc) we wait a little while longer and test again. Usually the chocolate is well tempered right off the bat. We use a fully automatic Savage Brothers machine,fyi
Thanks Louwegi! How long have you found it optimal to let it sit at 87? It is getting agitated the whole time.
Did you pour as soon as it got to 87degrees ? Ive had issues with pouring right away, not allowing enough time for the correct crystal formations to proliferate. There can be pockets of perfectly tempered chocolate and not-so-well tempered in the same batch. Agitation is key
Hope this helps
Hello,
My hubby and I have been making dairy, gluten and soy free 'milk" chocolate. We've just started trying out a melanger and can't figure out what is causing the swirls in the pictures. Here is how we made these bars:
Hi Melanie,
We've got one for sale! Shoot us an email at: elliegoldman730@gmail.com
I am desperately looking for an enrober, small, such as the Hilliard 6 inch. Please let me know if you are looking to sell one, or if you know where a used one might be for sale.
Hi thank you for taking the time to read this.
I'm look for non dairy dark chocolate truffle shells. If anyone knows where I can find it. I've been looking but cant find it anywhere. I heard about making it with a polycarbonate mold as a second option. Can someone please recommend a good place for me to buy it.
Thank you so much!
