Greg:
Can you post a photo (or photos) of what the attachment point looks like? You almost certainly need a tool of some kind but hopefully it's not a special tool.
All tanks are the same - the tricky part in using them is when there is only a small amount of chocolate in the bottom.
I often start with 2kg in a 6kg tank. That's easy enough to work with. The tricky part is when you start your moulding and you get down to the last 500-750g. At that point I often hold one end of the tank up so that the chocolate pools at one end. Alternatively, lift the pan out of the tank and simply pour the remaining chocolate into waiting moulds.
Gap,
This is really good information for me. I have been uncertain about how to simplify and make the process more efficient. I just have two stone grinders that hold 2liters in the moment. Do you think that would be too little to have in a 6l/kg melting tank(2 liters per tank)? I'd rather not get the smallest or the largest either, for now. I just want to make the right decision in purchases while starting out.
Thanks!
Sabrina
Hi everyone! I just picked up a used cutter and some of the strings are broken on a couple of frames. Do I neeed a special tool to loosen the bolts on the frame so I can replace strings?
Ok Thx Clay, it looks like I need to raise my budget; I am willing to spend more on a more descent machine something between 2K - 5K (I would like to stay as low as possible) do you have any recomendations?
In the same vein, you may find when grinding less viscous formulations that there are nibs that do not get processed, a trip through a screen is advised.
Thanks Clay!
I am definitely going to have a good look at the stand alone units. In the summer time our RH reading can get as high as 70% -- even with the dehumidifier on. I would like to keep it around 50% or less. What we currently have is a $250 unti from the hardware store. I don't think it is strong enough for our size room. The untis in the link are definitely bigger and more powerful so one of those will probably do the job. Thanks again!
Daniel
Daniel -
Do you know what the humidity range is already? Do you have a digital hygrometer that records? You should!
RH percentage will determine (to a large extent) how many changes of air per hour you need. (60-70% == 3 changes/hour; 70-80% == 4 changes/hour, etc). If you want a deep dive on how to calculate capacity, here's a read .
You can get a single large unit or multiple smaller units. If you can reduce the volume you need to dehumidify that could help. If you have HVAC you could install an i nline system .
Here's a source for stand-alonecommercial units. Here's another .
Here is a system to consider for walk-ins .
Note: I have not used any of this equipment nor purchased from the vendors. These are not recommendations. I just did some quick research.
I love winter and how dry it makes it our production facility. Warm and Humid weather is on its way though and we need to dehumidify our production space. Our space is about 2,000 square feet with high ceilings (at least 20 feet high) . We want to be able to make toffee, caramel, nougat, etc... all summer long. Does anyone have any suggestions on what to buy? Thank you!
Daniel
The easiest way is just to melt chocolate and add liquid (milk) to get to the consistency you want. It can be a pourable syrup or scoopable ganache (there are advantages to both).
If you want to use cocoa powder a Dutched powder will probably have lower acidity than a natural powder. You can use water or milk to make the syrup - there is no need to add any fat (butter). You can use a high-fat powder (20-22%) if you want a fattier mouth feel.
I would be tempted to make the syrup with water and then offer the options of different milks when making the final product. You could use skim, whole milk, half-and-half, or cream, or - and this could be interesting for some customers - coconut milk, almond milk, rice milk, or some other option. The base syrup is vegetarian and with the right sugar it could also be vegan.
PeterK brings up a good point.
FDA regulations require a magnetic trap during the bean inspection phase prior to roasting in the sense that if the FDA inspects your facility (you did register, right?) and they don't find one they can cite you.
It is also a good idea to have an inline magnetic trap before tempering.
Willing to sell a few at a time.
Let me know how many you would like.
Are you willing to sell just a few of these molds, or only the whole lot?
I think the fly in the ointment is that 6-7 % threshold. I can't ever recall getting direct shipped that showed up at that level. It is next to impossible for certain spots
as long as aw is low enough, and micro is clear it generally isn't (until maint.). Your kill step is in roasting. And do not forget your magnet.
I wanted to add a link to the original product for more specs:
http://tomric.com/index.php?route=product/product&filter_name=rectangle&product_id=2761
From my travels I came across Chocolat Chaud (hot chocolate) and noticed how much better it was than the rubbish we get local (watery). I wanted to recreate this product and offer it to people via a mobile coffee shop.
Typically local products are powders that get mixed with water/milk. I wanted to make a liquid (at fridge and room temp) chocolate sauce that could become a hot chocolate with cappuccino milk as the water/milk.
I was thinking of using Dutch cocoa powder, butter(milk) and sugar. Using milk butter as it is softer at room temp than cocoa butter.
Any tips on how I could make this liquid chocolate from scratch? Or any other thoughts?
Thanks in advance for your help
All gone. Thanks
I'm curious about cleaning equipment at chocolate factories. Assuming one is running the same type of chocolate in the equipment, how often is the equipment cleaned? What are the health requirements for cleaning?
Hello Sebastian,
If the opportunity remains, I would like information. Please send the info to my personal email address curlygapeach@yahoo.com.
Thanks in advance, Judah
I would say that rheology depends on MANY factors, your PSD being just one of them. How much moistuer you have post roast in your nibs, how much you can drive off in your conche, how effectively you emulsify, your other ingredients, etc all play vital roles in rheology.
Cleaning a MacIntyre constantly can get time consuming and costly, we ran in batches of 5 then mixed them together to even out the variances.
The lining should be ok - it's been used less than 200 hours total so far. I do use standard white table sugar though, so a two-roll prefiner should be my next purchase 
That then becomes a little more complicated. The lining on your macintyre will abrade away over time, resuting larger particle sizes the more you use it. You can have it relined, but the specifics of your PSD will be pretty related to the health of your lining currently. Also, are you using crystalline sugar (ie standard table sugar)? The starting size of your crystals also has an impact of how they break. Most 'table' sugar type sugar is int he 600-3000 um starting particle size range, and can benefit from going through a 2 roll prerefiner to reduce the amount of fines they can generate.
I currently put the nibs straight into the MacIntyre, and put whole sugar in a bit afterwards. I get to ~15 microns (measured with a micrometer) in around 22 hours.
Next would be getting a grinder, then a 3-roll refiner. It's been put off because of lack of capital.
Depends entirely on what distriubution you get. If you end up with a distribution that tight, but very small particle size - then no... as with many things, the devil's in the details here. Most prerefining configurations will result in less super fines, which will give you a lower viscosity (less thick) chocolate. Some configurations won't. How do you plan to prerefine and how are you currently refining? Sorry if youp'd already noted that...
There are no cheap/good cocoa butter presses available that I am aware of. What I can see from a quick look is that there are a lot more options than the last time I looked.
One thing: colloid mills are the wrong tech for this.
This is a home machine. It might work, but I don't think it's going to get you to the level of production you need and I would expect it to fail pretty quickly as it's not designed fot he kind of duty cycle you suggest.
You will need to spend at least a couple of thousand dollars and then expect to inspect the electrics, replace motors and hydraulics, etc if not right away then quite soon. An expeller press might be a better choice than a hydraulic press at anything under $3-4kg.
You can make your own but in the end I don't know how much $$ you'd be saving. You need a support structure, the hydraulic press, and to machine the pot and the parts. It can be done and has.
Keep in mind that the yields you can expect are on the order of ~250-300gr per kilo of liquor and that's highly dependent on the fat content of the beans, the pressure you can exert, and the length of time of each cycle. If you're getting 1/2kg of butter per kilo of liquor and the cycle time is 30 minutes and the pot size is 2kg, it's going to take a while to get the amount you're looking for.
That should lead to more fluid chocolate, right?
Will do. Thanks again Clay!
Just make sure to confirm the software that's running on that 5-pan oven. Make sure that it has the same control over humidity, the same level of programmability, etc. I am not entirely certain of the software differences between the machines and it's the Mind.Maps machines I was writing about specifically.
Hello,
I would like to purchase a small footprint cacao butter press for the purpose to maintain a single origin couverture and to produce artisan cacao butter from the any bean I work with. This for a small scale production not exceeding 25 lbs per day.
The machine must be sanitary and be costructed with stainless steel in all area that touches food (cacao liquor or nibs)
Is there any machines in the market today for this kind of production without paying high prices like Cacao Cuicina (25-30K) or Do I need to custom build this kind of machinery?
Does anyone or anyone you know has built/own a butter press machine or have any experience with this? Any suggestions where to start?
I saw in previous threads a butter press from China (Alibaba.com) with prices as low as $200, I am not sure how well those work? I am concerned about the amount of heat during the press and its impact on the flavor and the color of the butter (brown, creamy ... etc.)
Hi,
I'd like to offer that I currently make a chocolate bar from raw organic cacao paste and butter in Canada. My cacao comes from peru from a supplier in canada called Advantage Health Matters. Our weak Canadian dollar right now may make it cost effective for you to order from them.
As for the definition of raw when it comes to cacao. I don't know if science has found a true difference in health benefits of raw vs roasted however I notice a huge difference in the way raw cacao makes me feel. If I eat 20g of raw cacao I notice a slight buzz and if I eat 50g of it I feel pretty high off it. I've tried most raw chocolate bars on the market here and most don't give me this feeling so I assume they aren't really using truly raw cacao. A few brands do give me this feeling so I equate the quality of raw chocolate to if it gives me that high from eating it. If it doesn't then its probably not raw. Maybe the temperature has gone over a certain point but if it still makes you high then it probably hasn't crossed any important thresholds.
Hi Clay, Thanks for your valuable advice. After reviewing the options I am more convinced to go with the Unox option. The controls that the Unox unit have are way more superior than any other options in the same price range, not to mention the roasting capcity and the additional usage like roasting nuts and many other things. I've check the price of the 6 full size pan and the price is around 10K (It is kind of stretching my budget); however, there is a smaller oven from the same series which come with 5 hotel pans (12"x20") and it price right under 6K (still can roast larger batches than any other options within the same price range) which I am thinking to purchase next week via the local restaurant supply store here in Houston.
http://usa.unox.com/en/cheftop_gn_1-1_305e
Pre-refining will likely give you a tighter PSD.
If I was going to go with a belt feed, I'd probably get one of those toasters / pizza ovens with a conveyor belt. I would use the searzall manually to find out if nib roasting helps improve my chocolate's quality - unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a consensus on that question 
To get back to Arcelia's motivation though - besides adding cocoa butter, my biggest gain for fluidity has been getting a micrometer, which got me to realize I was under-refining. I did have some sticky, over-refined chocolate (hard with a premier but possible with a MacIntyre style conche) and that got me thinking about particle size distribution. Maybe if I pre-refined I'd have a more consistent size distribution, as chocolate spends less time in the refiner.
Arcelia, I'd love to hear about your setup and what other avenues you've tried. Is your grinding area very humid?
Interseting - i've never seen a searzall - now i want one. The heart wants what the heart wants.
It'd probably work. I'd urge you to set it at a fixed height above and below the beans, and belt feed the beans through. You'll need to do some trialing and error attempts to identify the correct height and residence time of the beans to get the moisture to flash out w/o roasting the beans. But i suspect it's doable.
How hot should we go to get the shell adequately dried off?
On the more extreme end of accessible short-time, high-temperature options are propane torches, maybe with attachments like the Searzall. I'd love to know if anyone has tried this.
James -
You might want to look into the Pushbox from HCS Hamburg. It was created to replace jute bags for shipping and is a box version of Grainpro bags. They use suction and heat sealing as a part of their process and claim that you can get more cocoa on a pallet than when using bags. Plus, because it's environmentally contained it might be possible to consolidate.
280 polycarbonate molds for sale
Mold size is: 27.5 cm x 13.5 cm
Selling for $8/ mold. If interested email: miles@perfectfuel.com
Only the premier wonders are left.
While i go about making friends with a bar manager for some access and help with using CO2, i wonder if anyone has maybe used an oxygen absorber pack instead?
Looks like the idea would be to store the beans in an airtight storage container, or a grain pro bag (as earlier mentioned) and put one of these oxygen absorber packs inside. This then supposedly absorbs all remaining oxygen. I assume this would take longer than using the CO2 method, but would it eventually have the same results without having to use CO2?
Alternatively i also read about creating an actual suction chamber, similar to those bag things that you store duvets in etc and then remove the air with a vacuum cleaner. Any thoughts on whether that method could also yield good results?
Thanks for spelling it out nicely, Clay.
