Forum Activity for @Clay

Mark -

Also interested to know if you solved this. One of the challenges is to know where you are. MT is where, Malta? I would be hesitant to make specific recommendations available in the US as you may not be able to purchase them in Malta.

Jorge - I am guessing that you also want to know, but again, it's helpful to let people know that you are in Costa Rica.

Approach companies that install commercial central air conditioning units. They may have dehumidifier units sized for larger spaces and capacities.

As far as tips and tricks to save electricity. Where does sun hit the building if it does? Awnings can reduce solar gain. The second thing I can think of is insulation. Another is to keep hot air and humidity from coming into the space to begin with, so some sort of ante-room vesitbule where you can keep the temp much higher (30C) and start to reduce the humidity there will keep heat an humidity from enter the shop space in the first place. Then why 18C? 20-22C is fine for chocolate, and 55-60% humidity.

I want to introduce the "Association des Mordus de Chocolat", a chocolate lovers' club in Geneva, Switzerland. The association was founded in 2011 and by February 2015, we have got some 100 members. Our activities consist mainly in chocolate tasting with independent master chocolate makers in Switzerland and in neighbouring countries. In the past three years, we organised chocolate tasting trips in France, Belgium and Italy. Meetings are held nearly each month. We are also contributing to the setting up and running of the "Salon des Chocolatiers et du Chocolat" in Geneva: the next Salon will take place on October 9-11 with 30 exhibitors from Switzerland and elsewhere. You can check the history of past events and also this year's program on our newly created site: www.lesmordusdechocolat.com

Hola Mark,

Did you have any luck solving the problem. We are in the same situation.

Gracias,

Jorge

Hello All,

We are based in Costa Rica, in the rainforest. It is not the most chocolate friendly environment! We are about to start building our new chocolate kitchen, and already have an airconditioning unit, which does a good job of keeping the temperature steady but humidity is still a huge problem.

We wanted to know if anyone, in a similar climate has already dealt with this problem and had recommendation for the kind of specs we should be looking at / suggested models of dehumidifiers?

Any ideas are greatly appreciated! 

Jorge

Clay, thank you so much for the awesome response!  I'm especially stoked about the major potential for cost savings- I'm at an early stage in the business where everything is going super well but every dollar counts! Time to start hunting down a buffet warmer, hotel pans, lids and a temperature controler!

Thanks again!

 Chocolate Company for sale: Enrober & Cooling Tunnel apx. 19' 6"L, 18"W. 5" wide wire belt through enrober is 5" wide, & conveyor belt is 7". Two -2 hundred pound melters. Heated Dipping Pan.  5 bakery cooling racks w/ 4 boxed fans/20 wire shelves. 15 aluminum sheet pans 18"x 36". 1 aluminum bakery rack . 6' stainless steel work table. 2 rolling work tables. 2 credenzas w/drawers. 6 ft high glass showroom unit w/ glass shelves. 1 cherry cordial tumbler. 1 22 pound melter.3 glass lighted floor showcases 6'L x 2.5'D x 3.5T. . .together. 1 older glass display unit, not lighted 6'L x 2.5'D x 4'T. New digital scale. Stock boxes with dividers (apx. 150. 3 well stainless steel w/ tabs and long spray nozzle, Single stainless slop sink w/ taps and single hand sink (all slightly used) all. Buyer must have professionally removed. Sold alone equipment stated above is $26,000. Buyer pays all shipping, handling and removal fees. The whole store (items above) plus all contents; Store is ready for move in all newly painted to health codes, Gift shop is painted “Pink and Chocolate brown a must see”, with landlord approval (Rent is not included). This will include of flat, mini, multiplie molders, and 3 --d molds for EVERY SEASON AND HOLIDAY!. Also lots of additional I items and stock left. The Molds brand new cost $25,000, at the time they are well used, but will last a life time. Lastly we are in Clinton Twp. Mich. have been in business for 43 yr, the name and the signage and the customer base will be sold for $45,000(Waiver is sign for quality requirements of products to remain as is, or be upgraded.

Try an NSF-certified buffet warmer that does not require water. Use NSF-certified hotel pans to hold the chocolate. The buffet warmer should holds 8" deep hotel pans but only put 4" or 6" deep pans in it as you do NOT want the pans to touch the bottom as the temperature controllers tend to be not very sophisticated and if the bottom of the pan is touching the inside bottom of the warmer it can scorch the chocolate. Rather than using full-size pans, use third-size pans to make transferring chocolate easy. (You can also put in a new pan of chocolate when you take out a melted one during the day.) Make sure to cover the pans with lids overnight. You could also put an upside-down sheet pan over the top overnight to make it more efficient. 

Total cost, under $250 depending on the buffet warmer you get. Much less, if you already have the hotel pans and lids.

If you want to make sure that you don't scorch the chocolate  and get it to melt faster -- get a temperature controller and affix the sensor to the inside bottom of the warmer. Set the temp for ~140F (~60C). You can now set the temperature controller on the front of the buffet warmer to a much higher temperature knowing that the temperature controller will keep it from getting hot enough to scorch the chocolate - the external controller will cut the power if it gets too hot. When it cools down the power will come back on. After a little tweaking you can find the front panel setting that gives you the most efficient cycle.

Controllers that will do this are under $100.

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No, the first baffle went badly uncalibrated one day (it registers like 6ºC less than it should), never worked again the same way as new and now it's unusable, if I tell the machine I want to work my chocolate at 25.5 (in order to be really at  31.5) it won't accept such low value. I did use a lot the extended temper mode with this one, so I used to have the machine running for 8 hours or so when it was working OK.

The second baffle (holey baffle) uncalibrated like 5 uses after it was new, but only registers 4ºC less than it should, this one also has never worked like new again, with this one I never had the machine on for more than 3-4 hours. I am still using this baffle with manual temper mode using my own values but I don't know if it is going to get worst someday. Also now I can't even use extended temper mode because once an hour the machine will try to reach 35ºC which will actually be 39º.

It may be some component inside or maybe I am just very unlucky and got two faulty baffles.

I've read in another forum of somebody replacing the delrin insert in the roller stone with custom machined teflon bushings.  I have this model melanger but have yet to fire it up. I'm going to be proactive and obtain a quote from a local machine shop. 

Hi, and thanks in advance for any wisdom you can share!

I'm currently using a Chocovision Revolation 3Z and I'm looking to get a chocolate melter to melt enough chocolate for an additional batch overnight so I can be more productive... Unfortunately the Chocovision and Mol d'Art melters aren't NSF certified, which I need it to be so I can use it in a commercial kitchen.  And the Savage Bros smallest unit is well out of my price range at over $4500.  Does anyone know of an NSF approved chocolate melter for under $1500 that can handle 30-45 lbs of chocolate?

Thanks so much!

I am working in a kitchen it is about 70F so I would think that would be optimal. Anyways I was trying to figure it out last night and came aross that if I put a blowdryer on it while it is still in the heating up stage then the temper came out perfect. In conjunction with what you are saying about the mixing it was helping it to mix a little more. I am not sure what the problem is but this is a fix for now. Have you experienced this problem with the larger ChocoVision machines such as the X3210 and Delta Series?

In an article ahead of Valentine's Day headlined  Valentine’s Day Chocolate Will Cost More This Year, as Cocoa Prices Rise (possibly paywalled), reporter Stephanie Storm writes:

"Criollo is also less susceptible to the diseases that strike the main type of cocoa, Forastero, which makes up about 85 percent of the world’s supply. The Trinitario variety, grown primarily in Latin America and Southeast Asia, ends up in high-end dark chocolate and is roughly 12 percent of the world’s cocoa."

Anybody who knows anything about cocoa knows that criollos are more susceptible to diseases than Forasteros are and that they produce significantly less than Forastero and Trinitario varieties.

And then Ms Storm quotes:

“The supply chain in West Africa is at the heart of the price problem,” Mr. Rollet [ed note: Mr Rollet is a co-founder of Alter Eco and serves as co-CEO] said. “Farmers are at the bottom of the chain, and they’re not getting any richer, thus they don’t see a future in cocoa,” he said. “So farmers there are planting rubber trees instead of cocoa trees.”

It's fair to say that this is a gross over-simplification of "the heart of the problem."

So - apart from spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) and not revealing more about the true heart of the problem - what's the real value of an article like this? One written from what appears to be a position of a near-total lack of understanding of the cocoa and chocolate markets?

Perhaps Ms Storm might benefit from reading this post from the very early days of TheChocolateLife.

Your thoughts?

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Victor -

I have no idea how you would test this, but I wonder if there is an electrical component inside the machine that is a little flaky. As you are having problems with more than one baffle this seems like it might be a problem. What if you open up the machine and blow off any dust inside and look for loose wires somewhere. Something is working okay when the machine is cool, but when it's been on a while and it warms up - that's when the problem shows up?

Without knowing more about what's going on I would say the issue is that the crystals are not evenly mixed in the chocolate. What you may be seeing is regions of different crystal formation.

This is a problem I had with a couple of smaller Chocovision machines (Rev 2s). It usually occurred at the begining if I didn't want a while after the machine beeped and said it was done for the crystals to spread (I usually helped it along by stirring) and at the end when there wasn't enough chcoolate in the bowl to maintain temper.

It didn't happen all the time - usually it was because I as working in the kitchen and it was either much warmer (late-afternoon sun) or much colder than normal.

HTH

The  article I mentioned appeared in Ars Technica today. It references a  paper published in the Journal of Advertising: Reexamining Health Messages in the Digital Age: A Fresh Look at Source Credibility Effects. Three authors out of Washington State.

Funny you say that - my wife's a professor who researches factors that impact credibility - i wonder if it's her study you read.

Although not obvious until you look really closely, the text links to the products she recommends are Amazon affiliate links. SO - FUD Babe is making money off all the direct sales of chocolate plus any other sales the buyer makes on Amazon until the affiliate tracking cookie expires or is reset.

There was a very interesting study that was released to day about the influence of commentors. Depending on the context, just saying you are a doctor (for example) even if you are not actually a doctor, can have more weight and influence on people's perception than an article actually written by a bona fide expert.

Fear is a fantasticaly effective marketing tool.  Opinion based advocates have used this approach effectively with their core group.  It's been pretty well established that most folks already have made their minds up about a topic, and leverage opion based advocacy to reinforce those pre-existing beliefs.  I've long ago stopped trying to fight that fight, precisely because the minds have already been made up, facts be damned.  As someone in the news once famously said - never let the facts get in the way of a good story!

I suspect she's making a comfortable living off this approach, which is why we continue to see it.  Sensationalism only calls more attention to her, which results in more money for her, which becomes a self fueling fly wheel that propogates it further.

God bless the internet, where everyone's anonymous, peer review is unnecessary, and you become an expert in everything simply by claiming so.

A colleague forwarded to me a link to an article - Are You Getting Conned by Cheap Chocolate ?

The problem I have with the article is that the author (anonymous Food Babe, or FUD Babe - Fear Uncertainty Doubt - as I will now refer to her) conflates candies and mass market confections with chocolate.

Is the Godiva ingredients list clean? Nope. Not by a long shot. And the author is right when she claims that the allure of of Godiva is good branding, marketing, and advertising — not that it is a quality product and it's never been advertised as being "natural" or "healthy."

But all of the products FUD Babe presents as being bad for you in this article are not rightly chocolate - they are all candies that contain varying amounts of chocolate. And, apart from Godiva, they are all mass market brands and products (Almond Joy, Ghirardelli Mint Patty, Russell Stover Pecan Delight, Butterfinger, plain M&Ms) and they are all candies. Not chocolate.

I also have a problem with the choice of "expert" opinion on vanillin. Rather than going to a widely-cited and referenced source, the link to explain what vanillin is goes to a hobbyist blogger . While the blogger might have a background in biochemistry, the 'nitty-gritty" is written from the perspective that vanillin is a villainous substance, and the article lacks background and nuance. Compare with the Wikipedia entry on vanillin .

My objection is that the article is sensationalist. It's headlined and written to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Not that the article doesn't make some good points about eating candy in moderation and looking closely at ingredient labels to understand what goes in to what you're eating.

Unfortunately, too many people believe that you have to be sensationalist and appeal to people's fears to attract attention and get your point across.

Brands are not out there trying to "trick" consumers into buying questionable ingredients. The list of ingredients is right there, out in the open. Consumers can choose to not read the ingredient labels and eat stuff that is not good for them. That does not make the products "despicable."

The comments are interesting. Some of the commenters show good knowledge of the issues surrounding chocolate candy and can distinguish between candy and chocolate though a lot of people are confused about what "fair" trade means.

What are your thoughts?

I took Callebaut classes in Montreal and found them to be well worth the time and money.

Some more photos.

I am getting issues with my molded bars looking mottled on the side open to the air. I am not sure why this is happening and it only seems to happen to about 8 of the 16 bars I can mold at one time. So not a great success rate.

I have been molding chocolate for some time now and have been doing it by hand until recently. I bought a ChocoVision Revolution 1 ( I think it is now called a Rev Mini) in July 2014. I have been using it pretty heavily and up until a month ago it has done great. No issues, it tempered fine and I never doubted it, but now I am loosing nearly half my batch each time I run it. What baffles me is that some may come out completely perfect and then others exhibit the streaking and mottledness seen in the photos. 

I have numbered the molds to see if it was in the beginning or end of the batch and they occur randomly, one mold may be fine, the next not fine. One bar out of my 3 bar mold may be perfect while the others look shotty. I am at a loss. I read somewhere that washing the baffle with the temperature probe on it in too hot of water may damage the reading of it, but I have checked the temper with 2 independent thermometers while it is tempering and everything seems to be spot on for the machine. 

Lastly, I can tell if the bars are going to be mottled or not after about 2 minutes of them being in the mold. So my workflow is I laddle the chocolate into the mold. Tap on table to release any bubbles, and use an offset metal spatula to scrap off the excess chocolate to make the bars flat. Then place them on the table while I finish my batch. When I pick them up to put them into a wine fridge (set at about 61-65F) I look at them and can instantly see which ones have the mottled look and can see where the others are going to getting the streaking...

Any thoughts? 

image.jpeg - 1.9MB

Hi David, I would like to see how you collect, store, transport, freeze the cacaohoney.

Also, do you allow visits to your farm?

Hi Francis, all boxes can be frozen but the plain thin cardboard type are more prone to absorbing moisture if not packaged well. You can consider a cardboard box wrapped in plastic. Or a plastic type box all together. Do you mean you want to sell them frozen to customers so they can also put in the freezer or frozen to businesses that will defrost and sell individually as needed? 

Hi Christian, I am actually looking into taking a course with them; I will follow up with you. But on a side note, you want to perfect your abilities? The only way to do this is to practice a lot. What exactly do you want to learn?

Sadly tried all the electricals with no strange results, baffles still uncalibrated. Seems like I will just have to pay for the new ones. 

Great thanks for the answer.

I received the following Tweet this morning:

Marcus: I am afraid the answer to that question is no, I don't.

One reason I don't keep lists of "good" pairings and make pairing recommendations is that I have learned, from doing pairing events over the past 20 years, that in settings as small as five people that at least one won't like the pairing. Some people just won't like the style of wine or the particular chocolate. Others will have come from a meal or brushed their teeth. If there is a cultural mix, I know that there are cultural differences in flavor preferences. Chances are one of them has had an argument that day with a family member or colleague or boss. Some are wearing heavy perfumes or colognes. All of these things affect the senses of smell and taste, and therefore affect the perception of the pairing. In other word, it doesn't really matter what I like.

When I do my pairing classes, I start from the presumption that at least one of the pairings (I tend to offer about five) is going to completely fail for at least one person in the room. Knowing that, I don't focus on matching a wine and a chocolate and saying that the two of them "go together." Rather, I guide participants through some basics of sensory evaluation, and specifically how combinations of aroma and flavor affect our perception of what is being smelled and tasted.

So, I know that if I make any pairing recommendations to Marcus there is a very good chance that he won't like one of them. And, if Marcus is turning around and sharing these recommendations with anyone then I am virtually guaranteed that someone will not only not like one of them - but they will hate one of them.

On a more practical level, it's also the case that Marcus may not be able to buy either the Port or the chocolate I recommend making any suggestions moot.

On a more generic level, the question is so vague that it is impossible to answer.

Let's start out with porto . By this I am assuming Port wines taken as a category. I know that Port is the oldest protected name in wine and it refers to a type of wine made in Portugal. I know that Ports can be made from a wide variety of grapes (though five varietals predominate), that there are several classes of Port wines, incluing Tawny Ports, Ruby Ports, Late Bottled Vintage, and many others from several distinct regions, and although people think of Ports as being sweet, dessert wines, they were often consumed by the British as aperitfis, not digestifs, and, in fact there are White Ports that are classified as dry and semi-dry (demi-sec). Even so, I headed on over to Wikipedia to refresh my memory .

So the first question we need to hone in on is, “Which Port are we trying to pair with?” And we haven't even thought about vintages yet.

The second question is even more vague. 70% chocolate? That doesn't tell me anything.

Origin? Blend? Made in France? The US? Italy? And why 70%? Seems kind of arbitrary. It rules out the Felchlin Cru Sauvage at 68% and the Elvesia at 74% and everything Bonnat makes and hundreds of other really quite wonderful options.

If I was forced to make recommenations I would say, "Go and purchase things that are easy for everyone to find and are not that expensive and taste everything against everything." Maybe focus on one brand - Taylor? - and get a selection. Then go to a local gourmet store and get a range of bars. Everyone knows Lindt Excellence, so get that - or something like it - at a minimum. And then taste each Port with each chocolate. What you will be surprised to find is how the aromas and flavors change. You will find that one Port tastes great with one chocolate and awful with another. The chocolate you love the most tastes best with the Port you like the least.

And that, my friends, is the fun of pairings. Not doing what you know "works" over and over again, but exploring new tastes, new combinations, on your own mission to taste where no-one has gone before.

I currently also use Calico and would love to not use them and make my own from scratch.  I have a savage Brother's Firemixer 14 and make toffee and caramel but can not locate a good recipe for fudge.  I pour the fudge into 8 oz containers and loaf pans.  Any recipes to try would be greatly appreciated.

It is referring to invert sugar. That is sucrose that has been split into its two components-glucose and fructose. It helps control crystallization.

I have one pound packages of dry fondant and on the label it also says 3% invert.

What is the 3% invert?

Thanks,

Joe C.

Thanks a lot to both of you. Going to try both things.

First I will try to check if voltage is Ok and if that is fine check for interference. 

Now that Kerry mentions motors there are times that I use a paintbrush in the room next to it. Going to have to try unplugging everything and pluggin one by one I suppose.

Are you casting solid bars or are you enrobing?  If casting solid bars you can look to add the flavor in a separate mixer just before casting/depositing, using the tempering machine to run the base chocolate.  This may help with more consistent temper as well.

There's another thing to consider besides interference and that is the voltage change that having other equipment on the same leg or circuit can cause. I know of one company that was having problems with a machine and just could not figure it out. When the tech showed up he put a voltage meter on the outlet and it was not running at 220~240V it was running at about 200V. They turned the machine off, plugged it into an outlet that measured just fine and the problem was solved.

Well - I've been chatting with a bean to bar maker who is having trouble with the tempering machine when the melanger is running - but not when it isn't.  The solution being tried right now is a EMI/RFI filter/surge supressor to see if that solves the problem.

Hubby say's unshielded motors can produce RF that will affect other equipment.  

Hmmm never thought about it. Microwave is next to it (connected but not in use at the same time). Refrigerator is about a meter away, Air conditioning machine is about 1.5 mts away. Same distance induction hob and electric oven (convection). Also machine is over a marble countertop, and below it there is a voltage converter 220->110 where the machine is connected.

I am not normally using any other electric equipment (except for air conditioning wich I use at low power when using the machine) when working with chocolate but they are indeed connected.

Do you think any of this equipment can mess with the baffle thermometer? Didn't know rev system was affected by RF.

I've often found I get white marks the first time I use a mold - they disappear in subsequent batches.

Victor - what sort of other electrical equipment have you got going around this temperer?  Anything with a large motor that might be producing RF.  

The legal limit in most (not all) countries is 1.75% shell.  Less is better, as the more shell you have the grittier it will taste, the lower your fat will be, the faster your equipment will fail, and the higher your unwanteds (lead, mycotoxins, etc) will be.

Hey David,

I've tried Rapadura once before.  From my recollection, it was much drier than brown sugar and I don't recall having tempering issues because of it.  I do recall that it added a noticeable molasses flavor to the batch of chocolate I used it in, so I haven't used it in chocolate since as I'm not looking to try to add flavors from the sugar...yet.  Anyway, my wife slowly used up the remainder in baked goods.  Tasty!

Another lesser-refined sugar that I have tried and really enjoyed was called Muscabado from the Philippines.  Alter Eco (I think) sells it here in the US.  It had a noticeable "unrefined" odor to it, not quite molassesy.  The package said vanilla and caramel notes.  The chocolate that I made with it didn't seem to have an altered tasted because of it though.  Note that at that time, I only had one refiner so I made two back-to-back batches of the same cocoa bean origin:  one with bulk organic cane sugar and one with Muscabado.  Didn't notice any major flavor differences and actually I liked the Muscabado more for that particular origin.

Are you buying the organic C&H from say Costco?  I had a negative experience with it in my Santha Spectra 11 refiner.  Relative to other organic cane sugars that I had tried before testing the C&H sugar, it had a seemingly much larger particle size.  When I put it in my refiner, it was like hearing Pop Rocks going off in my Santha and it definitely dogged the melanger down.  Enough so that I was worried it was going to fry my Santha's motor.  A heat gun helped though.

Other organic cane sugars that I have tried that had much smaller particle size were from United Natural Foods Inc (UNFI) and Florida Crystals.  Both I've ordered 25 lb bags from in bulk from our local natural foods COOP.  On sale they were about $30.  I know other chocolate makers have mentioned Wholesome Sweetners, but I haven't tried them.  Last week, I purchased two 1 lb bags of Muscabado and Wholesome Sweetners sugars to test out and compare to the Florida Crystals I'm currently using.  Each 1 lb bag was $3.99 at our COOP, which is pretty pricey but not going to break my bank to test with.  I'm sure there's a much larger price break for 25 or 50 lb bags of each, if they sell that large.

Anyway, hope that helps.

Dave

I bought a Rev Delta from amazon last year. First uses went fine, but this year I needed to move to a new place with air conditioner (here in Peru is summer). First use I noticed the chocolate was not in temper and with a thermometer I checked the temperature of the chocolate, machine said 31.4 ºC "In Temper", all my other thermometers said 34 ºC "Your batch is ruined". I noticed the sensor was strangely not calibrated and it was detecting like 3-4 less degrees all the time. It was really strange. I thought maybe I got a faulty one. anyway I contacted customer service and they told me warranty doesn't cover external parts (what?) and that they will send me two new baffles as a courtesy but I would have to pay for the shipping (shipping cost they gave me was almost the same as buying the new baffles without shipping).

I then remembered I also had a new holey baffle stored, so I decided to work with that one while I decided if I was going to pay for the shipping of the "courtesy" baffles. First time use, fine, second one, fine, third and fourth ones fine. Fifth one, the nightmare ocurred again the baffle started detecting an 3-4 less degrees. I really don't know what to do now, maybe this has already happened to anybody here and can give some advice. Thanks in advance.

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