Forum Activity for @Brad Churchill

granite

Jayne, that is correct.  Each little case is 12 boxes but I am selling them 24 at a time.  Can you email me at cbw@chocolatspassion.com to get in touch so we may discuss and I can give you a shipping quote?  Thanks!  Catherine

Hey!

I have a question about the stone grinder machine...

I am in the proccess of making my own machine but i do not know the name of the stone.... i mean, i imagine that should be a special stone.

anybody know the name? or what kind of stone can i use

THANK YOUUUUUUUU!!!!

Hey!

I am in the proccess of making my own machine but i do not know the name of the stone.... i mean, i imagine that should be a special stone.

anybody know the name? or what kind of stone can i use

THANK YOUUUUUUUU!!!!

Hi.

I am interested in buying the first two listings, however I wanted to double check the quantities listed.  At ASB the boxes are listed 12 per case, so have these been reboxed into 24pc cases?

Tomric's was on my possible list... it's in my "affordable" range, so it's good to hear it has made that much of a difference! Thanks!

Hi there.

Caramels are a huge part of my business.  I have many things on my equipment wish list, but I will tell you what we use.  I do have a guitar cutter, and I would never use it for my caramels.  Our caramels are cut with a Tomric caramel cutter, and we also use this for toffee.  Our production time has been cut down by 75%! and we still hand dip everything.  We do not foot the caramel....we repair if needed.  You will find what works for you, and if I can answer any questions let me know. 

It's a week since the Grenada (Home of tree to bar) Chocolate Festival 2017 took place, it was a wonderful and inspiring week. You can see a short video of our cocoa farm workshop and other events on the channel. 

Tri Island Chocolate - Tri Island Chocolate Farming Workshop -Tri Island Chocolate Farming Workshop

Grenada Chocolate Festival 2017 - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIlLr7janXGzojCRgASHrnA

email sent

if you can't, my email is sweetimpactchocolates@gmail.com 

I'll see if I can figure out how to send you a PM.

Hi there! Are you willing to break this lot up? I already have 2 of these and LOVE them, but don't need that many. I'd be interested in 4 or 5 of them. 

I'm in Southeastern Wisconsin.

I have a caramel cutter I might be able to sell to you.  Where in the U.S. are you?

I'm looking for the dispenser for my X3210 tempering machine. If you have one, let me know price and condition. Thanks!

Brian

bmikiten at gmail

The Carousel Cream Center Extruder & Cutter helps the artisan candy-maker to shape and size ganache and cream based centers before dipping or enrobing.

Features

• Extrude and Cut Creams, Ganache, Fudges, Marzipan, Truffles, Cookie Dough, and More!
• Increase productivity of operator by more than 300% over any hand method of forming centers.
• Make round, oblong, egg shape, diamond, square, or heart shape, using interchangeable nozzles.
• Maintains uniformity of weight and shape better than any other extruder on the market.
• Independent adjustable rates for extrusion and for cutting - repeatable sizes at the rate you want
• Can cut 20-25 lbs per hour

http://scciclient.blob.core.windows.net/savagebroscom/uploads/media/pdfs/24-Cream%20Extruder%20&%20Cutter.pdf

Machine is from 2011. Great condition. Comes with 3 nozzles. Custom nozzles are easy to get from Savage Brothers to get the size/shape you want.

Pirce: $5000 + shipping

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Professional, high quality Chocolate World polycarbonate heart shaped mold. Lightly used.

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@paul2 email me at kristian @ nuttyness.com and we can set up a time for you to come see it.

I'm local and interested. Can you contact me at drwallingjr @ gmail.com with pricing and viewing info.

I'm also in Oakland. Can I come see this?

Gami T400e Continuous Tempering machine with 25kg capacity. Machine is equipped with flow-stopping foot pedal, programmable dosing system and heated vibrating table.

Tempering machine is combined with a
Gami TR300-4 Cooling Tunnel with an enrobing attachment.
Cooling Tunnel length is 4 meters
Belt Width is 300mm

Power supply for both machines are: 208V/3-Phase 20Amps

Machines are from 2007

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The product I have the most "titanium dioxide flavor issue" with is a chocolate bar molded in a silicone mold and then sprayed with white cocoa butter color and finished in maroon with a foam stencil brush.  TAMU Bar  I use the smallest amount of white on the bar to get a solid coat and use a stencil over the lettering. It's the fact that the first thing you taste when you eat the bar is the white pigment sprayed on the outside of the bar that accentuates pigment flavor. It needs to be pure white to get approval by the CLC. We offer a plain chocolate version, but it doesn't sell nearly as well as the color version. 

We have a chocolate with a white transfer sheet, but its in such a minimal amount of white, the off flavor isn't an issue.  TAMU Chocolates with Transfer Sheets

@Brad, is there a supplier that you would recommend with a flavorless Titanium Dioxide pigment? When I mix my own colors its usually a 20/1 ratio cocoa butter (deodorized) to pigment. I haven't mixed white myself yet. Would this ratio work? 

Thanks!

Josh 

PS - if applying directly to the transfer sheet for later application to enrobed pieces, you'll have to mind the balance of dry-enough vs too-dry before cutting the sheet into individual units.

Have you tried using white chocolate (assuming you're not making Vegan products)? If airbrushing, you can cut it 50/50 (more or less) with plain cocoa butter to thin it out for spray application. Of course, this solution is for using a transfer sheet (assuming that's the University logo application) with a magnetic mold - you could just make the transfers for the Maroon part and leave the white portions as negative space, which then get sprayed with the white background color to form the white portions. Then, you can use any kind of chocolate to make the shell, so it won't taste like white chocolate. Of course, if you're talking about enrobed chocolates and didn't want the whole piece to be white chocolate, then you'd have to apply the white "background"/portions by spreading or spraying using the white chocolate (not necessarily cut with cocoa butter if you're spreading, not spraying application...your preference) directly onto the transfer sheet. Then you'd cut them to individual units and apply them to dark or milk enrobed pieces as normal. Don't forget that if you're spreading, not spraying, then having the white tempered/pre-crystallized will be (more) necessary, as the act of spraying *supposedly/usually* tempers the cocoa butter. Hope that works for you!     

This will work great for you.  We have one, and can completely break nibs into almost powder, or into larger pebble sized pieces without creating a paste.

All you need is the breaker

http://www.datasweet.info/cms/front_content.php?idcat=180

Josh;

Cocoa butter isn't white.  Ever.

Unless you've got a direct line on the red phone to Mother Nature you're going to have to use a colorant.

You might want to look at a different supplier for your whitening agent.  It shouldn't have any flavour at all. On top of that good colorant is so concentrated that you have to generally use very little.

Cheers

Brad

Hi Jens,

ss drum refers to the grinder's stainless steel grinding drum.

I can send you more photo's if you give me your email address.

Jim

I can help you, I have a large supply of raw, og Peruvian cacao. You can email me at moore.deanna@gmail.com

CPS Winnower SOLD & Cracker on custom stainless steel tables on wheels, with pull out drawers to hold 5kg - Price €4,000

NEW FBM UNICA Tempering machine 25kg - single phase 220v-  craft chocolate upgrade - dosing plate - Price €10,000

image1.pdf - 578KB

Howdy,

I am looking for a white cocoa butter color without that Titanium Dioxide kick to the palate. I currently use the Chef Rubber Alabaster. It seems we've been getting more and more complaints about the off-putting flavor. Any suggestions?  We have CLC licencing for our local university's logos, which happen to be Maroon and White, so using the white is a necessary evil. Thank you! 

Josh

We are BRC, organic,  GF and can be kosher if the volumes are there?

Hi Clay,

I am in the market for a cooling cabinet and was hoping for some suggestions. We are a very small kitchen just starting our cannabis chocolate in Tucson, Arizona. I am considering Hilliards cooling cabinet which is in the $3500 price range. Do you have any recomendations for alternatives with a similar price and size? I appreciate any help! Thank you  

Cooling Cabinet info (1).pdf - 658KB

If you would like to invest in a larger pot, then you need to have a burner that is strong enough to heat the contents of that pot. The kettle we use most often is made by Savage bros and we have purchased a candy stove to hold this copper pot. Our copper pots are round on the bottom. so your stove will need to be capable of stabilizing the pot.

The link you showed was interesting. I imagine it would work and it is flat on the bottom like standard pots. I prefer what I have, but I also have the matching stove to work with it.

Greetings!

TL;DR: need a new small-batch refiner & heavy duty Korean to American transformer.

I currently live in the ROK, and I've been waiting for my parents to mail me my small-batch chocolate-making machinery (a Premiere Wonder Grinder & a Behmor 1600+ roaster) from the US. But we decided not to send the wonder grinder & just look for a similar machine here in Korea, instead, but I have had absolutely no luck finding machines that run on 60hz & 220v, as machines here do. I've been looking for something under $300 and which has a capacity of 2-10 lbs, and I couldn't spend too much more than that, though it does have to be compatible with Korean electricity output since it'll be on for 2 days at a time.

On top of that, my transformer started smelling like burnt plastic after I tried to use the roaster with it. It seemed like it'd be fine since I had been using my American espresso machine with it for the last few months with no problems, and the roaster also only runs for about 30 minutes at a time. So now I'm in need of a new refiner/concher & super strength transformer. Unfortunately, Japanese machines would not work since their voltage & hertz output are different. The transformer just blew yesterday, when I was trying to roast a test batch of coffee to make sure the roaster functioned well here, so I can keep searching for that. But the refiner has been a month of intermittent searching in the making, and I seem to be no closer than before.

For a year back in the US, I was making chocolate with these machines, and everything was fine... and now I've been in Korea for about 8 months and this warm weather has got me itching to get back into chocolate-making. Please help!! Any helpful tips or links or tricks would be much appreciated.

Thanks so much!

Best,

Max

All equipment for sale in great shape, and priced at about 1/2 retail.

Cocoatown grinder used 10 times at most, with ss drum (used once) and 2nd drum with loose center pin.  $300

Behmor 1600 Plus used 10-15 times $200

Sylph Winnower $125, include Micro shop vac - add $25

Stainless steel Crankenstein: $125

Add UPS shipping from San Diego or local pickup.

If interested email jbenten@yahoo.com

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So, I've been doing some research on copper pots... not sure how big yours is or how much you'd be asking for it, but would something like this work?

http://tigercook.com/product_info.php/products_id/195

Thank you for all that great advice, Daniel! 

I never seem to have any issue with scorching, and my caramel is the texture you describe. If I cut it, it holds it's shape, in a room at about 66 degrees, for about 10 minutes, before it starts to spread a little. I'm neurotic about temp, but I only get 150 caramels from each double batch.  I am using my modified version of the master recipe they gave us in Ecole Chocolat's chocolatier course. It has always worked brilliantly for me... my only trick was to discover the precise temp I wanted to use to get the right texture, while adding about a 1/2 cup of bourbon to the double batch.

That kettle you use sounds huge. How do you get it onto the stove????

Good to hear the guitar cutter works for yours... that's my first option for a big expenditure, because it will also help improve my options for truffles. 

I already do a liquid caramel in a 70% shell, that is a HUGE hit. Everyone that tries, in my little area, has never tasted something like it. But I want some chew to these and that one doesn't have it. It literally just flows into your mouth. I'm using a dry caramel for that one - no water... just dissolve the sugar, get it to toffee colored and then add butter and cream, vanilla and salt.

Hi there!

Yes! we need to find you a faster way to get these done.

Getting some new equipment can be helpful. Of course none of this stuff is cheap. IF you want to make dipped/enrobed caramels, one of the best things you can get is an enrober for obvious reasons. This will bring your daily production from the hundreds to the thousands. Of course this involves several thousands of dollars, even for the least expensive unit.

The other thing is cooking your caramel in one large batch versus multiple smaller batches. We cook all of our caramel in a copper kettle. I have an extra one that we don't use that I would be open to selling ( I know that is an issue for classifieds and I can post there) . When I used to make caramel in stainless steel pots, the pans would often get scorched and ultimately ruined. For some reason this does not happen when I use my kettle and if a little scorching happens then it washes out really easily. Anyway.... our kettle can make a batch of 1,000 caramels in one pot.

When the caramel is done cooking we line our granite table with silicone mats and use long metal bars (6 feet long) to contain the caramel. The bars on the ends are about 2.5 feet long. I had a machine shop make these out of food grade stainless steel. It was a few years ago, but I think I paid around $150-200 for 8 bars total.

The next day when the caramel is cooled, we spread some untempered dark chocolate (you can use tempered too -- either works) on the caramel. Believe it or not, we cut the caramels with a confectionery guitar. If you want to use a guitar, you must be extremely careful with the final temperature of the caramel. Our caramels are soft enough to cut, yet firm enough to hold their shape. If you cook your caramel to a higher temperature then you may break guitar strings. We are very exact on a caramel temperature so that we can achieve the exact texture. Many times, we need to use a knife to cut the caramels again -- regardless, the guitar establishes and marks the perfect shape of the caramels.

Then we put the caramels through an enrober.

If you cant afford some of the equipment I am mentioning, you may want to consider making molded caramels. For a very small operation, I believe that you can get more molded chocolates done in a shorter time than hand dipped chocolates. Also, it is easier to achieve a more liquid caramel for molded chocolates then firmer caramels for dipping/enrobing.

Glad to answer any questions you may have.

Thanks for that response Ben. Wasn't too sure at first but now that I know, will go for one of them. Will look thru the list here as I see many names have been mentioned severally here. 

Continuous tempering machines draw from a bowl of melted, untempered chocolate and then temper it through cooling and then heating. The result is that tempered chocolate comes out of the depositing head. No seed is necessary.

I haven't figured a way.  I bought a caramel roller and it doesn't get through caramel.  The handle has a terrible grip.   It is great for scoring them before you cut them.   Don't get a guitar cutter.

If you want to speed things up, I'd recommend getting a Chocovision Delta to automate up your chocolate tempering.  They're used on eBay regularly.  

Hello to all the lovely experts out there. I'm a 1 year old newbie, when it comes to working with chocolate and have managed to get myself into a predicament. Hoping there might be some techniques out there I'm not aware of.

One of the first things I made that were a total hit are my Bourbon Salted Caramels. I do them in 4 forms... naked, dipped in a Peruvian milk chocolate and sprinkled with Hawaiian lava salt, dipped in Ecuadorian 65% and sprinkled with Applewood smoked salt, and then I do turtles. I've posted some older pics, to give you a bit of an idea. 

My problem is this. They have become really good sellers... particularly when it comes to shops that carry them. And I'm very low-tech, in terms of my operation. The caramel is made in double batches, using a 13 quart tri-ply pan on stovetop. It's poured into a sheet pan and cooled, then, at this point, I'm still scoring them with a pastry cutter (not the super sturdy type) and cutting by hand. Then, I dip them all by hand. 

All my chocolate tempering is by hand/seed method and I hold my chocolate in 2 3kg Mol d'Art melters that I found used, on Ebay, for a song...I've become very obsessive about tracking when this sort of stuff shows up. Again, very low tech, in terms of shop size, equipment, etc. 

I don't bottom them... not sure how to do that with a sheet pan full of caramel. I just cut, group for dipping type and go. But this is taking FOREVER. And with the 3 shops buying them at several dozen at a wack (but wholesale) and then weekly markets and my online sale, I need to figure out a faster way to bang these out. 

Anyone have a non-expensive recommendation on how to speed things along? I am looking at a caramel roller cutter, since that would speed it along a little. If not, I'll just muddle along until we can afford some higher tech stuff.  

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