Forum Activity for @Clay

Dorothy:

Jean-Marie Auboine runs a school in Las Vegas, NV. I am not sure if he offers anything at this level, but I would check to see.

Hi Dorothy,

I have taken both Ecole Chocolat's and SFBI chocolate courses this year. They are good courses, but you will not work with any tempering or enrobing machines in these courses. You also won't learn any recipe development at SFBI and you are instructed by Ecole Chocolat to experiment with standard recipes. Neither course will help you figure out how to best design a kitchen, but Ecole Chocolat does require that you design a kitchen focusing on the major equipment.

Ecole Chocolat is a course where you are instructed to research this information extensively and they do provide a ton of reading material on all subjects involving chocolate. You can ask questions of two chocolatiers and they will provide some information and then they will suggest you do more research. EC is about getting you to take charge of your business. I think it is a great course, but it doesn't sound like it is what you are looking for.

I was frustrated by not being able to get simple answers from tutors because in general they would say the answer depends on what you are making, where you are located and what your business concept is. I regularly read both EC's website and The Chocolate Life for information.

Honestly, I think working for another chocolatier for a week would be your best option. EC offers week-long internships once you have completed their professional chocolate makers course. The internships are free but, you pay for your transportation, lodging and food. Sweet Paradise Chocolate, in Hawaii, is one of the companies (through EC) that allows students to intern and they have several tempering machines and an enrober. Melanie, the owner, is very knowledgeable and she will teach you to use those machines if you intern with her. She also has a cacao farm, so you would get the most bang for your buck with her. There are two or three other chocolate companies that offer internships through EC, but I haven't looked into them.

Good luck and please post if you find someone who is willing to let chocolatiers try their machinery.

Jennifer

Terry Richardson used to do a series of courses that sounds like it'd fit just fine - out in california. http://www.richres.com

Hi everyone,

I just posted this on the Startup Central Group, but realized it might work better on this forum.

I want to introduce chocolates to my bakery and have taken a few chocolate making classes, mostly for a few hours at a time.

I am trying to find where I can take extended chocolate courses -- hands on -- for up to a week at a time, that will teach me:

1. How to temper using different machines (batch and continuous), and work with different depositors, etc.

2. How to create my own recipes.

3. How to design my kitchen.

Here are my limitations:

1. I will only be using already tempered chocolate. I love to read about -- and have friends in -- the bean/farm to bar business but I can't do that.

2. The courses need to be in the US.

3. I can only go for a week/course.

I have looked at ecolechocolat, but I believe it is mostly online and I want to finally get some hands-on courses. I would like, though, opinions about ecolechocolat.

I have talked to Barry Callebaut in Chicago and they offer classes, but I don't know anyone who has taken them.

I understand that the SFBI also has a chocolate course, but again, no first hand opinions.

If any of you know of chocolate-making courses or offer them, would you please let me know.

Much appreciated,

Dorothy

The Stonehouse Bakery

Wonderful, thanks Clay!

Juliana:

Thanks for the kind words about the community and the book. I am privileged to be able to work with so many people around the world who share a passion for chocolate.

I think your best bet is going to start working with an online store/distributor like ChocoSphere.com. They carry many brands and many different varieties from those brands. You can purchase in small quantities to start with, and larger quantities if you need to. I don't think that sourcing direct from the manufacturers makes much sense at this level.

Hi Clay,

I am looking to buy 10 - 20 pounds at a time, with a price range of $5-9/lb.

I would prefer Latin American grown.

It would also be nice~ but not necessary ~ to find some that is Soy Free and Sugar Free for the purists.

I just ordered a sampler pack from El Rey to try their different varieties. If you know of other companies that have similar sampling packs that would be helpful too.

Muchas Gracias~

P.S. I am excited to get your opinion Clay! I am now reading your book Discover Chocolate! This is such a great site and community. I am very grateful for the the work that you and all the chocolate makers and lovers do to make this world more blissful and sweet one mouthful at a time! :D

Thanks,

Juliana

Juliana:

Two questions before we can answer this question for you:

1) How much chocolate do you want to buy? 10 pounds? 100 pounds? More?

2) What's your price range? $4-5/pound? $5-9/lb? $10 or more/pound?

I am looking for a good source to buy chocolate for melting to use with molds. Preferably Latin American grown with minimal ingredients, soy free would be great but is not necessary. I appreciate any suggestions, Thank you!

Thanks for the reply that is pretty much what I was starting to put together from talking with them and one of the people that uses one for nuts down in texas. It does seem to be a very cost effective way of roasting large volumes but like you have said there seems to be quite a few variables that contribute to how good it might work for cacao. I certainly don't think I have enough experience myself to pioneer the roasting of cacao in this machine though the price to production ratio makes for a tempting option...

Ash -

I contacted Roastech and the prices of the ovens are very good. However, they really are continuous ovens and they want to be run all day long (24/7 would be better). The smallest one does up to 50kg per hour, and based on what I heard I would not try to run it for less than 6 hours at a stretch and 8-12 would probably be better for consistency ... as the roast is not entirely even with the drum has different amounts of product in it.

The temperature range is quite large and there is a VFD on the drum so you can select how long the product is in the roaster. This gives you some fine control over the roast. They also claim (but I have no way to verify), that the moisture coming out of the product is turned into steam and so does perform a sanitary kill step.

There's no one using one of them for cocoa in the US.

For small batch production I don't know that one of these makes sense. But I could easily see production situations where a 50kg machine (about US$6500) could be very useful.

That said, fine-tuning variables to get the roast you want might involve a lot of time and beans and there is no way to inspect the beans mid-roast that I know of.

:: Clay

Look forward to you sharing your experience!

That certainly brings a better understanding to the situation... All that being said it seems something like theMoffatt E32D5 might be a good way to start getting to know the use of steam...

The flavanol preservation topic is a hugely complex one. There are many, many types of flavanols, and they complex with things like sugar and proteins. Some of them taste astringent, some of them don't. Most of them degrade with heat and water - but some of them less so.

How much starting flavanols you have, how long you hold them at a given temp (and what temp you start it, how you ramp the heat), when you introduce the steam and how long you have it present, what the starting moisture is of the beans themselves - well, you get the idea. Can you get 40% less flavanol degradation? certainly, but the details are important. 40% as compared to what? Setting the beans on fire? (i exaggerate, but often comparisons are baselined against absurdly worst case scenarios to make a product look as shiningly positive as possible). it's important to know what the claim was made against.

If, say, the 40% was baselined against a medium roast non alkalizing drum roaster that doesn't employ a water injection for micro kill - the types of flavanols you'd be 'saving' would result in a more astringent flavor (actually astringency is more of a mouthfeel than a flavor) - but it would be noticeable. Additionally, steam is a wonderfully effective way of stripping off some flavors (bad and good) - so if you're working with beans that have delicate floral or fruity notes - those may disappear in the presence of steam (depends on the nature of the chemistry that causes those flavors). Moreover (but wait - there's more!) - because of the additional astringency that could result from the saving of the flavanols, flavors that weren't physically lost could be covered up by the more present flavanols now (i.e. masking effect).

People have spent decades working to understand the intricacies of this seemingly simple question 8-) Would i personally look at using one for small scale production? That depends on what end i was trying to achieve, and what my starting materials were that i had to work with. Consider a roaster as you would any other tool - it's important to select the right tool for the right job, and to select the right tool, one must have a clear understanding of what it is they want that tool to do - otherwise you could inadvertently try to use a hammer to cut a piece of wood. The right first question shouldn't be should i use a given roaster - it should be what is the right roaster to use to give xxx and yyy results with zzz materials.

Ash -

I imagine that the flavanols would fall into the category of bitter flavors.

from what I am hearing/reading roasting with super heated steam in something like the roastech r100e can achieve similar results as a medium roast in an oven but maintains a much higher level of polyphenols and supposedly up to 40% less loss of flavanols... I would look at the fat not being degraded as a good thing... I guess just wondering how a 40% less loss would effect the flavor... One might assume that that would be better and there would be more room to pull out the flavor you are looking for... Really don't know just trying to learn more...

Well, i suppose that depends on what your definition of "better" is 8-) If you want a dark roast flavor profile, this is not the road you should take. If you want a lighter roast, it has it's merits - is it better? Well, especially when it comes to flavor - that's for you to decide!

Same for health - what do you mean by nutritional profile? Fat is part of the nutritional profile - this will do nothing to degrade fat. If you mean flavanols - well, generally speaking, water and heat are the enemy of flavanols.

The more precise you can be in your definition of what 'better' means, the more informed response we'll be able to provide.

On the bit of a larger scale... anybody have any experience with something like roastecksR100E?

[ Editor's Note: That's the Roastech R100E. ]

Also, if you can find it, Moffat makes (or used to) cookie racks for their ovens that allow 8 full sized sheet pans. Or you can just add some simple brackets to achieve the same thing. I did it for mine and the temp distribution throughout is pretty uniform.

This is a very small (consumer) version of what is often referred to as a "combi" oven and that is often found in commercial kitchens. What makes the Sharp a little different from most combis is that it also includes a microwave cooking option, something that is not found in most commercial combis.

You can achieve an improved level of microbial kill by using a combi oven with steam for a portion of the roasting cycle. You can get the oven quite hot, add the beans on trays, start the steam, and roast for a relatively short time. At which point you can remove the beans to let them cool and turn the oven down to a much lower temperature for the remainder of the roasting cycle. This way you can effectively achieve a lower roast profile while getting the benefit of the microbial kill step.

One thing to consider is that once the beans are cooled you could crack and winnow them before putting the nib back in the roaster. This could mean much shorter roast times as well as more even roasts.

If you want a larger oven, something like a Moffatt E32D5 will give you the steam option with a five full-size sheet pan capacity.

Pretty well micro scale but...

What about something like the little steam ovens from sharp sharp ax-1200?

I suppose my next question would be then using steam can you achieve a better flavor and maintain more of the nutrition as it says in a few of the reports I have been recently reading? as you have said on the light and medium profile anyways? Almost all of the roasted chocolate I try pretty much taste burnt to me... I would hope to get a medium roast without the burnt chocolate flavor coming through while maintaining as much nutritional value as possible... I notice a big difference in the way raw cacao makes me feel but do understand the need for heat in the chocolate making process... There for I would hope to compromise with a method that maintains the highest values of nutrition and flavor...

I wouldn't say it's new - i'd used them for many years, but not on a small scale. Excellent way to achieve an effective micro kill and get a low to medium roast profile. Anytime your'e working with superheated steam and pressures on a small scale, your costs are going to be 3x higher than if you were simply due to the safety elements necessary to prevent your roaster from turning into a bomb.

Hi there, anybody have experience with the new method of superheated steam roasting? Or the roasters them selves and wether or not it would be practical to acquire a roaster for small scale production... I have read that it is a way to maintain maximum nutrition and health benefit...

Variable. More then a couple of mm but less than the width of a finger (i know someone who knows that firsthand (pun intended) from putting his fingers where they shouldn't be while equipment is running).

Can anyone tell me the gap size between the blades and wall of a Frisse or Thouet type conche?

Thanks

Interesting. I'll be up in NYC a bit next week, and more so the week after.. I'll have to look for some.

Peru in July - are you going down for the chocolate trade show? Someone offered to pay my way for a week if i came down to speak - and i'd love to - but i'm afraid it's not good timing for my family. Next time 8-)

Sebastian:

I will check into the pH levels with our master distiller when I am in Peru in July and get back to you.

Solbeso is now available in the US. We're registered for sale in New York and Florida and I think we can ship to 48 of the 50 states if you're not in NY or FL. LMK and I can send you the names of our retail partners who ship.

It's an interesting liquid. It has no taste of cacao/chocolate, but is reminiscent of pulp. 40% ABV, so it's formulated for use in cocktails but can be drunk neat or over ice (it behaves a lot like a brown spirit - water softens it and opens it up). Good cocktails are in the sours and international sours families. One of our signature cocktails is called a Beso Picante - hot kiss. Solbeso, lemon juice, orange liqueur, and heat -- cayenne pepper, habaero bitters, muddled jalapeo/cucumber ...

Solbeso also makes a great Michelada. We did one at Taproom 307 here in NYC during Beer Week -- the Midnight Sun Michelada -- that was lime juice, Solbeso, spicy tomato water (from pico de gallo), and a splash of Worcestershire. Shake, pour into a pint glass (salt-rimmed if desired), fill with a black IPA, and garnish with a pickled jalapeo slice and a lime wedge.

It also goes great as a beer shot/boilermaker with Cusquea lager.

:: Clay

One of the tricky things to manage - especially at larger fermentaries where the cacao isn't grown where it's fermented - is to be sure to manage the freshness of the beans. The second you split open a pod - fermentation begins. Jungles are wonderfully effective incubators, and there's yeast, mold, and bacteria everywhere, just waiting for you to open a sugary pod up and let them begin to feast. Typically the farmers open the pods, collect enough to transport, and then transport - if you're able for receive these beans w/in 8 or so hours of them first being opened, you're going to still have a high bris level (sugars), which is your primary indicator of how much fermentation has progressed. Acidity doesn't really start to play a part until the secondary and tertiary fermentations of lactic and acetic kick in - if you're observing pulp (juice) pH in the 3 range, it's a very clear indicator that either fermentation has been underway for some time (i.e. the beans were harvested before you think they were), or there's a significant disease/pest impact at play. I suspect that if you were to go to the farms and trace the supply chain, starting the clock from when the first pod is cut open to the time it arrives at the fermentation center, you'd find the time is considerably longer than 4 hours...

Edit - huh i've never seen solbeso - is it available in the US?

Sebastian:

T0 is when the pod is opened?

In our experience in fermenting juice for Solbeso, by the time it arrives at the collection center between 4 and 8 hours later, pH of the juice has dropped considerably into the range I mentioned.

The Rizeks are going to be the most advanced of the non-privatized folks to work with on this topic - they've got a very nice set up there that a member of this board helped them build in fact. Marcello Corno would be your main technical contact there, and they have a small micro laboratory on site at their main production facility. As noted, yeast selection doesn't really matter as long as the strain is viable, and it only needs to be viable for a portion of the fermentation as it will be quickly outcompeted by the other two phases. I've just reviewed some of my historical pulp pH data - now - and this is critical - assuming you've got relatively fresh pods, undiseased, you're going to have a 95% probability that your T0 pH will be between 4.74 and 4.93. That pH will drop over time as the acetobacter and lactobacter kick in, to be sure, but by the time that occurs that yeast's job is done (it's main functional job is to convert sugar to alcohol - which is important for a number of reasons) - but once that's done, it doesn't matter if the yeast lives or not.

Tibor -

Vicente Norero in Ecuador -- Camino Verde -- is offering several different fermentations from the same beans so I know that there is someone doing this on production scale and you can buy the beans and taste the differences.

Also, I have heard that the Rizeks in the Dominican Republic have been doing the same for some of their clients. I have not visited either facility so I don't know any of the specifics.

There are commercial sources for yeasts for the various alcohol industries - beer, wine, and spirits. Wyeast Labs is one source I know that several of my beer, wine, and mead friends use. If you wanna go all serious and stuff on this project, Lallemand may be a place to try.

One thing to consider when sourcing yeast for fermenting cacao pulp is that the pulp has a pH in the 3.5 range so you're going to want a yeast that is comfortable working at this level of acidity -- not all yeasts are.

The three things you'll need are yeast, lactic acid bacteria, and acetobacter, very concentrated. remember that naturally, there are dozens/hundreds of strains out there that are all competing with one another. At the end of the day, it usually doesn't really matter a great deal which strains you have (there are a few exceptions, but not nearly as many as you'd might expect with the thousands of combinations). while the callebaut work is actually being done, it's really more for marketing than affecting actual large scale results. others have been doing this type of thing for many, many years and are significantly more progressed in their understanding and usage of these techniques than callebaut.

Any brew house can give you the yeast, i've never looked for retail available acetobacter or lactobacter, but i'm sure they're available as well. It's important to understand the fundamentals of fermentation before starting to try to tweak the components of fermentation, so i'd encourage you to be certain you've got the basics of that down first otherwise you're going to just get frustrated and not understand why.

I have heard that Barry Callebaut is working with starter cultures for their fermentation that gives great and consistent results for their fermented beans.(like yoghurt, beer, wine, cheese makers)

I am not so much interested in the consistency part, however the it is very exciting opportunity to create required flavour profile for the beans, like microbreweries do with their yeasts. It gives the opportunity to work with desired cultures, not just whatever "falls" and multiplies in your batch of beans.

Does anybody have any info on this? Should it be possible to use starter cultures used in other products like beer? Where can I find cultures that I can experiment with?

Thanks Brad I will try this!

The problem you're running into is that the silicone is insulating the chocolate and keeping it warm too long at temperatures which create different types of crystals. Your silicone molds need to be cool.

Does lecithin help chocolate keep its temper? Or is there anything that helps prevent bloom? I use silicone molds and the chocolate starts turning a lighter color after a couple weeks. Chocolate from the same batch that I pour into polycarbonate molds stays fine, only the silicone ones bloom. Are there any suggestions for this? Thanks!

Personally all my experience is with butter various nut oils , olive oil and tinctures. That said I have found that roughly 190 degrees sees the least degradation of the cannabinoids. One process that may be of use is to actually make an alcohol tincture and then evaporate out he alcohol with low heat creating an extract. The extract can then be added in measured doses to warm cocoa butter, though it likely will need to be warmed first to aid in it mixing uniformly throughout the butter. Naturally the strength is going to vary by plant strain, and harvest so each batch has to be individually tested, but once evaporated it is easy to test for potency and determine the appropriate quantity of extract per batch of chocolate.

One thing to note is that using a super tincturing method is best. That is where you grind the plant matter and then add the alcohol until the plant is submerged by a good inch (typically 750ml of 195 proof alcohol to 1 ounce of mmj) blend well and place in a 3qt pot. place on ELECTRIC heating coil and slowly bring to med. low heat wherein you start to get pin bubbles forming. Lower the heat to maintain just a pin bubble and stir occasionally. Heat thusly for 12 minutes ( sometimes the plant may urge you to stop at 10 minutes or continue to 15 minutes - that's between you and the plant) remove from the heat and poor off into a jar. After it cools, strain and squeeze the last of the alcohol out of the plant matter. Notice you now have an emerald green tincture. Now you can use the tincture for in liquid filled bon bons and such or add to chocolate recipes wherein the low heat levels will naturally evaporate off the rest of the alcohol.

It is interesting to know that if you use 90-100 proof alcohol and the same process, you can actually kill the THC while keeping the rest of the cannabinoids such as CBD. This tincture comes out very tanic looking - brownish, rather than green. If you use dense couch lock type strains such as NYC Diesel or Bubblegum, or other heavy Indicas, you will get a powerful aid for insomnia, relaxing of smooth muscle cramps, aid for indigestion, stomach upset and wasting syndrome. It will also aid in the relief of menstrual cramping and other symptoms as well as for the easing of tension headaches - all with out the psychoactive high. I have not tried it myself but I would guess it might give aid in the other health issues in which CBD has proven to be effective medicine. Since this tincture has a higher water content it is going to be a bit more tricky to use in chocolate recipes, though you could likely pre-evaporate, and thus concentrate the tincture moving it toward an extract.

Just dissolve the cannabis oil in melted cocoa butter instead of MCT oil, and mix thoroughlyinto the chocolate with a stick blender, before tempering.

I forgot to mention that the cannabis oil must be decarboxylated for edibles. This is done by slowly heating the oil to about 210-220F, until you see small, uniform bubbles appear. Continue for about 3-5 mins or until the bubbles stop. Now your oil is ready for proper processing by the human digestive system.

Cheebs

Thanks for the detailed information. At this point in time we are more interested in producing a bar. So the next question do you add the oil to the chocolate as the chocolate is being tempered? or after the chocolate is tempered? or does it matter? My goal is to produce a bar with a consistant amount of THC of CBD

Thanks