I came across a short video on the internet showing an enrober belt with what appeared to be a silpat-styled belt, or cover. I've got parchment paper rolls or acetate rolls, but a re-usable silpat would be pretty cool. You get the texture of the silpat on your bonbon bottoms too...I like that look.
Is this something commonly used on enrober belts?
thank you for the answers
I was more interested in the function of this machine. It seems that (2nd picture) it is used to heat up cream (for a ganache) and later it is put together with the chocolate into a stephan mixer. I am curious about why to use such a machine to heat up(cock) cream? or is it because of quantity.
i am looking for chocolate world moulds number 2051 , these moulds are no longer in production by CW. IF you have any that you no longer require please message me
mick , kilbeggan handmade chocolate
It's a product from CadixPro in France. Similar to a Stephan or RoboQbo. http://www.cadixpro.com/portfolios/sugar-cooker/?lang=en
hard to say from the photo. could be a stephan mixer / kettle.
Hello chocolatiers,
We are selling our 2nd 2012 Selmi One tempering unit.
Volumetric dispenser and pedal to control the flow of chocolate. Close circuit cooling system featuring counter current heat exchanger.
• Tank Capacity: 26.45 lbs
• Pwer Requirements: 220V, 3 phase
• Dimensions: w 14.18" x l 28.75" x h 57.48"
Condition: Excellent
Location: NYC
Price: $6000
Please feel free to reach out with any questions!
Diana
DianaKelleryd@gmail.com
Calling all chocolate consumer enthusiasts/lovers to help us with our research.
We're beginning to do research to find out how and why consumers buy and enjoy craft/artizan chocolate. We're looking for consumers/enthusiasts of dark chocolate. This includes anyone that consumes craft/artizan chocolate but IS NOT in the business as a chocolate maker or works in the chocolate industry.
Once this research is complete, we'll publish our finding and analysis for anyone in the industry to benefit.
Please fill out the following survey. Then if you agree, we'll pick 10-15 people to participate in a more detailed interview.
We know your time is valuable, so if you're selected for the interview, we'll give you $50 Amazon Gift Card for your time!
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/HS7QFLQ
Thanks.
Ilya Sterin
Hi, i just need some little help. I want to know what machine this (image attached) is?
I saw it at a few chocolatiers and it seems it is something for cocking and mixing? (one picture with where cream is inside in the other picture there are caramelized nuts inside).
Does someone know this machine?
friendly regards, dd
I run a homemade chocolate business and I am searching for a new packaging service company. Has anyone heared of the Clearpak Creative Packaging, here in Ontario. Have been thinking of doing the packages from there. Would love to hear some more about their services, incase anyone here have tried them before. Thank you.
4 Ft x 4 Ft on Casters, the marble is 2 inches thick an it is 30 inches high. It is excellent to help chocolate cool. Can be used for chocolate making birthday parties (people can sit at the table with regular chairs), can also be used for several types of candy making. Email for details TRIANAML8@AOL.COM Asking $1,000
Custom Made Prefamac Double Head Spinner for sale. 1 1/2 years old, prestine condition. This machine includes vibrate button and dual fans. 2 arm spinner, it can hold from 8-16 moulds at a time. Custom made and imported from Belgium. $10,000 Located in Northern NJ. Shipping not included. Email me for more details or questions. TRIANAML8@aol.com
Two years old. Holds up to 240lbs of chocolate per day. Not heated with light bulbs. In perfect condition. $6,000. In northern NJ. Shipping not included in price. Email me for more info. TRIANAML8@AOL.COM
I over-ordered on chocolate (and a few other things) this season and am looking to sell some stock.
Ok, so being new to the industry, was glad that I'm not the only one with questions about bean to bar. In your opinion description, you say: "they must produce a retail bar under their own brand", but then also define the phrase "from the bean". In my simplified view, the bean-to-bar defines that the maker gets the beans and produces the bar, but it seems like it's become quite ambiguous? When you mention the production of retail bar under their own brand, what is that opposed to? Isn't that what most makers do, even if they just remelt someone elses product?
In the simple view, Barry-Callebaut is a "bean-to-bar" maker because they do make chocolate bars. Huge ones that are mostly only used by remelters. Small from-the-bean makers who wish to differentiate themselves from industrial producers would have a problem calling B-C a "bean-to-bar" chocolate maker though they are in a literal sense. They make chocolate from cocoa beans and they mold chocolate bars.
From-the-bean clearly differentiates a remelter, who would be properly labeled "from-couverture."
By throwing the retail bar in their own label requirement in, you can say that a "bean-to-bar" chocolate maker starts with cocoa beans and ends up producing finished bars for retail sale. This disqualifies Barry-Callebaut (and, unfortunately Felchlin as well - which produces very fine bars for many companies under private-label contracts), but it means that companies like Guittard, Valrhona, and Cluizel, and many others who are also industrial-scale producers can be considered bean-to-bar.
The question is ... where do you want to draw the line? Purists will say that a "true" bean-to-bar chocolate maker must own all of the equipment and do all of the work in-house. I am less demanding because I can see a lot of value of roasting and liquor-making at origin. But to be considered bean-to-bar the chocolate maker would have to personally supervise every single roast and grind. If they just phoned it in, then they'd from a from-liquor chocolate maker.
Some companies, like Pralus and Scharffen Berger in the early days, only produce some of their bars. When I visited the Pralus factory I could only see wrapping machines for their 100gr bars, not the smaller tasting squares. Those were (at the time, I don't know the situation now), wrapped by someone else with special machinery.
Answers to questions about where to draw lines become even fuzzier if we want to start talking about the definitions of craft, or artisan, or micro-batch. In the end I think that these are nuances that are important to only small, but passionate, segments of the producer and consumer markets.
[Edited on Jan 5, 2016 for typos and grammar.]
The Mast Brothers were in the right place at the right time with the right product and the right image. Clay made this observation back in 2012; they captured the cultural zeitgeist perfectly, guiding and riding the wave they expertly caught. But change any one aspect of that picture and the Bros may have had less success. Take away Williamsburg, the flannel and, yes, the beards they claim were grown on a bet about the amount of chocolate they sold. What you have is chocolate built upon the work of others, heralded by journalists and cool hunters hungry to rave about a hot new thing—some of whom are now indulging in gleeful schadenfreude about the takedown.
There are many reasons to be disappointed in the Mast Brothers. They were willfully dishonest about which, if any, of their chocolates were bean-to-bar (as chronicled in exquisite detail by Scott Craig in his four-part series ). This is an affront to any chocolate maker dedicated to the painstaking process of sourcing beans from various origins, paying for shipping (a much greater expense for smaller makers who do not have economies of scale) and then working through the laborious process of transforming the seeds of the cacao pod into chocolate.
It takes about 400 beans, or approximately 11 pods, to make 1 pound of chocolate. The seeds we call beans are roasted, cracked to release the cocoa nib, and then shelled (winnowed) to remove the papery husk. Next, the nibs are ground into a paste known as cocoa liquor, which can be directly processed into chocolate or pressed to separate the fat (cocoa butter) from the non-fat solids. The resulting “presscake” is processed into cocoa powder which can later be recombined with cocoa butter to make chocolate or with vegetable oils, like palm oil, rendering a much lower-quality product (that cannot be called chocolate in the U.S.)
The cocoa bean contains between 47 and 54 percent fat—a stable fat with a long shelf life, one that’s solid at room temperature but starts to melt in our mouths or under our touch. Its stability means it’s coveted not only in chocolate but also as an ingredient in medical and beauty products. The butter can have a mild to very present cocoa flavor, depending on the way it’s processed, and is the only part of the bean used to make “white” chocolate.
Butter separated out from the powder is often added back during the chocolate-making process because fat—glorious fat—makes the chocolate creamier and, as the carrier of cocoa’s aroma compounds, more flavorful. (Interestingly, some craft chocolate makers do not add any cocoa butter to their recipes, thinking that added butter detracts from the “true nature” of the cocoa bean.)
The resulting mass (with any added ingredients—sugar and, perhaps, vanilla) is now the texture of coarse mud. As it’s refined, the size of the cocoa and sugar particles get progressively smaller. Conching (most often a separate step from refining) improves texture and tames harshness by evaporating off unwanted volatiles and fostering chemical reactions that can create delicate aromas and flavors.
A chocolate with particles over 30 microns will register on our tongues as gritty. Through refining, a cocoa liquor that starts out with particles in the 100 to 150 micron range is, ideally, reduced down to between 18 and 22, resulting in a smooth texture. That sensation influences the entire experience of flavor. “The whole process of making chocolate is to break down particle size and expose flavor,” explains Trinidadian chocolate maker Matthew Escalante. “Every step of processing changes the possibilities.”
The next step is tempering: forcing the fat crystals in the cocoa butter to line up in a specific shape through a controlled combination of heating and cooling. This increases the chocolate’s sheen and intensifies its snap. Tempering is tricky; if the chocolate isn’t tempered properly, it has a greater chance of getting fat bloom, the whitish coating or splotches caused by cocoa butter separating out of the chocolate. After tempering comes the sublime moment when the tempered liquid chocolate is poured into molds, cooled and—finally—packaged for consumption.
You can see why chocolate makers would be frustrated by anyone melting down pre-made couverture chocolate and claiming they’d had a hand in the entire process. This work is arduous. Through unclear labeling, Mast Brothers allowed consumers to assume all bars were made from beans they had sourced. They were not; they fudged the truth.
By 2006, about the time the Bros turned their attention to chocolate, the real pioneers of the American craft chocolate movement— Scharffen Berger first of all; then John Nanci’s Chocolate Alchemy and his work with Santha and Crankandstein.net to solidify the first end-to-end micro-batch craft chocolate production pathway; and chocolate makers including Steve DeVries , Art Pollard , Shawn Askinosie , Alan McClure , et al.; and even Clay’s own chocophile(.)com ( now TheChocolateLife.com )—had done all the necessary preparatory groundwork. Work that had, in turn, been built on the efforts of Valrhona , Cluizel , Bonnat , Pralus , Bernachon , Domori , El Rey , and Vintage Plantations (the list stretches on), plus the community around Martin Christy’s seventypercent.com .
In essence, the required foundation had already been laid for them, the path already paved, and the market proven—chocolate could pretty much be made by anyone. But chocolate is a product almost everyone loves, but few actually know anything about when it comes to sourcing or production. A product with none of the universally accepted sensory evaluation criteria that has been long established in wine and coffee.
Was it done out of wondrous fascination for the purity of what they made in the cloistered atmosphere of the apartment where they first started experimenting? Or was it with an awareness of a unique market opportunity? Probably a combination of the two:
The beards were distinctive; they solidified the Iowa-farmboy-cum-Amish/Hipster personae that the brand gelled around. The tattoos didn’t hurt, nor did the puzzling (at least for Iowa farm boys) nautical references.
And then there was the wrapping on the chocolate. The paper gave a tangible aura of quality, gravitas, even value to the chocolate—a characteristic that their early attempts at chocolate making did not possess. (And, many would argue, the product still lacks.) There was and is something about opening up the wrapper of a Mast Brothers chocolate bar that lends credence to what’s inside, that says, “Take notice of me. I am important!”
Was the packaging any better (or more authentic?) than what Shawn Askinosie was doing at the time? Shawn was putting pictures of actual farmers on his labels, naming people and identifying the real communities from which his cacao was sourced, and closing the wrappers with threads from the jute bags in which the beans had been transported from origin to Missouri. His wrappers were (and are) physical artifacts—a tangible bridge between the farmer, the end product and the consumer.
We may never understand how and why the Masts thought it necessary to start gilding the lily—or perhaps, more appropriately, the paper—but at some point they did. The most cursory examination of the chronology shows that the equipment and methods needed to make craft chocolate from the bean had been created well before the brothers started experimenting in their apartment.
Did they invent the bean cracker they used? Nope. The barley mill for home beer makers they purchased from Crankandstein was modified at the request of John Nanci. Using a hair dryer to winnow? Also John Nanci. Using a Champion juicer as a pre-grinder? John Nanci again. Using Santhas as grinders? Guess who. The CPS winnower they bought? Not John Nanci, but the Masts had no hand in its design. The winnower they claim to have built ? A modified Brooklyn Cacao Vortex Winnower.
In short, almost every claim they have made about their roles in equipment innovation and processes of craft chocolate making are, to put it politely, embellishments. Or, to put it plainly, misappropriation. They were creating a myth and they spun it of whole cloth because, for one reason or another, no one called them out on it publicly. There was no little boy pointing out that the emperor was not wearing any clothes. Chocolate makers were whispering this to themselves, but not one journalist turned the whispers to shouts until earlier this year .
As a result, the unknowing and unsuspecting public continued to grow mesmerized by gossamer tales woven of sheer fabrication, regardless of what their own intuition or taste buds told them. Mast Brothers were the “it boys.” Surely if the New York Times and renowned chefs, such as Thomas Keller, thought so, it must be true. Our own sensory experience—at least the one that culminated in our own mouths—could not be trusted.
Simran (a relative newcomer to the world of chocolate who cared less about expert opinion than she perhaps should have) explored this in May of 2015, when she started to tease apart taste in her book Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love : “Cacao from Papua New Guinea is often dried on beds heated by diesel or wood, both of which can impart hammy or oily tastes to the beans because fats absorb odor. These are defects, the kinds of things most chocolate makers, particularly those concerned about flavor, don’t want because they mask aromas inherent in the beans. Yet one maker—who has gotten a lot of media attention and puts its chocolate in the most beautiful of wrappers—has decided to turn this defect into an attribute, repackaging the off-flavor as a novelty by highlighting the smokiness of the bar. Many craft makers who work closely with farmers on improving drying techniques and eradicating those off- flavors question if this is something we should celebrate—if, by buying into the smoke, it’s making it harder for producers who are trying to improve the taste of their beans. This is a question only we, the eaters, can answer, but it’s important to recognize we’re vulnerable to external influences, including hype and packaging.”
A 2008 study by neuroscientist Hilke Plassmann and her colleagues reaffirms our vulnerability: We tend to enjoy identical products more when they’re priced higher or highlight positive “expectations of ... pleasantness.” This doesn’t just happen in our mouths and noses but also in our brains.
This isn’t to say we shouldn’t try a wide range of chocolates, but if we’re going to expend time and money and take in calories, we should know what our investment is supporting. We should try to understand where the flavors come from—and what good farming and processing practices taste like in order to understand why we love what we love.
We understand people wanted to believe the story that two brothers, toiling away in their Brooklyn apartment, had discovered something new and pure, something that never before existed. It’s part of why many were so willing to overlook and excuse the discrepancies and write them off to youthful frat boy hijinks, an aberration long in their ancient past.
The Masts now claim they were open about melting Valrhona as part of their early experimental years, before moving into their first workshop. Once they settled into their brick-walled storefront on North 3rd Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, their refrain became, “Trust us, 100% bean-to-bar.”
Trust us … now .
If a company positions itself as an “authentic” “bean-to-bar” chocolate maker obsessed with integrity, purity and every little detail (from how the cocoa is sourced right through to the wrapping), then any bar produced that strayed from that storyline should have been clearly identified. That is very different from being “open” about re-melting only if and when asked. The vast majority of people who purchased products in the early days were not knowledgeable enough about production to make those inquiries. They accepted the statements made about the product at face value—statements that were not honestly represented on the labels of at least some of the products.
To rebuild trust with chocolate makers and consumers, the brothers need to document their trips to origin. They claim they source directly from the best farms in the world, yet the names of specific farms and details on varietals are conspicuously absent from their wallpapered labels, their website or any other source that can be found.
Yes, Venezuela is an origin, but if you were sourcing Chuao, or an Ocumare, or Cuyagua, Carenero, Sur del Lago, or a Guasare why wouldn’t that be featured prominently? Perú does produce some terrific cocoa, but if the Masts were using some of the best—say Cacao Gran Blanco from Piura or Marañon—why isn’t that information prominently featured? Craft chocolate makers mention specific origin and varietals whenever they can because it’s what sets them apart and helps consumers ascertain value. Where are the proud photos of the bearded brothers at origin, working with “their” farmers? Or, as they proudly proclaim, sailing said beans from origin? It’s economically unsustainable to sail a small cargo of beans from Papua New Guinea, Madagascar or even the Dominican Republic on a regular basis to Brooklyn. What is also out of the economic reach of most makers is what Rick Mast boasted about claiming they once paid ten times the market price for beans. If they actually paid that price at the farm gate, we would be truly impressed. But if a significant portion of that cost is tied up in transportation and other costs, then it’s far less impressive.
So, why do we care? We are not makers. We have no professional axe to grind.
Our motivation is simply to clear up misconceptions: The Masts dished it out, and most of us gobbled it up.
But through their assertions, Mast Brothers make it much harder for chocolate makers who do actual good works to flourish. And it makes it harder for us to do the work we want to do in supporting quality chocolate and makers with integrity.
Too much #mastsplaining.
Take Shawn Askinosie. He profit shares with his farmers. He has created self-sustaining school lunch programs in communities from which he buys cocoa. Or Gianluca Franzoni of Domori, who works with the Franceschi family to preserve endangered strains of cacao in Venezuela. Volker Lehmann’s work with cacao silvestre in Bolivia and Marañon in Peru. Ingemann in Nicaragua. Graig Sams, Gregor Hargrove and company well before anyone else had their eyes directed toward Belize. Or the efforts of the Cocoa Research Centre in Trinidad, CATIE in Costa Rica or the hundreds of other conservationists and farmers working to conserve the very best varieties of cacao.
The Mast Brothers consciously and deliberately set themselves apart from the rest of the craft chocolate community. When asked by journalist Megan Giller about critics, Rick Mast glibly replied, “We are a dangerous company because we are outsiders to the chocolate industry, never leaning on industry norms.”
Given the meticulousness that has gone into crafting every other aspect of the brand, it’s hard not to conclude that the adoption of this position is just another aspect of the brand. As self-proclaimed dangerous outsiders, the company justifies operating under a different set of principles—and different measures of accountability—than other craft chocolate makers. Rather than replying to the press storm with openness and transparency, they have r esponded by turning inward and closing their doors tighter shut. Their response reinforces that what the Bros may be remembered for is their branding—the beards and the paper—not their chocolate.
Simran Sethi is the author of Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love — a book about the rich history—and uncertain future—of what we eat. Sethi is also a former visiting scholar at Trinidad’s Cocoa Research Centre housing the largest collection of cacao in the world.
Hello, my name is Jenni, and I am a freelance illustrator and graphic designer. I graduated last year with a degree in Studio Art, however I've been working with chocolate since I was in middle school (truffles, filled chocolates, caramels, cordials, seed tempering).
After graduation, I got myself a Premier Wonder Grinder and followed the advice of John over on Chocolate Alchemy and have been a long time lurker on The Chocolate Life. I started making chocolate bars because I had lost interest in making other chocolate confections and wanted experiment making my own chocolate from scratch, where I could control just how sweet the chocolate I eat could be. Since August, I started a small cottage food business (working title "Honmeid") and have been selling my own formulation bars to friends and family. So far, it's been a success!
I will be leaving West Palm Beach, Florida and moving to Seattle in order to start a life somewhere new and different at the end of January. Currently, I'm looking for a job in the chocolate or confectionary industry so I can learn more about chocolate making up close. I'd love to hear any advice you have to offer, especially anything job-related!
Thanks for your info, Larry.
Yes, this one is definitely a 3-phase machine, with a NEMA 16-20R outlet.
I briefly spoke with Ian this morning re: this issue, but he had no idea about the 3-phase with regard to this machine.
Machine is roughly 12 years old.
Thx, Dallas
Does the JKV 30 need 3 phase? I had a pair of older machines & they just took 220V. This required some specialized wiring, but was relatively easy to do.I ran both machines on one 20 Amp 220 circuit. What style outlet does the machine need? Mine needed a NEMA-6 outlet. (indicating 220V).
Ian Mackenzie is the JKV rep I've dealt with. you can reach him at his first name @JKVNL.com
Thanks,
Larry
We had a hard time finding anything related to cacao in San Blas, though it was still one of the most awe-inspiring places I've been to on the entire planet. The next time I visit I'm hoping to stay off the islands and explore the mainland a bit more, with hopes that I'll be able to find cacao there. Check Bocas del Toro, Almirante, and across the border in Talamanca (Costa Rica) for lots of great cacao. There are lots of options in these areas that aren't too hard to find.. I'm at me@brianwallace.com if you'd like more details. Happy travels.
Thanks for your reply, Clay.
I'm located in Canada, so I'm looking primarily at canadian distributors. Electram and PhaseQuest are both available here in Calgary. That pesky exchange rate is killing us up here, right now.
American Rotary is a good source for phase converters. You can call (or email) one of their techs with the sizes of your motors and other elements and they can size the converter you need. Also - you may be able to get away with a static converter if there is no cooling compressor.
I personally have found that the average person does not understand what bean-to-bar really means. Instead, I started using the phrase bean-to-chocolate, which was originally coined by Callebaut. It works and people seem to grasp the concept better.
Hi Hazel. Did you go to Panama? I dont think san blas has cacao plantations. Bocas del toro does.
What exactly are you looking for? I'm from Panama.
my email is Michelle@sweets507.com
Hi folks.
I recently bought a second hand JKV30 and I'm curious if any of you are familiar with this machine?
The place where I plan on using it doesn't have 3-phase power, so I'm looking at a rotary phase converter to power it properly. But I'm trying to find the HP and max heating loads, so I can size the phase converter right, but I'm not having any luck finding this information.
As we all know, the documentation that comes with the machine is lacking at best...so I thought I'd check if any of you fine folks are able to shed any light on the subject?
I'm looking at a 10HP rotary phase converter, which has a 1.3x max rating. Is this sufficient? Overkill?
Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.
Ok, so being new to the industry, was glad that I'm not the only one with questions about bean to bar. In your opinion description, you say: "they must produce a retail bar under their own brand", but then also define the phrase "from the bean". In my simplified view, the bean-to-bar defines that the maker gets the beans and produces the bar, but it seems like it's become quite ambiguous?
When you mention the production of retail bar under their own brand, what is that opposed to? Isn't that what most makers do, even if they just remelt someone elses product?
@ken-hastings, Is your candy cutter still avavilable?
Belt Coater is still available... Click the link for pictures. If interested, call me at 425-344-7737
Thanks, @ruth-atkinson-kendrick and @larry2. I, too, wipe wires between each cut, push the wire through thicker ganache and don't cut caramel. My husband also suggested a new policy of "you break it, you replace it." I had time today to replace all of the broken wires (12!) and as annoying as it was, it was actually good to be able to get some momentum and figure out a good system. When you only replace them on occasion, it's easy to forget the best way to do it. So I'm creating a manual, a policy and scheduling a training session. Larry, I think I will try the .8 wire.
I got a response (2, actually) from Dedy...which was ZERO help. They sent me the manual I already have, which has very little direction and no troubleshooting guidance. And they sent me very lengthy emails telling me about all their great equipment.
So here's a question to consider after re-reading this and editing it for typos:
For me, the questions are about which parts of the process truly matter in the final product. Roasting? Check. Grinding, refining, and conching? Check.
Molding and putting it into wrappers/boxes? Maybe not so much. I agree that tempering is an important art to learn, but actually doing it myself when a contract manufacturer could do it better might be worth it.
This is what Scharffen Berger did for several years before they got bought to Hershey, at least for the small tasting squares. It made no economic sense for them to buy the (expensive) machines to wrap the squares so they shipped the chocolate across the country to NJ to a company who did that work for them. Did that make them any less of a "from-the-bean" or "bean-to-bar" chocolate maker?
I think not. What think you?
Hi Nat, im interesting, you can send me a machine to miamia. i need the price, send me email to marianohonduras@yahoo.com.ar
thnaks
I had string troubles as well. I ordered some 0.8 wire from TCF and while it is a lot thicker than the original 0.5 wire, I havent broken any of the thicker wires. Our coconut fondant is pretty tough to cut because the shredded coconut catches on the wires and essentially makes them thicker.
the thicker wire has been worth the cost.
I have had my Dedy for years. I had a learning curve and broke several strings when it was new. Since then, I am careful to wipe wires between each cut, make sure that if there is a ittle bit of thicker chocolate, I push the wire with my fingers until it cuts through. I only cut ganaches, not caramels. I also try to make sure the wires play the same note. I know I am probably wierd that way, but I figure that means they have the same tension. If whom ever breaks it has to replace it, they might be more careful, as it isn't a fun job to replace them.
I have a Dedy guitar cutter that keeps breaking wires. I work full-time outside of my chocolate business, so I'm not there enough to know if my staff are doing something to cause it or not. Every one of my staff have broken them. I've contacted both Dedy and TCF, where I bought the cutter, to ask for troubleshooting advice, but thought I'd try here, too.
My husband, who often gets stuck repairing the strings when we're busy (he is a musician, and they are similar to actual guitar strings) thinks my staff is not cleaning the wires quickly enough and the buildup is causing resistance. I wipe down the wires after every pass, but I'm not sure all of my staff does the same.
They are also not immediately replacing some broken wires, which I think may be causing uneven pressure?
Some wires are breaking at the handle end (which comes down through the ganache last), some at the other end.
Wondering if the repaired wires are not all being wound in the same direction, or are not all consistently taut? Could the wire itself be weakened? I've had the cutter for several years and am still replacing with the original wire I received.
I've never found any detailed suggestions from Dedy or online about how to replace the wires or troubleshoot, so we've just been winging it.
Very frustrated. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Let us know how it turns out! Pls send boxes of the finished product to me at ....
8-)
Well said Mr. Clay Gordon. Thank you for taking the cudgel for the chocolate farner.
Thank you so much Ruth and Sebastian!
I was hoping I would hear from both of you. I will definitely try going higher in temperature. I was concerned that if I went to high too much invert sugar would be created. I might possibly increasing the butter as well. I will keep you posted on any updates. Thank you again!
Daniel
ab -
That's a very good question, and one that's being asked in a lot of quarters these days. The answer in the end is that I think everyone will be better off as a result of the scrutiny and improving customer trust.
Hi all,
At first, the news was just circulated in our own circles. Now it's been picked up by almost every big news source –– Inc, Vox, NYT, etc. . .
I'm wondering if the general tone of our conversations has been counterproductive. We want the public to respect us as artisans, but it seems like the image we've been presenting is more divisive than anything else.
I totally agree about the importance of transparency and integrity. And I think it's important for any community to hold each member accountable for their actions. I'm just not so sure that that's our real motive (or at least the impression we're giving off).
I wrote a blog post on my thoughts here if you're interested.
Cheers,
ab
[edited to fix the link URL - at signs are not allowed in URLs.]
Brad -
PLEASE do not put words into my mouth. What I am asking - as I have been asking consistently for years - is that you respect my desires about how to comport yourself on TheChocolateLife. We have had many private discussions on this topic.
You can make exactlly the points you want to make. But you don't have to bluster. You may not care what other people think of you, but I can tell you from personal experience that people will pay more attention to what you have to say if you aren't so confrontational.
That's it.
Now I realize that you are frustrated about people in your market (and elsewhere) deliberately misrepresenting what they do. Saying they make 100% of their chocolate from the bean when they are buying couverture and remelting. And I realize that you are happy that someone is calling the Mast Bros out.
BUT one of the reasons people paid attention to the DallasFood-org articles is that they are written dispassionately. If they were written any other way they would probably have been dismissed out of hand. Now Scott has been having fun in social media tweaking the Brothers but the articles stand apart from that. Which is important to remember.
Please believe me when I say that I have every motivation to root out and expose deceptive practices in the craft chocolate world and elsewhere. Although I am not explicitly mentioned in many of the articles, I have been involved in several - and in some very important ways. There are huge media forces like the NY Times weighing in on this subject and they have the ability to shape the narrative in ways that are beyond our control.
I have been doing, and will continue to do, the best I can to see how we can use the firestorm that has been kicked up in positive ways.
If I were you, I'd write a reasoned op ed to the local papers and figure out how to make this a positive for your business.
