Forum Activity for @Sebastian

it does.  you'll need to compensate by adding milk fat (or a soft fat of your choosing).

Sounds like a "do it and find out!"  I was under the impression that fat content made a difference in a caramel, but honestly I've never tried using a defatted liquid/powder.  I bet it works wonders for balancing that profitability equation, too.  Thanks for sharing!

Hi Bart,

Great to e-meet you. My company is Rescue Chocolate (rescuechocolate.com). It's a line of all-dark chocolates and we donate all profits to animal rescue groups. Please be in touch if you'd like to get some samples!

Best,

Sarah

Every day for years.  Some of the best caramels in the world are made that way.

Thanks Larry!  I'm still on the fence about it, but it'd be really nice to free up some time whenever... things really get cookin'.

@sebastian, have you done this?  What were your results like?

Hi John!  I went into a chocolate boutique the other day that was part wine lounge, and thought it was fantastic - I'd definitely have some tea I were to wonder past such a spot, too.  

Something that may be useful to you is a tool such as foodpairing.com or this one on http://www.callebaut.com/ocen/chocolizer#foodpairing.  Other manufacturers may have a version as well, but it could be a start.  Good luck, sir!

Thanks, @bartbasi, it does help some.  I'm thinking I might try to find/make a styrofoam cooler that fits the kraft boxes I use that I can leave with the retailer, and take one back each time I deliver.  She's a pretty cool lady, so I think she'd appreciate the extra care and it'd work fine as long as it doesn't take up much space.

Wish there was a 'Like' button Sebastian! 

I can just picture how they discovered that technique led to better ganaches.  Someone screwed up - the ganache was clumpy and almost impossible to work with - someone added a bit more cream - beat the hell out of it and voila - the BEST ganache that was ever made!

I wouldn't think so Ruth, but it never hurts to do the test - that's how we learn new things sometimes!  

Kerry - the only reason Aw would be lower because of mixing would be that there were 'pockets' of high Aw areas, and testing done happened to hit one of those pockets.  It's not a function of mixing lowering Aw, it's more a function of ensuring homogeniety.  I see chefs all the time make technical errors as they're trying to explain why this or that technique is better than the other guys' technique.  The fusion of culinary and technology's a pretty cool place to be, but a lot of people don't really understand it, and as such it ends up being theater to some degree.

Interesting though - Valrhona claims that is you mix your ganache the way that Frederick Bau shows in the video - that the aW will be lower. I have plans to test the theory!

Sebastian, I was just wondering if it allows you to get a really good emulsion, and sets quickly, if it would affect it in anyway. Probably not:)

I wouldn't expect the form of the cocoa butter to have any impact on Aw of the finished product.

I wonder if on sitting it will change over time? Have to experiment and report.

So - I'm trying to make some video footage (can you say frustrated beyond belief!) - so this morning I had some ganache to which I had added silk and some that I had not.  The aW differerence was no more than 0.01 between them - but I'd love it if you would do some tests as well.

Kerry, Have you checked aW to see if it has changed?

On the plus side, at least consumers are getting used to the idea that the price of 'fine chocolate' should be more than what is currently the price at your local supermarket. While I haven't seen or tasted the chocolate, if I made a bar worthy of charging that much I would be quite chuffed with myself. That said, I agree with Sebastian. Marketing, love it or hate it; it can really influence customers.

I hope to learn something from what they've done (even though I dont think i'll be selling bars for even half of that much). I also think that fine chocolate has a long way to go in terms of the way we look at pricing. I think that so much lack of customer knowledge means that what david-menkes mentioned is going to happen for a while. Which is a real shame. 

A little fooling around - I set one of my EZtemper units at 35 - put coloured cocoa butter in overnight and splattered and sprayed with my Fuji. Tempered some dark chocolate with the silk - added some silk to the ganache which allowed me to back them off in less than 30 minutes.

Wow!! I need to put my chocolate in a wooden box and include a book so I can charge more. I have much to learn about marketing.

I've never tasted their bar, nor do i know them personally.  But some chocolate can benefit greatly from age.  I've aged bars as long as 8 years that have been fantastic.  It depends a great deal on your raw materials, how they were processed, the specifics of the packaging, and the storage temperatures.  I've also stored bars that were terrible after 2 months.

Do their bars benefit from age?  Possibly - I have no idea.  My suspiscion is neither do they.  Long live marketing.

Was doing some much-delayed reading on To'ak and finally took a look at the website. Not having faced the bar or tasted it I do have to give credits to the marketing -- de-husked, roasted bean plackaged with the bar, chopsticks provided, wooden box packaging etc. I do agree with Annmarie that the navigation is a bit laggy.

Anyone else noticed that the sequence of flowering to fruiting depicted on their website is mistakenly reversed in the early stages?

While others were BBQing yesterday, I was making my version of Dulcey. I sealed 1000g of white chocolate in a Food Saver bag and pressure cooked for 90 minutes on high. Stirred thick mass and it thinned as it cooled. Added the EZtemper silk when temp was 89f. Moulded bars just so I have a tempered breakup bar. The eztemper silk made this a quick process.

Everyone was doing this yesterday 8-)

I couldn't fit the ribs and brisket into the photo, but they were there!

Hi everyone!

My name is Mateusz. I am chocolate enthusiast and collector of chocolate wrappers since I was a child. So far I've collected over 6,5 thousand different wrappers from 58 countries. Most are from Poland. Here you can see all producers and distributors whose wrappers I've got - www.chooco.blog.pl/wrappers.

If you eat a lot of chocolate and get rid of all beautiful wrappers which don't deserve such a fate please contact me! I will know what to do with it My main aim is to collect at least one wrapper from every country.

I hope you enjoy my collection

 Collection.JPG.jpg - 1.2MB

Forgot it was a holiday in that big country south of us today when I tried to call Tricor!

Never hurts to ask - that's one of the few plants i've not been in i'm afraid. i'd suspect they have one  however

If you're using a stone grinder, because they're so terribly porous, it's almost impossible to clean them fully.  That could be y our issue.  I still suspect it's beans however.

Thanks for the help, I am aware of that, however it's really not the problem here. This is a very distinctive, very unique flavour characteristic that is running across multuple batches from multiple, entirely different sources - some of whiich have made made both award winning chocolate but are now producing inedible chocolate from the same small bag.

My question isn't about the beans. It's about wheter anyone has experience of an issue with grinders (or other kit) affecting the flavour.

I'm not really in the hotbed of chocolate manufacturing - but a call to tricor might just find me someone not too far away. If I'm not mistaken Cadbury had something in Hamilton years ago - perhaps they are still close by producing.

Big ol' trap in that line of thinking mate - beans can be HUGELY variable.  Even in the same bag, much less the same lot.  Localized clustering/clumping issues can happen all the time.  How certain are you that you have a homogenous lot of material to work with?

Cocoa beans aren't like finding a company that sells a shirt that fits you, so you konw you're 'safe' buying that shirt because it'll consistently give you a perfect fit.  Big companies devote a tremendous amount of time and effort to trying to control consistency and develop statistically sound sampling methods to attempt to minimize intra lot problems - but since you can't test 100%, it's sort of the nature of the beast that you'll find issues.  The smaller your purchase, the harder that becomes as you don't have any level of control over sourcing, nor can you even be certain the beans in your bag are all from the same region, country, or even growing year.  Nature of the beast mate.

Hmm.. maybe call the folks at tricor and see if they can direct you to someone in your area that has one?  If not, any of the large mfrs will have them, be it mfr of chocolate (such as cargill, callebaut), or finished product (hershey, mars, etc).  Not sure if you have relationships with any of them...

Hi,

I'm not sure how to be clear on what I'm looking for - we used to buy some chocolate from Christopher Norman; his pieces were large (3-4 bites per piece).  They were serious and beautiful and whimsical all at the same time.

I'm not looking for anyone to duplicate what he did - just looking to buy some chocolate pieces that are large, cool, interesting.

Here are a couple of pictures of some of the best sellers from him we used to stock.

Pictures are pretty far blown up and don't do justice to the pieces.  The pears are 3x the weight of a typical Norman Love piece of candy; the dark chocolate pears were filled with a ganache flavored with poir william liquor, and the white pears were filled with a different ganache; amazing foil between the two.  The shine was stunning - very impressive.

The espresso cups were life size; the chocolate shell was wonderful, the cup itself was filled with a hazelnut coffee chocolate ganche and the crema part was filled with a light orange white chocolate ganache.  Really stunning, large pieces.

He also did Meyer Lemons (about 1/2 to 2/3 life size).

So I am looking for pieces in this size range (2-4 bites per piece), of this quality (top notch, strong temper, great shine, sharp crack, quality chocolate). 

I am very happy with the "regular" chocolates we carry - I'm just looking to fill the gap left when Christopher Norman closed; it was a nice high end line for me.

Any help or thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Bart

It would - know anyone with one?  I tried to make my own tempermeter - but it was an abject failure!

Not enough, clearly.

The bigger issue for me is that the astringency is occuring now in batches of beans that I know to be good and have made great chocolate from in the past.

It'd be interesting to see if someone would loan you a tricor to get some slope and ctu information on the comparisions...

It is almost certainly the beans.  W/o knowing the specifics of your formula, process, and most importantly - how the beans were made - it's going to be difficult to determine exactly what's going on.  What do you know about the origin and processing of the cocoa beans themselves?

Hey guys

I'm having an issue with my last few batches of bean-to-bar, made in a small 1.5kg Premier grinder. I had an issue with one batch of beans that produced a very intense bitter/astringent taste in the chocolate. I'm fairly sure this came from a bad batch of beans, although I didn't notice anything after roasting, so maybe just some of the beans in the batch were affected.

My issue now is that subsequent batches made from entirely different bean sources also have this bitterness, although to a lesser extent. Has anyone ever encoutnered an issue like this before, where a strong flavour can carry over to a different batch, even after thoroughly cleaning the grinder?

Alternatively, could it be an issue with the grinder itself? Perhaps grinding stone into the chocolate? I'm at a bit of a loss at the moment as the grinder does seem to be the only common factor between batches and I am (as far as I can tell) cleaning it thoroughly between each use.

Here's what those tests from last night looked like this morning. Much clearer that preseeding was badly out of temper.

I'm awaiting delivery of some bean to bar hopefully 'badly out of temper' chocolate to continue my experiments.

Both are based on a similar concept but without taking one apart I wouldn't be able to say if theirs uses the same technology. In terms of capacity there is not much to choose between them.

Ours does use multiple containers - you can continue to use generated seed from one container while you are waiting for the seed to generate in another container - rather than adding cocoa butter straight in to the already generated seed. And you can actually wash the containers after you have emptied them. Theirs has all the cocoa butter in one vessel and I'm not sure if you can take it apart for cleaning.

seems like this is the same technology as the "Magic Temper" Device from CCMS, but smaller and cheaper(?)

Doing some experiments today using chocolate as the seed rather than cocoa butter (for the bean to bar people who don't want to add any additonal cocoa butter). Makes a very stiff paste. Preliminary results seem positive. Bugger to stir in though.

. 

  Hard to see clearly in these but the left offset in before seeding and it marks with the heat of your finger, the test on the right does not.

My partner is flying off to Delaware (from the UK) at the end of May and while she is on holiday she wants to hunt for some new chocolate moulds as well.

it would be good if we could find some mold suppliers that have a good range of products that she could either go and see, or get shipped to her quickly so she can bring them back with her.

If anyone has some recommendations it would be great.

I'll 'third' Sebastian's suggestion not to formulate using liquid milk even in 'condensed form'!  As he states there's a high risk of microbial issues.

It's a good way to get folks sick given the near impossible set up for 'in place' sanitation of the equipment you are apparently using.   I hope and assume you're not planning on selling this 'product'?

p.s.  I haven't seen the Glass and a half in every bar of Dairy Milk tag line used for years.... I thought Cadbury's UK had dropped way back it as it isn't technically true....The UK trade descriptions Act require truefully accurate language, they use proprietary Milk solids (Milk crumb) as most of the big boys do.

Please don't take offence, but the old saying " A little knowledge is a dangerous thing" comes to mind here

MJ