Forum Activity for @Lee2

First let me say thanks for accepting my membership. I filled out some of the questions rather glibly before knowing it would be approved by a human of all things haha. Oops!

Just opened a chocolate business in Taipei, Taiwan, last month. Going well so far. Looking forward to adventures in high humidity / temperature come summer! (It should start in a month or two haha)

Seems there's a great community here on TCL, looking forward to being a part of it. I hope to start into bean to bar in the next six months and tree to bar within 5 years (we have cocoa trees growing in Taiwan if you can believe it!). Fun! So I will need to learn a lot and you guys seem to know a lot so ... looking forward

Lee

Vladislav -

Most of the chocolate makers who are members of TheChocolateLife are small producers - under 10MT/annually, and few of them make more than modest amounts of caramels, marmalades, etc.

If you want to make tonnes of caramels, pates de fruits, and nougat you are going to want specialized equipment. If you were here in the US I would recommend Savage Brothers as one source. In Europe I don't know, however there is a used equipment broker in Milan that probably has what you're looking for. Contact me privately for the link.

I'd like to make the products like on the pictures

Do not people on the forum that could give good advice on the put questions?

I suspect that many manufacturers of chocolate, make caramel and marmalade too ..

Good day to all!

Congratulations to all forum members a Happy New Year and Merry Christmas!

I have a small chocolate factory. Capacity of approximately 25 tons per year. I plan to build another factory for the production of caramel and marmalade (from fruit pastes and pectin).

Part of products of the new factory will immediately come to the chocolate factory and will be covered by chocolate

I ask you to advise producers of good equipment for the production of marmalade, caramel and nougat. And I am not interested at all industrial equipment. I need equipment for medium factory (30-40 tons per year), which is able to produce high quality products.

I would be grateful for any information on this subject: company names, links to forums, websites it.p.

I wish you all a good new 2014! Vlad

I've been having problems with making chocolate bars, I've been tempering the chocolate in my chocovision tempering machine and then pouring it in to my bar molds than i add nuts and dried fruit. my work area stays between 65-69 degrees and i live in a desert so there isn't much humidity. but I'm still getting blooming on all my bars i haven't had one bar come out. I'm at a lose as to what i should do to fix this.

any help would be great

thank you

Sheena

update: OK so i made another batch and this time i did not use any additions and i didn't use a spoon to scrape the bowl which is what i was doing before. i just poured it straight into the mold and so far it seems to be looking good no bloom yet, but now i have extra chocolate from the bowl that's been wasted because i can't touch it with anything or it will bloom, also how am i suppose to add nuts or fruit to my chocolate bars if they just keep blooming every time i do?

Dear Clay,

I live in Singapore, and find it very hard to get any information on chocolate. This website is such a big support - I don't have the words in my vocabulary to thank you enough.

Anjali

Thank you Clay for everything you've done with this website. It is so nice to be able to look at the forums and see things that really matter to me. This is the best site for chocolate information and discussions. Though I might not be involved on a weekly or monthly basis, I always glad when I do need information and I can find it on The Chocolate Life.

Thanks again for all your hard work.

Thank you, Clay, for not contributing to the flood. And thank you for CHOCOLATE LIFE.

You may be happy to know that, encouraged by the community, our Pure Cacao Tablet producer has started to gradually fulfil their dream of producing chocolate. This Christmas they managed to create their first real chocolate, which taste as good as real: RAW and DARK, and SPICY too! We hope to be able to contribute more machinery to them so that their CHOCO will become even more divine next Christmas.

Fanny-Min Becker, Fair-and-Healthy (FMIR)

Merry Happy 2014!

Those of you who pay attention to such things will notice that I haven't sent a member newsletter in quite some time. There are many reasons for this, but the biggest one is that, if you're like me, you started receiving holiday emails in early November. The flood continued on on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. And on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

Enough already. I did not want to contribute to that flood.

So here it is, Sunday, January 5th where I live, and this is the first member newsletter of 2014.

The 6th Anniversary of TheChocolateLife

Mid-January marks the 6th anniversary of TheChocolateLife. It's hard to believe that we've reached this milestone. I think TheChocolateLife is where it is because it offers experiences and opportunities that other sites don't. TheChocolateLife is not just about reviews and it's not just about beantobar production. Those are both topics for discussion, but really, there is no limit to the discussion as long as it's about chocolate.

My main reason for writing this message is to say Thank You to everyone who contributed in any way to TheChocolateLife in 2013.

I did not start out wanting to grow TheChocolateLife into some huge behemoth generating millions of page views per month, for me it has always been about building community and focusing on quality over quantity.Nonetheless, wetopped the 8000 member mark and now count members in well over 150 countries.

While I knew a good deal about chocolate when I started TheChocolateLife, I know a lot more now and I can chalk it up in large part to the discussions I've read here. TheChocolateLife is a place for people to learn, share what they know, and share their passion for chocolate. Thank you all, again.

What's Most Popular on TheChocolateLife

The most popular parts of the site, by far, are the main Forum discussion area on the Home Page and the Classifieds Group.

In addition, over 8,700 photos have been uploaded and more than 240 videos have been posted. There are nearly 3000 discussion topics and uncounted comments (I estimate that the number approaches 50,000!), nearly 600 blog posts, and over 400 event listings.

Taken as a totality, I think that TheChocolateLife represents one of the largest, if not the largest, bodies of collected wisdom about chocolate on the Internet. That's a pretty remarkable achievement, and one that we can all be proud of.

What's New on TheChocolateLife

I have started a new feature that I hope will become a monthly series. These are "Group Reviews" of chocolates. These reviews are designed to foster discussion about specific chocolates that are very popular, have been hyped in the media, or that have performed well in awards programs. For January 2014, the chocolate I have chosen is Fortunato #4. Click here to learn more about Group Reviews and to contribute .

What New Things do YOU Want to See on TheChocolateLife in 2014?

I am always open to new suggestions for features and functionality as well as new groups, forum topics, and more. I do what I can to implement the features within the limitations of the software. One thing I am very interested in working on is creating some sort of cocoa bean exchange that will help connect buyers and sellers of cocoa beans.

Post your thoughts there for all to see and comment on. The more discussion there is about a particular feature, the better I can gauge the popularity of a request. So - don't be shy, especially if you have never contributed before.

Thanks To ...

I also want to take a moment to thank those businesses that have shown their support of TheChocolateLife in 2013 by taking out Member Marketplace ads and Sponsorships. The monies collected from these placements primarily go to covering the hard costs of hosting and maintaining TheChocolateLife. They make it possible for me to not incorporate third-party advertising. These include Truffly Made, Micelli Molds, and CocoaTown.

My ongoing relationships with FBM, Chocovision, Packint, and others also make it possible for me to work on and grow TheChocolateLife. I will be expanding these relationships in 2014 in some new areas with the intent of providing new equipment for the confectionery kitchen as well as bean-to-bar chocolate makers.

No Thanks To ...

Spammers and others who want to take advantage of TheChocolateLife community in 2013. As you know, I work hard to keep TheChocolateLife free from spam and spammers. I am not perfect, and there were a small handful of incidents in 2013 where I got fooled. Every single request for membership is reviewed manually before being approved. At one point, spambot membership requests outnumbered real requests by 50:1 or more. Some days, I would sit down to review requests and find that not one came from a person. That can be disheartening at times as you might imagine. But it it a part of my commitment to the community to continue to do so.

Want more ChocolateLife?

There are other ways to follow TheChocolateLife:

Twitter @DiscoverChoc
Facebook page
Facebook group LaVidaCocoa
Google+ community
Paper.li digest

Here's to a Merry Happy Chocolate-y 2014 and beyond,
:: Clay

Hi Clay, I'm waiting for a new group review What will be the next bar? Chocolove, Vera

I arrive very late at this discussion, hope still on time . I recently tried Fortunato No4 and considered a very good experience.

Soft and very subtle flavors. I have family that works making wine and have a vineyard, I used to go visit them when I was younger and saw wine making process. The chocolate took me back there, sometimes I felt I was smelling the inside of the stone bottles (botijas) with wine, but it wasn't something strong it was very subtle and forced me to try hard to remember. I don't know if it was because of that but I really liked it.

I also would say I found a well rounded flavor, gave me a warm feeling.

I just tasted the Maranon from Bar Au Chocolat. Complete different than the others. I love this one too

Don't follow the coffee rating system. It is heavily weighted in favour of the taste of the US Japan and the UK. Also although good coffees score in the high 80s or 90s... and the maximum is 100... the minimum is (from memory) around about 60.

A true scale should go from 0-100 not 60-100.

OK - Anvers got some back in stock in the past month or so (having sold out previously) and I received my bars today. First up, reasonably priced for an Australian fine chocolate - I paid $10.50 for a 100g bar which compares very well against the like of Valrhona (~$13 for 70g) or Cluizel in my local area.

I enjoyed the chocolate. It was fairly one-dimensional in flavour (that's not a bad thing) - it tasted like a dark, luscious chocolate without any other strong notes of berries or fruits etc. Beautifully made in terms of texture and melt - mine was quite soft for a dark chocolate and melted away pleasantly.

Very decent of you to be so considerate Choco, I think it speaks to your integrity. I didn't feel like you went anywhere near out of bounds in your comment, but thank you for not simply trolling.

Saludos, Brian

Brian,

I deleted the message that you replied to because I didn't want to give out information that was not correct. I was making assumptions based on the PR that I have seen, so I apologize if my comments created any negative repercussions. (Some day I may learn that making assumptions so often gets one in trouble!!)

ChocoFiles

Thanks Brian

Hi Gap, this Brian Horsley, the bean guy for Maraon Chocolate, writing from Peru. I posted this already but now i don't see it so reposting, please forgive me if it appears twice. House of Anvers is the retail representative for Fortunato #4 in Australia.

Saludos, Brian

Hi Vera, this Brian Horsley, the bean guy for Maraon Chocolate, writing from Peru. I'm so glad you enjoyed the chocolate, i really love the swiss style and slow conch too. when I visited the Felchlin factory in Schwyz last year i was overwhelmed by the care and attention to detail given to the beans by the Felchlin team. Sepp Schoenbachler, the chocolate boss at Felchlin, is truly a master in my opinion at bringing out balanced and rounded flavors from what are considered to be difficult and temperamental bans to work with. Thanks again for your patronage!

Saludos, Brian

Hi Choco, this Brian Horsley, the bean guy for Maraon Chocolate, writing from Peru. I never comment on anyone's perception of our beans or chocolate, its subjective and everyone has their own opinion which is by definition right for them. I only wanted to comment that our marketing budget is zero. All our PR ( on the Maraon Chocolate side, not our retail clients ) comes from free press. We have never bought an ad, paid for a stand at a trade show, etc. We are a small company - albeit growing due to positive market acceptance of our product - and don't have the budget for any expensive marketing of any kind. The beans are truly difficult and expensive to source, buy, process, transport, and make into chocolate. Those factors, and as with every other product in the world, retail margin, are the basis for the cost, not marketing.

Saludos, Brian

Other brands making chocolate from those beans: Ritual, Nave, The Chocolate Tree and Bar au Chocolat.

I tasted Felchlin, French Broad and Nave. I definitely prefer Felchlin. I love their style. The long conch creates a sublime texture and melting. The flavours are very delicate and nice layered. Flavours I tasted: cassis, blackcurrant, nuts, a little spicy, burned sugar, cream, butter, liquorice. So on a scale of 10 that will be a 10 for texture and melting and a 9 for taste

Clay and Sebastian;

Why re-invent the wheel here? I'm sure that there is some type of rating/award system in place for coffee, and seeing as there are so many parallels between coffee tastingand the direction that chocolate tasting is going why not just mirror those processes?

Sebastian brought up one of the significant concerns that I have always had with the ICA: some judges' palates aren't sufficiently discriminating.

Just like coffee already has, chocolate is evolvingto cater to"personal taste", and everybody's likes and dislikes are different. Add into the mix the concept of demographic preference (Europeans consumers typically like a darker, more intense chocolate than North American consumers), and you have a rating system that is not only as effective as herding cats, but is also skewed to a particular group of producers which is dependent on where the judges are from and how desensitized they have become to the intensity of the product throughout their careers.

Brad

French Broad 2011

Rating = 6, Above Average

See Review notes attached below.

Profile: hard to pin down, but I'll go with Earth. My very first tasting was noticeably acidic and kind of burnt, but I never got that again subsequently. Red wine undertones, but not too strong. There's a persistent "off" note in the undertone that reduces my enjoyment, but it's hard to nail down. Maybe like something green or unripe, maybe like faint red wine. It rather overpowers other flavors, though.

For a first attempt with these beans this is above average. Knowing the French Broad Chocolate's Lounge high standards I expect them to work out the kinks, so I believe that this bar will get even better over time. One reason for my lower rating is because the bar is expensive. I know the beans are expensive, but when I pay more I expect more.

Also-

• Chrisophe Morel
• French Broad, 2011. Probably made from the beans not Felchlin's couverture.
• Good & Evil bar (extremely expensive!)

There are quite a few makers that have Fortunato bars, so a good place to start may be to identify all of the companies that sell Fortunato #4 bars. To get things started:

Moonstruck by Felchlin

Cocoa Dolce

I saw a list somewhere, maybe it was on the Maranon website...

I'd like to play along but I don't source anything but american bars so I can't play. If you want thoughts I'm happy to give them but we could use a source to purchase from or if you wanted to build a shipment of 3/6/12 months worth of review materials + a spif for yourself I think many of us would be happy to order from you. :D

Clay - like most people I've heard the back story and know of the chocolate, but have never seen it for sale at a retail level. Is it for sale under the Felchlin brand? I was under the impression that is was been sold in wholesale lots (or at least bulk) from Chef Rubber at one stage, so do people simply re-melt and sell it under their own brand?

I would be interested in trying it if I could get hold of it in Australia

Thanks for any leads

We're getting far afield from asking members to contribute their impressions of a particular chocolate. We can discuss the merits of creating a "new" rating system that addresses these very important issues - but let's do it in a different discussion thread.

Given that chocolate nuances can be many, I'd suggest a more granular scale of 1-100. You could stay with 1-10 and allow decimal points, but decimal pointssmack of a lot of math and that freaks people. People are used to the 1-100 scale, given things like school test scores, the Wine Spectator rating, yada, yada.

Actually the statistical part is the easy part - there are lots of programs out there that effectively do that for you, once you have the data.

As far as the balloting goes, it'd probably make sense to start with a subset of a ballot focusing on a few prime attributes - cocoa intensity, fruit, bitterness, astringency, etc. A 1-15 or a 1-5 scale is typically used (1-5 is probably easier for this purpose). At that point it's simply a function of getting with a number of 'good' tasters and evaluating a range of bars (no more than one bar every 20 minutes i'd suggest) under controlled conditions (temperature, quantity, don't drink your starbucks mochachinno before, etc) and agreeing on what constitutes a 3 vs a 5 - this is creating the standards. I'd suggest sticking with larger mfrs for this, using single material from the same production lot, and then freezing a few bars of it for a 'static' reference point in the future. That way as you bring new folks on, you can have a sensory 'kit' where you download the ballot, say go buy bars x,y,z which correspond to 1,2,3 on the chocolate intensity scale, for example, to help provide a frame of reference vs what the actual balloted chocolates should be scored against for intensity.

A similar approach has already been recommended to the ICA. Having participated in these for a long time, my take is they're off to a great start but haven't continually improved their processes to harmonize results. A big reason of that is the time it takes to create a good sensory process. it is a difficult thing to manage, and frankly not everyone can taste - there's some concern about needing to tell long time participants their results aren't valid because they don't have a sufficiently discriminating palate.

Sebastian:

It is something to consider, and something that could grow organically out of the responses. I have been a judge on two different occasions at the International Chocolate Awards (ICA) and I think what they might be doing the best job of "managing subjectivity" at the moment. One of things they can do is in their analysis is to spot statistical outliers - a judge whose rankings are consistently different from the average. The judging forms are posted on their web site.

I know that for the 2013 ICA round more than 300 different judges participated.I don't have the expertise to devise a formal statistical analysis method so it would be difficult for me to work on the normalization and calibration of such an approach. However, I do agree that taking a standardized ballot and having a decent-sized pool of people rate some specific, well-known, chocolates (e.g., Valrhona Manjari, which is one of the reference chocolates at the ICA), would be a good start. That's a different exercise, and one that probably would be worthwhile, in and of itself.

What would other reference (standard) chocolates be do you think?

Perhaps a suggestion..

one of my observations with the Salon du Chocolat's review system is that the ballot used is pretty good, however there's an amazing lack of calibration between the panelists. Panelist 1 may think chocolate A is a 5 on the chocolate scale, however another may rate it as a 13. This results in a muddled sensory review, with a huge standard deviation, and is difficult to interpret.

It may be interesting to take that ballot (it is a decent ballot - not great, but decent), and select standard chocolates (and lots of those chocolates) that equate to a 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 - etc) on that scale, in an attempt to develop a more standardized approach to group evaluation. Calibration of sensory panels is very difficult, and i don't think that this approach would ever calibration global panels (that's a bit optimistic), but it may be worthwhile to think about how we could lower the standard deviation in these groups such that we're increasingly 'speaking the same language', or at least the same dialect 8-)

If someone were then so inclined, the ballots could be modified to include a general 'likeabilty' score, and data mined over time to get a picture of what attributes translate to 'good' in the eyes of the general evaluation population. Or use it as a standardized way to monitor annual variations in flavor profiles, etc.

Something to consider!

This is the first in what I hope will be a regular series (at least quarterly) of Group Reviews , a new feature for 2014 here on TheChocolateLife.

The idea behind the reviews is to get members to contribute their opinions about chocolates that are either very popular, have been heavily hyped, and/or that have received strong positive reviews from rating and reviewing web sites and/or awards programs.

The inspiration for the feature comes from Jos Ortega y Gassets 1929 book, The Revolt of the Masses [ Amazon affiliate link ]. In this book, Gasset predicts that future generations will come to rely more heavily on the recommendations of friends, colleagues, and even strangers over those of experts. If asked to choose between the advice of "experts" and the impressions of "regular" people, the majority will turn to the latter. This helps explain why many people tend to trust crowd-sourced aggregate reviews over those from reviewers in established media outlets.

This month's chocolate - Fortunato #4

Fortunato #4 is made by Felchlin (Switzerland) from beans sourced in Peru by Maraon chocolate.

While it hasn't received a lot of love from international chocolate awards (though this might be be because it was not entered, not that judges did not like it), few chocolates have been more overhyped in the media in the past five years than Fortunato #4. Some of the claims made are true (a distinct genetic variety of Nacional thought to have disappeared in the early 1900s) while others clearly are not (the rarest chocolate in the world).

Think about your response in three parts.

Part 1 :: Present your sensory impressions - Aroma, Taste, and Texture -of the chocolate.

Part 2 :: Give a rating of the chocolate on whatever scale you want (or that you use for your own purposes) - 1 (low) through 10 (high), 1 through 100, or an impressionistic scale from low (This chocolate is so bad that if I were gifted it I would not even regift it to someone I did not care about); to high (This chocolate is so good that I would have to think three times before sharing any, or This is a desert island chocolate).

Part 3 :: This part is optional and can include a discussion about other aspects of the chocolate - including your thoughts on packaging, marketing -- topics that are not central to the chocolate itself.

Beth -

Sebastian is right to consult with someone. Starting out, you want to think about the flow of production, from accepting shipments to shipping out. The organization of your space needs to accommodate the flow of materials through the space. You are going to want to separate out the space(s) where un-roasted beans are from the rest of your space (to prevent contamination), and then you are going to want separate zones for hot and cold operations, dry storage, and temperature-controlled storage. This gives you your functional zones.

When it comes to equipment, I can tell you that the place to start thinking is from the amount of production you plan to do. If you need to produce 50kg of finished product per day that suggests one or more different production paths. If you need to produce 250kg per day, then other paths need to be considered. I would not recommend scaling up much past 2 or 4 CocoaTown/Spectra "universals" as it's actually a comparatively inefficient way to go (rather than lots of small "universals" it's best to get equipment dedicated to each step in the process - or go with "real" universals. Real universals will be loud so you should consider putting them some place that can be sound proofed.

I was at Alain Ducasse's workshop and they have a half-bag gas roaster into an antique winnower. They grind the nibs in a colloid mill ( here's a video of what a small colloid mill looks like ) and then put the liquor into a mixer to add sugar to the liquor. The resulting paste is put through a three-roll mill into an old-style Carle and Montanari conche (250kg capacity but they are looking to upgrade to 400kg). With this method they can easily fill the conche in an 8-hour working day.

Think not just in terms of weight of production (kg/day) but also in terms of the number of units. It doesn't take much longer to do 1000 80gr bar than 1000 50gr bars. But think in terms of molds and cavities. If you can fill on average 1 mold/minute with four cavities/mold that's 60 molds/240 bars/hr. 1000, 50gr bars will take about 4 hours at that rate to mold. You don't need a tempering machine capable of tempering 100kg/hr (e.g., a continuous tempering machine with a 25kg working bowl) to reach that capacity.

Until you get into large volume production, cooling tunnels are very expensive propositions. Many small chocolate makers make a "cool room" and you can do this with a conventional through-wall air conditioner and a CoolBot [ referral link ]. Elsewhere here on TheChocolateLife I've posted conceptual plans for a "static cooling tunnel" that several ChocolateLife members have made and are using successfully.

You'd probably do well to consult with someone or buy lunch and pick someone's brains - but here's a quick an dirty shot at some answers before i go out to plow my driveway (again!)

1) Variable. Macintyre type machines will be very loud, the santhas less so - however they're still going to produce a fair bit of noise.

2) Yes. ESPECIALLY important to separate your unroasted from your roasted sections for micro purposes. also the heat generated may interfere with your tempering processes.

3) Options for.. grinding? sure - you don't mention the volumes or the particle sizes you're looking for, but there are plenty of grinders out there such as ball mills, colloid mills, macintyre mills, etc

4) I've never used those models

5) yes, get one if you do high volume. Less than 50 lbs / day consider hand tempering or a savage kettle. they are likely to be expensive.

6) ideally you'll want a 3 zone tunnel, coldest in the middle. the specifics of the length and cooling are dependent upon how much you put into it (i.e. what your tunnels heat load is). fans inside to push the heat out also help.

I am building a commercial space to house my chocolate business and have many questions about machinery. While still a very small business, I am in the process of upgrading to a larger production and have many questions about small scale universals and tempering machines:

1- How loud are these machines and how much heat do they produce? Are certain machines quieter than others?

2- Do people generally isolate these machines in another room?

3- Are there any other options besides cocoatown and santha in the under $10k range?

4- What are people's experiences with the spectra 40 and cocoatown 65 grinders? I was using two cocoatown ECGC-12SL melangers for the last year until they both broke down on me. I am looking at having to replace the stones and the metal arm (which snapped) because the plastic has now cracked in all the places where it attaches to the stones. I am hugely skeptical to invest in their larger machine because I am already out the $1000 I spent on these machines and they only lasted me a little over a year. the motor is still fine, but I think there is inconsistency in the tension which creates wear over time and stresses the plastic, as well as the metal nuts that scrape constantly on the plastic, thereby wearing it completely away. I wonder whether anyone else experiences this? In my conversations with cocoatown I learned that they changed the machine to include new plastic washers, in order to help with the wear on the plastic, but they don't seem to want to compensate me for this on my machine.

5-Any good advice on tempering machines?

6-Does anyone have any good information on homemade cooling tunnels? ...any thoughts on the ideal cooling temperature, should the temp stay the same or change? I am thinking of putting an external thermostat on a freezer and then putting a fan inside, but there is no way to control humidity.

any helpful advice would be appreciated, thanks, Beth

Hi all Happy new year to you. I am currently thinking of starting a new project but have come to a dead end with some thing has anyone ever used sponge cake as a base in chocolates and if so what kind? also was it more successful with dark, milk or white chocolate when dipping many thanks Lynsey

Thank Bart , the size of the chocolate will from 4 cm up to the chocolate bar size , not 2 kg for 1 ps

and what you said , I am looking for something with low investment , till to be expert in that domain

Thank you a lot for you kind of collaboration

Kind Regards

Hassan

Hello Hassan,

Do you mean a product of 2kg? That is a big chunk of chocolate, what dimensions will this be? I've no experience with something that large.

Anything that is rigid enough and can withstand the heat from the plastic, can act as a pattern. I've used wood, plastic, aluminium, cast resin, epoxy coated styrofoam, even plaster for thermoforming.

Obviously a CNC router and thermoforming machine are a professional solution to make this type of mould. But you're looking at quite a large investment in money (guestimate: several thousand dollars) and time (learning how to operate this machinery). I don't have a CNC router (yet!): at the moment I let somebody else do the CNC routing for any shapes I can't make myself.

PET thickness will depend on size, shape and complexity of your design. As you stretch the warm plastic over your pattern, it will become thinner in some places. For some shapes 1mm is ok, for others I use 2mm. E.g for large flat shapes I prefer 2mm, as it is more rigid than 1mm and there is less chance of cooling spots on the chocolate. But thicker plastic will need higher vacuum for good reproduction of small details and corners on the pattern.

My vacuum forming table is giving me good results for what I do, I make moulds for small shapes with simple geometry (largest so far was 20x20x5cm). First upgrade will be a better vacuum pump so I can use thicker PETG.

With thermoforming it is as with making chocolate ;-) There is no foolproof recipe: sometimes things don't work and you don't know why. Then you need some feeling and experience to balance all parameters for good results.

Best regards, Bart