Forum Activity for @NCW

Hi Jeremy

is this still available?

Trent

San:

One of the challenges with "raw" is that there is single, accepted, maximum temperature. Some say 42C (Douglas Adams coincidence?), others say 45C, and the most common one I've heard here in the US is 48.7C (118F).

One of the challenges I have with a single temperature definition is that it assumes that all foods (and all enzymes) react the same way to heat. I know that Excalibur, a dehydrator manufacturer, cites research that says that enzymes are more durable in aqueous environments. They can "survive" for far longer times and far higher temperatures than the ones you cite.

From a process perspective, trying to express butter from liquor at low temperatures is inefficient - time consuming and expensive.

Furthermore, there is no proof that I am aware of that there are living enzymes in dried cocoa beans (drying is a stage missing in your process diagram, and I take issue with the order of other steps). If there are no living enzymes in raw beans then it should not matter what temperature the cocoa butter is processed at. Also, to the best of my knowledge, there has been no peer-reviewed study that tracks changes in nutrient levels from the bean in the pod to a finished bar that conclusively shows any benefits from consuming "raw" chocolate.

So - from my perspective - the distinction is meaningless.

But your customers obviously care.

Trent -

NCW is a commercial company whose business is selling products and services to confectioners and chocolate makers. 

You can promote your business on your profile, but if you want to promote product or services here in the Classifieds - you need to help cover the costs of keeping the servers running and the software up to date.

Please send me a PM or email to discuss.

Thanks,
:: Clay

Natural Chocolate Works is actively seeking Existing Chocolate Brands wanting to sell or perhaps look to become part of a larger confectionery company 

confidentiality agreements available 

trent@naturalchocolateworks.com

Natural Chocolate Works has 60% Organic Dark sweetened with Coconut Palm Sugar Couvertures FOB Coquitlam BC Canada.

Yes, they are. 

Hi everyone,

I have been wanting to ask this question for a while regarding "raw" cacao butter vs. regular butter. I am sure some of you already know much more about this. After talking to many people in the chocolate filed, I have come to the conclusion that raw cacao butter (i.e. processed below 42 degrees Celsius) is practically non-existent, as even the producers that declare their butter as raw say that they will go up ti 45 degrees in the processing, and that temperatures during transport (especially in the tropical countries where they are produced) can even exceed that temperature at times.

Below is a chart that is apparently used by a producer of raw cacao.

My question is: does it ever actually make sense to make the distinction? Wouldn't raw and now-raw cacao butter be very similar in structure and attributes (excluding those that are deodorized)? 

Many thanks,

San

 @.jpg - 27KB

We sell organic and organic FT cocoa liquor

perhaps we can help

trent@naturalchocolateworks.com

We are not located in Ontario but we are in Vancouver - perhaps we can assist?

trent@naturalchocolateworks.com

I have organic 60% dark couverture sweetened only with OCPS - 18.14kg per box

we can discuss your volume and price 

FOB Coquitlam BC Canada

Trent

Are these still available?

please see attached file for details, with prices.

Inventory List with pictures update Aug 18.pdf - 1.7MB

Details on the truffle/bon bon trays?  Size, quantity, price?

If you are in the continental US, I will ship to you for the $500 price.

yeah, i didn't read it very thoroughly.  lots of speculation from the little i did read.  w/o knowing what it is, it's hard to say.  i've work quite a bit with gold leaf, and it's a nightmare to handle.  i suspect it's not gold powder/leaf/whatever at all, but something else. Exactly what?  I dunno...

Edit - i've got a good friend who's a CMPC - let me ping him to see if he know's the details of what's going on, and then we can get into the science

Hello, my name is Tony and I am really glad find this forum:)

I am an amateur and big fan of making chocolates at home.

But I have a small problem and got confused when I start try to make pralines with airbrush.

After I airbrush the mold with colored cacao butter and fill it with chocolates, some colored cacao butter will remain on the surface of the mold and when I scrape the overfilled chocolates back to my bowl, then some colored cacao butter will mix with the rest of the chocolates in the bowl, which will cost some wastes.

It seems like a beginners problem but I am really confused.

Could anyone give me some advises to avoid this problem please?

Thanks a lot:)

Sebastian -

The /reddit thread is spectacularly unhelpful in explaining how/why this works.

There is a lot of bandying about the word hydrophobic but the question remains, how are the gold powder particles selectively removed from the (cocoa? coffee?) to stick to the surface of the chocolate?

What's the chemistry of this, do you know?

Very neat. I'd not seen that before.

I thought some of you would be interested in this "trick".

I found the thread on reddit yesterday.

turning chocolate into gold

In the comments there are a few descriptions of how it works.

They say there are some gold flakes suspended in some kind of cacao or coffee powder and only the gold will stick to the bonbon because of some hydrophobic process?

just take a look at the link and you will see.

Ilya -

250kg week is 2500, 100gr bars or about 3500 70gr bars. If your mold has 3 cavities in it and you can process 3 molds per minute thats 3x3x60 or 540 bars/hour. So, molding 250kg would take 5-7 hours per week at those speeds. Tempered chocolate requirement is ~35-50kg/hr.

Cooling time is dependent on several things, with the thickness of the bar a key factor. A 7mm-thick bar is going to take a lot longer than a 3mm-thick bar (the time difference might not be a linear function).

If it takes 15 minutes to cool down a mold (a cooling tunnel will make this much faster, BTW), then you need to have a minimum of 45 molds at 3 molds/minute if everything went perfectly and there were no delays. To be safe you will want twice that number.

Throughput is going to be dependent on getting your molds into the mold loader, de-molding at the other end, and returning the mold to the mold loader.

One of the things people think is that going to a cooling tunnel eliminates labor. That's not strictly the case as you need people to operate the machine. A skilled operator and manual dosing can do a lot more than you think. It's about organizing production to be efficient.

A case in point is to consider that at .5 meters/minute you need at least a 7.5 meter cooling tunnel to keep up. And that's going to mean a lot of walking from one end of the tunnel to the other.

[ That's not the case with the Selmi bar tunnels because there is one fold. They go down to one end then move to another level, and return to the beginning. ]

A specialized crystallization fridge with 20 racks can probably hold 80-90 molds. It might cost you $6-7000 delivered. By the time you put the bottom tray into the fridge the bars on the top rack will be ready to take out. The operator can work at their own pace - it's not dictated by the machine.

When you need to double production, duplicate the line. It will be less expensive and require less space. When your production projections reach into the 1000 bar/hour range and you have to run at that pace for more than 5 hours/day, then go get a tunnel. And then consider a folded (vertical) tunnel not a linear tunnel.

$300 for 20 molds, each bar is 100gr or 3oz

Closing my shop Vancouver Island, BC. All seasonal packaging: Thanksgiving & Fall, Halloween, Christmas, Valentines, Easter

Unbranded boxes, ribbons, display decor, trays, etc.

 20160219_160621_resized_2 - Copy.jpg - 259KB

We are currently selling our FBM tempering machine! Excellent condition.

Suitable for those using couvature or for bean-to-bar makers who add cacao butter.

Includes belt and paper rolls.

Please e-mail chocolate@fineandraw.com for more details!

Many thanks!

FINE & RAW

ROSS 4 X 8 3 - ROLL REFINER WITH CORED ROLLS

MEASURING 8" LONG X 4" DIAMETER

COMPLETE WITH HOPPER AND SCRAPERS,

DRIVEN BY A 1-HP, 3 PHASE, 60 CYCLE, 230/460 VOLT MOTOR.

It's in great working condition.

Asking price:  $10k

http://www.unionmachinery.com/Product.asp?Number=76017

Please e-mail chocolate@fineandraw.com for more details!

Thanks!

 3 roll 3.JPG.jpg - 1.3MB

ROSS Rollmatic RAF machine
2-roll grain mill
2012.
We have an custom built additional hopper for it.
We are asking $6.5k

Please email chocolate@fineandraw.com for more details!

 2 roll.JPG.jpg - 1.1MB

How much for the bar molds, and how many gram bars do they make?

Closing my shop Vancouver Island and selling all molds.

Bonbons and pralines, magnetic, logs, golf balls, hearts, nuts, figurines, boxes, bars, Christmas, Easter, Valentines, Fall/Thanksgiving, etc.

Available detailed list with photos and prices.

Inventory List with pictures molds only.pdf - 722KB

I am planing on setting up a bean to bar Production starting at 250KG a week

so I'm looking for the right solution for molding my bars that is scalable and could see me producing according to demand.

I don't know how adjustable the cracker on the Selmi machine is. 

The machine I am talking about works more like a scraper/peeler. There is a stainless steel plate with holes in it and a paddle-wheel-like device that scrapes the beans against the plate, breaking them. Larger beans and pieces stay in the chamber until the pieces are small enough to fall through the holes into the chamber where forced air separates the shell from the nib.

There are three fractions - and the speed of the cracker wheel and the fan can be adjusted to fine-tune the separation. One fraction is fines and shell, another is usable nib, and the third is a combination of nib and shell. You can wait until you get a lot of this combination fraction (i.e., at the end of the day) and run just this fraction back through the winnower to get as much usable nib as possible. The 100kg/hr figure for the small machine assumes two passes to get below 1.75% maximum shell in nib.

I will get up-to-date pricing over the weekend and get it to you.

Rochelle -

I have seen one. They are beautiful (which is to be expected for Selmi products) but the winnower is expensive for the throughput they offer. If aesthetics are really, really important to you then I don't know that there is a better option in this price range.

If aesthetics are not as important, but throughput and budget are, there is a company in Peru that offers one for about 60% of the cost that delivers about twice the throughput.

Ilya -

You mention small production above - how large?

Because, before we go anywhere talking about any specific machine or approach ... it is very helpful to have an estimate of your bar production needs? Hundreds per hour? Hundreds per day? There is a huge difference in how I would recommend approaching this depending on the production volume you are talking about.

That said, one of the nice things about flood/scrape mold loaders is that you can fill different mold configurations without having to adjust anything in the line (assuming all the molds are the same size). The downside is that the method can be very messy and it does not handle mixed-in inclusions very well.

Pneumatic depositing options fill each mold cavity separately. They are more expensive, but the process is much cleaner. That's an advantage when going directly to a cooling tunnel as excess chocolate on the outside of the molds can get caught up in the drive mechanism.

You can DIY a cooling tunnel using a series of chest freezers bolted together. Remove the door (lid) and build a wooden collar (8-12 inches high) on top of each unit (this is done all the time for jockey boxes for craft beer to hold the taps), then attach the door to the top of the wooden collar.

Create openings in the collar for the conveyer to fit through. Put a PID control unit in each freezer to control the temperature of each unit separately. Put a fan in each unit to move the air around inside (you can build internal baffles to direct/control the airflow). If humidity is a problem, put a dessicant inside each freezer.

3, 7-foot chest freezers give you the base for a ~21-foot tunnel for well under $5000. PID controllers are going to be less than $100 each. I don't have a price for a conveyor unit but you want a surface that will allow air flow underneath the mold and you want the speed to be adjustable. You want the conveyor to be at least 18" longer on each end (3 feet overall).

21 feet is approximately 7 meters. If the belt speed is .5 meters/minute then a mold will spend about 14 minutes in the tunnel. If you are using 275x175 molds then the max throughput is just 3 molds per .5 meter so you're talking about max throughput of less than 3 molds/minute. If you need to work faster you need a longer tunnel.

With separate PID controllers you can set the temperature of each freezer differently. If ambient is 68F you could make the outside units 62F and the center unit 55F (I recommend an odd number of units for this reason). Of course, you can make this any length you need by selecting different freezers - though they should all be the same dimensions for obvious mechanical reasons.

Keep in mind that a cooling tunnel that is designed for enrobed items is not optimal for molds as there is no airflow to the bottom of the mold. So - a purpose-built tunnel for molds is going to be better.

If you are doing batches of 450 bars at a time, the question I have is how many batches per day and week are you doing. If the answer is one then a fridge designed for holding and crystallizing chocolate is going to be a better idea. It will be much smaller and much less expensive.

Hi Albert , this side Balpreet singh from Chandigarh, India near New Delhi. Let me know if I can help you.

If you plan to only do chocolate bars then i can suggest a tempering unit and  vertical folded tunnel as Clay suggested. It saves space and is very efficient.

However, if you plan to do other items (enrobing) an horizontal tunnel will be a good compromise. You just need quite a long one tho...

What do you think about one of  prefamac's machines paired with a second hand cooling tunnel 

Automatic tempering machine with scraper - How to use

Hi Clay,

Yes I was just using the picture to demonstrative the basic principal.

yes please share your opinions on the cheaper options,  the pneumatic Mould loader seams an attractive option paired with a tempering machine

and DIY Cooling tunnels, or reconditioning a second hand cooling tunnel. 

I only know how to make chocolate from scratch, the idea is that I want to set up a small production of chocolate bars.

Noel:

You can't take your experience with the various processes of batch tempering and apply them to continuous tempering.

The chocolate that comes out of the pipe - when it's in cooling mode - is the temperature set in the cooling cycle. 30.5C you say. That drops into a bowl of chocolate that is heated and whose sole purpose is to melt out all the crystals before it exits the drain at the bottom and runs through the tempering pipe.

When the chocolate is melted and before you turn the cooling cycle on, the temperature of the chocolate in the bowl should be fairly even. The longer you let it run, the more even it will be. There is a thermocouple on the outside of the bowl and that's there the temperature is measured.

When you turn the cooling cycle on, the temperature of the chocolate coming through the spout drops. (The thermocouple is right at the top of the tempering pipe.)

Eventually, you start pumping 30.5C chocolate into a bowl of warm chocolate whose max temp is 47C ... and you start mixing them together. If you put a probe thermometer in the bowl you will not get consistent temperature readings. This is to be expected. You don't really care what the temperature is anywhere in the bowl except at the very bottom by the drain. All you care about is what temperature ensures that crystals are melted out before the chocolate re-enters the tempering pipe. If there are still crystals there is the risk of a positive feedback cycle leading to over-crystallization.

From a consistency perspective you want to keep the working bowl at least two-thirds full while working. Don't empty the bowl. The emptier the bowl the harder the heating and cooling systems have to work. You'll quickly get into a rhythm where you fill some molds, then do some other work (moving molds to cooling, de-molding, etc). While you're doing this other work put chocolate into the bowl and allow the tempering cycle to re-establish itself. If you can put melted chocolate into the bowl and the chocolate is about the same temp as the cooling temp then you won't interrupt the tempering cycle and can resume work immediately.

But - the important take-away is that a probe thermometer inserted into the working bowl will not return any useful information. The temperatures will be different throughout the bowl. That's to be expected - it's the way it works. One thing to note about the geometry of the working bowls in FBM machines is that they are narrow and deep. This design reduces wasted heat - wide shallow bowls are less energy efficient. The design also provides more time for the chocolate in the bowl to melt out crystals.

The Selmi line you show is not for molds. That setup requires a TOP with mold loader accessory, Tank400, and cooling tunnel - plus room for the cooling tunnel. Last I checked it was in excess of US$70k.

You can get a new Unica from FBM with your choice of 50/100/200kg tanks, pneumatic depositor with mold loader, and CLIMA 50 folded/vertical cooling tunnel for less than the Selmi equivalent.

If you want to cool in a room or fridge instead of using a cooling tunnel I'd need to know how many molds/bars hour/day you want to produce and to think about the options. You can build a room (I know someone producing >10K bars/day that way) or get specialized humidity-controlled chocolate crystallization fridges.

I also know of a way to DIY a cooling tunnel using chest freezers and PID temperature controllers ... if you have the room.

Is this on the surface or all the way through? What's the texture of the bars that ar affected?

Do you have a recording thermometer/hygrometer? What's the temperature of the room ... and what's the temperature of the fridge?

Whats the most cost effective setup for the production of solid single origin Bars without hand moulding

and manually cooling them in racks in a chiller 

temper unit and a second hand cooling tunnel  and manually demould on the other end.

who has set up a basic straight through production line and for how much money

 tunnel_300_400.jpg - 39KB

Interested in some of your beans.  Send me an email to preston@hellococoachocolate.com for prices please.

Hi there,

We are in the process of consolidating our facility and have a bunch of great beans for sale. We are trying to focus on our main five or so chocolates and have a number of different beans that would love a new home. These are great beans we are just unable to use them at the moment.

Origins include -

Around 250 lbs of Dominican Republic, Del Eden Hispaniola

Around 150 lbs of Peru, Oro Verde

Around 50 lbs of Nicaragua, Momotombo

Around 400 lbs of Uganda 

Around 300 lbs of Guatemalan, Lachua 

Around 300 lbs of Hondorus, La Masica 

We can give a pretty good deal to anyone that wants some or all of these beans!

If interested please email us at - info@starchildchocolate.com