Hello All,
I've just signed up to The Chocolate Life and I'm also just starting up a tiny little chocolate business here in London.
I'd love to meet up with anyone else who's on the chocolate scene here in the city.
Say hi! Let's go stuff our faces at the William Curley dessert bar or something.
Best,
Connor
It's time for me to start looking in to caramel wrapping equipment.
I need something with a small footprint and something under $5,000 used
Is there anything like this out there? I saw Package Machinery's tabletop wrapper, but at almost $20,000 it's way out of budget.
Even something just semi-automatic would be great.
Any suggestions or ideas would be appreciated!
I press all my own butters... and I go so far as them being Plantation-Specific, not just origin-specific. It is outrageously expensive to do this, and if I weren't in the country of origin, I would not do it. There's a video in my profile of the process.
And I don't use it in all of my chocolate, only in eating chocolate. For couverture we use a local butter that is still quite nice, but nowhere near as awesome as the butters pressed from prime beans.
Even so, deodorized butter has its place in our operation. For beans that we can't get enough of to press the butter from, in goes the DO butter. We also use it for making a white chocolate that goes in ganaches and fillings.
Julie;
There is a lot of deceptive labelling and naming in the chocolate industry. "Percentage" and "origin" are just acouple misusedterms. To battle that, I have since day one, put the exact ingredients and their percentages by weight on the bars my company makes.
Brad
This is what I suspected. But for me it then raises the question of how honest the labelling is.
For instance an 80% pure Single Origin, from Land A. This could have 40% cocoa butter from unspecified sources. So in actual fact only 40% cocoa mass would be from the the Land of Origin.
Therefore I would like to see clearly on the packaging..
Percentage cocoa mass from land of origin
Percentage sugar
Percentage added cocoa butter... from land of origin
Percentage added cocoa butter... from unspecified sources.
Butter is like any other commodity - they'll produce what the majority users want. Much of it is indeed deodorized - i'd be hard pressed to say if most of it is, however - but certain a lot of it is. Almost all of it, deodorized or not - is blended to try to achieve consistency. Cocoa beans are not always fermented, not always ripe, sometimes infested, sometimes rotten, etc. Origin notwithstanding, all these things result in different physical and sensory profiles - blending helps round those out to achieve a stable commodity.
Shawn presses in the US BTW. His cocoa powder certainly won't go to waste, it's in another of his products 8-)
This is an interesting thread, and I'd like to add my two bits...
There has been no mention yet of deodorized, or non-deodorized cocoa butter. Sebastian would know better, butmy understanding isthat most of the cocoa butter used today in chocolate is deodorized, because most of it is made from cocoa beans that nobody would really want made into chocolate and by itself smells horrible.
If in fact the cocoa butter IS deodorized, then origin is for the most part irrelevant as the cocoa butter is used solely for it's fluidityand crystalization properties. It in essence then brings absolutely nothing to the chocolate in the way of flavour.
I read in here that Askinosie makes their own cocoa butter. Interesting indeed. Is it made in the US, or at origin? I would certainly like to do some financial costing on THAT cocoa butter if it's made in the US! Well.... No... Not really. Paying a high price for, the beans and their import costs - all by weight -only to press out the fat and leaving 60% of the bean as waste doesn't seem viable to me unless they are doing it to make their own cocoa powder, which in that case would make sense. Sometimes I wish I could make my own cocoa powder.
Anyway, given the typical uses for cocoa butter, and the source of the cocoa butter it does make sense that there is very little single origin cocoa butter around.
Cheers
Brad
We add cocoa butter in small quantities to our chocolate because we feel it brings out more of the flavors we are seeking. In addition it makes tempering much easier.
Callebaut, with the purchase of Petra, is now the worlds largest grinder - all of their beans can't be flavor grade 8-) It's always either the beans, the process, or the storage 8-)
That is perhaps going too far. But I am not happy to buy a 75% Single Origin bar, if only 40% is actually cocoa mass from the land in question and 35% cocoa butter...unspecified.
I would like to see the actual percentages of cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter etc. And if the cocoa butter is not from the same origin, I would like to know.
Personally I cannot understand, yet, why extra cocoa butter would be added.
Well the companies concerned are Valrhona and Callebaut. Both offer Single Origin. so it is not per se the beans.
Why not? Sugar cane grows in huge quantities in central america and the carribean; palm sugar in africa and asia, etc. I've seen cows on every continent except Antarctica, and soybeans are one of the most abundant crops on the planet (lecithin). I bet you could even get an orchid to grow in la republica dominicana and harvest some vanilla, although i've never looked for one there 8)
Could be a function of conching, but remember that the bulk couverature that you're buying from large industrial manufacturer is likely made using predominately a blend of african or african and indonesian beans - which aren't sourced for their unique delicate flavor parameters - rather because they can be purchased in huge volumes and the 'rough spots' blended out in massive mixing tanks.
There are exceptions, of course, but without the details of the specific mfr, i'm going to place my bets on the 99.75% of the product that's on the market 8-)
Askinosie presses their own cocoa butter and they use it in their chocolate. I agree that to be strictly origin chocolate that the cocoa butter should come from the same origin as the cacao. So for those who add cocoa butter, maybe only Askinosie is truly single origin.
One chocolate maker I know recently said that, in his opinion, to be truly single origin then even the sugar should come from the same source. But that may be going too far. If that were the case then then no company would be able to call themselves single origin.
The reason I asked, is that at the present moment I have no conch. So I am looking at working from couverture. However most of the major couverture producers, seem, to me, to over work/conch the chocolate. That way it is super smooth, but the aromas and flavours that make a particular bean/origin special are almost gone.
For me that is so disappointing. And it will force me into conching my own chocolate much sooner than I would like.
Conching is treated either as an art by most, or as a quick passthrough step, and there are very few who understand even how to measure the progression of conching (ie is it doing what you want it to do, is it doing it most effectively, etc) - there's actually quite a lot of science behind it!
Perhaps one day when i retire or semi-retire i'll start holding classes 8-)
Interesting Sebastian. What do you mean when you say that very few people understand how to conche properly... when do you do you Masterclass? 
1) Not everyone does add add'l cocoa butter. Because things like moisture and particle size make a difference to viscosity, and because there are very, very, very few people who understand how to conche properly - add'l cocoa butter is a very easy way to compensate for rheological challenges
2) i'd say so, yes - but there are no standards.
3) it's expensive, and there's little demand for it. you'd also end up with a single origin cocoa powder, by the way - which there *may* be demand for if you can market it properly... but still very expensive. Actually there are single origin cocoa butters - you can get single origin ivorian, single origin ghanaian, single origin indonesian - it' effectively what's already out there, for the most part.
It seems that many chocolate producers add cocoa butter to their ingredients.
Since cocoa beans are approx 50% fat (cocoa butter) why would you need to add extra?
If you are producing a single origin bar, shouldn't this cocoa butter also be from the same origin?
Why then are there NO single origin cocoa butters available?
Hi!
I have always wanted to visit a cocoa plantation and find out how it grows, walk around between the cocoa trees and see how the fermentation process is done.
This year (in September to be exact) I'm going to travel to Peru hope to get the chance to visit one of those farms.
Has anyone experience with cocoa plantations in Peru? I don't speak Spanish and couldn't get any information in English about where the farms would be located and if it's possible to just go there and take a look.
I would be so grateful if anyone of you would have some hints for met!
Thanks in advance!
Cheers
Astrid
Good luck!
Good evening!
Right now my candy shop makes every product by hand, including dipping truffles. We have grown too big for our britches 
I am looking to purchase my first piece of equipment and think an enrober is the way to go. I am looking at the Perfect 6", however, as I think about how I works I am concerned about sanitation of the chocolate.
When using a hard item like a cookie or biscuit, you may get a few crumbs that come off under the chocolate "waterfall" or from the blower.... but my largest concern is when enrobing truffles. We make a Mayan truffle, which contains a lot of chili pepper in the ganache. When we hand dip them, I can clearly see the outermost layer of ganache melt slightly as the warm chocolate coats it. Eventually the dipping bowl becomes so filled with chili powder build up from the melting ganache centers that we have to throw the coating away and begin with new.
My thought here is that when using the enrober with a large hopper as it were, will also experience a slight melt of ganache centers during the coating process. As that chocolate is rotated back into the hopper, hasn't that introduced both flavor contamination and water contamination (ganache contains cream, cream contains water), thereby inviting bacterial growth into your chocolate tank? I know there are tons of companies that must use enrobers for truffles but I can't figure out how they get around the likelihood of contamination of the coating chocolate. I feel like I have to be missing something very obvious.I make a number of truffles with strong flavors, so the worry of bothflavor and bacteria contamination are making me second-guess this idea.
Am I missing something? Can anyone tell me their process in order to avoid this concern? Thank you!!!
Why don't you call the lab at Guittard? They are very helpful and can answer your questions. Guittard also sells cocoa butter. They might suggest you use a different chocolate than Ramona.
Clay,
Thank you for taking the time to reply, I really appreciate it. I will be using Ramona Guittard. Yes, to answer your question this is about the enrobing question, we have been trying to achieve the thin layer with the enrober, and yes it does have a blower, however this enrober is super ancient and when the blower is on nothing comes out looking nearly as nice as without. So that is why I am wondering if we can achieve the thin layer with a less viscous chocolate and without the blower. Ah yes and I think I may have gotten confused with the weights somehow, I am looking to achieve about a 1/16 of an inch. Also is there a particular brand of cocoa butter that I should consider using with Ramona?
Thanks!
Brianna:
You should only need to add a fairly small amount (<5% by weight) so the answer is ... it depends on the chocolate and the cocoa butter you are using. Unsweetened chocolate (like Guittard Oban) is fairly high in cocoa butter, so if you think you're diluting the flavor, cut down on the butter slightly and add some unsweetened chocolate to the blend. Alternatively, consider using an undeodorized cocoa butter which will have a pronounced chocolate flavor (compared with a deodorized butter).
As for the melt point - some butters have lower melt points than others. Butters with low melt points are considered "soft" and butters with higher melting points are considered "hard". If you add a low melt point butter to a chocolate it may affect the melt point of the blend, also depending on the amount of butter you're adding.
In the end, you'll need to do some experiments to see what works best for you.
Is this related to the enrobing question?
Hi there,
If I am looking to add cocoa butter to thin out and lower the viscosity of chocolate, does anyone know how much I can add before it will really begin to effect the flavor? Will a higher level of cocoa butter cause my end product to melt easier?
Thanks!
Brianna -
I assume you've done tests to know that the chocolate adheres well to your center.
Can you specify thinness as a measurement, not weight? 8-10gr of chocolate on 28gr of center is 25-30% by weight which seems fairly thick, actually. And the pieces are fairly big. What shape are they? Not sure if the can be panned or if they need to be enrobed.
You can thin out the chocolate a tad (is this the point of the cocoa butter question?).
There is usually a movable blower attachment on an enrober belt. The blower can be positioned quite close to the work to remove a significant amount of chocolate.
Enrobers should also have pre-bottomers and de-tailers so I would not "settle" for having a foot around the pieces.
How many do you need? I do this with freeze dried strawberries in order to give me a base for panning.
Hi there everyone,
I am looking to get an very very thin layer of chocolate on to a hard center. By thin I mean super super thin, around 8g-10g of chocolate per 28 grams of hard centers. I will be having this done by a commercial facility and so I am looking to figure out the most efficient method, and piece of machinery that will be needed. If anyone has any advice at all that would be greatly appreciated. I don't mind having a "foot" on the bottom if need be, and I would prefer to keep them natural and matt vs any sort of confectioners glaze.
Thanks!
Talk to your people at Oregon State. You have to be concerned with the water activity and possibly using a small amount of preservative. If you pack at 180 degrees and have your aw low enough, you SHOULD be ok. Wouldn't want that liability without the experts advice.
Hello! I have been trying to find a thread on chocolate/truffle/caramel/sauces shelf life issues and I am having a hard time. Does anyone "bottle" their chocolate sauce and/or caramel? If so, how is your process? Do you do a water bath? Pressure cooker? No "canning" at all? What is your self life? I just can't find specific information about this...I have been making a chocolate sauce that would be a great product to sell around Christmas time, but I would like to make it safe...Thank you!
Carrie -
Yes, please post photos. And, I agree with Ben - unless a part got broken or lost during disassembly/assembly it should be able to be put back together correctly.
Also, CocoaTown representatives are members of TheChocolateLife and once the photos are posted they should also be able to help.
Unless there is a piece that is actually broken (snapped plastic on the case, etc.), I'd imagine it can be put back together. Can you post some pictures?
Help! Because of a stupid misunderstanding(I wont get into the nitty gritty details, but it wasn't my smartest move) my Cocoatown 12SL melanger is now disassembled and I cannot put it back together. I removed the bottom piece to check the belt, and it has somehow changed size so it will not reattach. The belt and all pieces are in their places. We hired a sort of handyman to try and reassemble it, but he says that it is broken.
I am obviously a beginner; this is my first time using these machines and I am not mechanically minded. Does anyone have any insights on how I might put this thing back together? Anyone else have the same difficulties? I should not have taken it apart in the first place, but I had no idea that by simply taking out a few screws I would ruin the thing forever...
I'll be starting it as a home business so that I could cut in rental costs. I'll be starting with the minimum equipment requirements, and I'll just work my way up to bigger Equipments.
A Stone melangeur would be good for Conching and Refining right?
For the winnower I'm planning to build my own customized winnower using a blueprint that was posted here in the website.
If you are going Bean to Bar, then you will also need a roaster, a winnower, a conch. Good cacao beans.
It depends on the quanitity of chocolaes your going to make. Marble slab method takes time and eventually you will need to invest in a tempering machine. There are cheper lower production quantity tempering machine like Chocovision Rev2. Apart from this you will need probe thermometer, bowls, dipping tools, scraper, mold. visit sites like bakedeco, chocolate doctor, ecole chocolat, jbprince, chocolateman. They sell starter kits as well
P.S Bean to Bar.
Hi everyone,
I'm Eirven from the Philippines. I'm a new member here in this forum. I would just like to ask from you expert Chocolatiers if what are the necessary Equipments that needs to be purchased right away, and what other equipments can be purchased later. (e.g Instead of buying tempering machines right away, I'll just use the manual table tempering method using Granite/Marble tables)
I'm 20 years old, and I'm planning to Start-up a small chocolate company here in the Philippines. I'll be starting as a home-based business, and will expand later.
Cheers!
P.S : Bean to Bar.
