I will second that suggestion.
Thanks Sebastian.
Thought I'd post a picture of some chocolate I tempered using the EZtemper - on the left I dipped chocolate that had been cooled to 33.5, on the right - the same chocolate from about 1 minute later after pre-crystallizing with 1% generated seed.
Of course tempering chocolate is a bonus - it's real super power is tempering ganaches, allowing you to cut them within hours instead of days.
Wish I would have seen this prior. You just missed an amazing weekend with confectioners here in Washington DC. ( http://forums.egullet.org/topic/151277-report-eg-chocolate-and-confectionery-workshop-2015/)
we hold these conferences each year, suggest you follow the thread and join us next year. This year we had the amazing Mark Heim with us for three days. Anything you needed to know, Mark was there to help.
I'm pretty thrilled that it finally got off the ground - I've been using my prototypes to temper chocolate, ganaches, meltaways and coloured cocoa butters for almost a year now. Thought it would never be finished!
Seems only fair that artisan chocolatiers get to take advantage of the same technology that industry uses to pre-crystallize but on a small scale.
Full disclosure - Ruth took one home and I hope she'll post here what she is doing with it. Funny - I've been keeping it a secret so long that I've been hesitant to post about it - but I guess I should get some pictures of what it can do here as well.
Dang, thanks.
Still taking advice on fridge and Air-4
If you're asking me what's the best production setup for a high viscosity chocolate, i'd probably suggest something that's in a price range that'll send you screaming. I always advocate trying equipment before buying it - i can understand how you may not want/be able to travel to china to do so - perhaps they'd be willing to put you in contact with other customers of theirs who might be willing to lease you a unit they've purchased to take it for a test run? It's hard to talk generics, because my idea of 'high viscosity' may be different than yours, and i not everyone has a haake viscometer or a brookfield to get a numerical value of it.
Ack i just noticed i made a mistake in my previous post - i said it was not good for low viscosity formulations - that's wrong, it is. it's not great for HIGH viscosity formulations. egads.
Im actually working with a high viscosity formula. From your experience what has been the best comapny to work with? As I won't be able to test any machine, what do you think will be the safest bet?
The company im looking at makes chonces for Hersheys and a few other large scale producers. There is also a video on their site of them using it.
Thanks for your help!
Many. They're generally known as universal or mcyntinre type conches. My experience is that they're difficult to consistently achieve sub 20um particle sizes. Every so often you'll need to resurface the inside of them as the gap between the rotors and the wall will abrade away over time. They can be a decent piece of equipment. Not good for low viscosity formulations.
I just returned from a week in D. C. at a chocolate workshop. We had the opportunity of learning from Mark Heim. What vast knowledge he has. One of the new toys we played with is the EZtemper. It is a seed generator for cocoa butter. It maintains CB at a constant 33.7C. It was amazing to see this in action. I have never seen chocolate tempered any faster. You just cool your chocolate to working temp, and stir in .5-1% CB seed and stir a few times. Wait a minute and your chocolate is ready to go. We also made ganache and added it at the end. Ganaches set up in a few hours, even white chocolate ones. We also made gianduja and meltaways. This is new technology to me and I think it will change the way many of us play with chocolate.
I wish I could but the company is way in China. Have you ever worked with another similar conche from another company?
Thanks!
How do I link to an album of pictures that I took at Potomac so I can add them here?
Really happy to become a member of The Chocolate Life
I am Lucy - Owner of Bah Humbugs
We opened back in May 2004 with the idea of creating a Sweet Emporium for Retro Sweets fanatics after several nostalgic conversations about sweets. Within a month we'd found premises, located all the sweets we could find, and opened the door to our new sweet shop in Masham , in the Yorkshire Dales.
The business is run by myself and a team of fabulous people who all work hard spreading the Bah Humbugs Sweet message.As well as the huge number of different sweets we have, we also stock a fab range of SWEET HAMPERS and SWEET GIFTS. Today we have one of the largest selections of sweets online and we send sweets all over the world. Bah Humbugs has become renowned in the confectionery world as having one of the largest selections of liquorices in the UK with over 50 different different varieties to choose from. We also provide a range of sweet gifts, childrens sweet party bags , a sweet subscription scheme, wedding favours and a mobile sweet shop for events.
If you're in Yorkshire, please do pop in to see us. There's plenty of things to do in and around Masham, otherwise take a browse through our online shop for a superb selection of Retro Sweets, Sweet Hampers and other tasty treats.
Thanks for your custom, we hope you enjoy the Bah Humbugs experience!!
Bah Humbugs 2 Market Place, Masham, North Yorkshire, HG4 4EB Tel: 01765 688 997
Hi everybody,
I'm looking for a low viscosity dark and milk chocolate to be used for enrobing candy bars and also for polycarbonate molds. Something that would produce a nice thin shell. If anyone can recommend some brands and where it can be purchased, it would be very much appreciated! Thanks in advance!
Quinn
Thanks Ruth and Kerry! I had a great time meeting all of you! Thanks Ruth for setting it up!
My strong advice would be to not continue on this path for safety reasons.
I do have a little update on my first experiment. After checking on the grinder for the fourth time last night, I started messing with the fastening nut and ended up seizing up the grinder. I removed some of the mixture, tried again, did this a few times until it started spinning again. While watching and waiting for more stops, I decided to use my old, modified grinder, with the lid that has some air ports in it. I put some of the mixture in that one.
This morning the grinder without air circulation had ganache and cocoa butter, separated. The other grinder with air ports had an integrated mixture. I think it was able to evaporate the excess moisture. I was able to temper the mixture and just shared some of the results with family. The chocolate was better than powdered milk, milk chocolate, but still a little darker than people are used to. Right now I am using the air flow grinder to pound out another batch, but with more milk.
I read about crumb, also read some patents on how it is made. As you stated, it is usually made with a vacuum type evaporator. On my second experiment, I made some condensed milk, got the temp up to 115C, added some cocoa liquor, cocoa butter and it's in the grinder now.
Take very good care to thoroughly clean that grinder out, and sanitize it. remember you've put fluid milk into an environment with LOTS of holes, crevices, and cracks - and lots of food (sugar, protein) for bacteria to eat. Would hate to see you have a microbiological nightmare on your hands.
Thanks!
Milk crumb, that's a term you don't hear too often, never, in my case. That's a whole new variable. Will look into it.
And yes, despite my best efforts, it looks like my wet grinder has 8 lbs of ganache in it. :-(
Many thanks for the new insight!
A suggestion, if i may - if you have the ability of taking the unit for a 'test drive' - ie putting your raw materials into it and having it complete a process cycle before you buy - i always recommend doing so. While i have no direct experience with this unit nor this manufacturer, it's not uncommon for equipment mfrs to overstate the capabilities of their equipment, and often times equipment from that part of the world may have more variability than one might expect from unit to unit. If possible, always a good idea to try before you buy to ensure it's really what you want.
Ok, what you're talking about here is something called milk crumb. It's a very difficult process, and there's a lot of trade secret info around it.
Obviously when you start with fluid milk, you've got a scenario where there's a lot of water, and oil (cocoa butter) and water don't mix. You need a way to get rid of the moisture in the fluid milk. That process almost always involves a vacuum and heat. Starting with sweetened condensed milk is often preferred because there's high solids (less moisture), and higher sugares, which caramalize during the process. You'll need to get your moisture down to single digit %'s. Because you're working with a fluid dairy product, many countries will have stricter requirements as a result - the fluid dairy industry is highly regulated for safety reasons - there's an aweful lot that can go wrong microbiologically if you don't get it right.
I'd absolutely, unequiviocally not recommend this approach as a do it your selfer. Rather, there's a series of manufacturers who produce crumb for resale. All of them use different process and thus achieve different results. You could try Fazer in Finland. Cargill in the US may be willing to sell some of the crumb they make in Canada, and Fonterra has a line of co-spray dried milk powders/fructose that is crumblike in flavor in one of their New Zealand facilities.
OK, self answer after having tried an experiment this morning that I do not think will turn out well, super-saturate sugar into evaporated milk before adding it to the chocolate, maybe after heating milk and sugar to 230'ish. I read that Cadbury at least partially caramelizes their sugar before making chocolate, so I think this is one of the factors. I do make caramel fillings for our chocolate using evaporated milk and sugar.
I was thinking maybe my wet grinder would drive off the excess moisture from the milk, which I've seen happen with humid cocoa nibs. It might be too much to hope for from a whole can of evaporated milk. When I first poured it into the chocolate liqueur, it seized up and I had to stop the machine. I've made that mistake before making chocolate syrup, the solid cocoa absorbs the moisture and turns into a thick paste.
Going to try super saturation next, but will try to salvage the current mess first...or fatten up our pig. :)
Hi Rahman,
If you have some way to send it to us, I'd be glad to try it. How much can you send? With a 5 lbs, I can make a very small batch of dark.
I am one of the lucky ones who was there. Thanks so much Ben!
Several Chocolate Lifer's are in the Washington, DC area for the annual http://forums.egullet.org/topic/151277-report-eg-chocolate-and-confectionery-workshop-2015/
We took the opportunity yesterday afternoon to visit with Ben Rasmussen of Potomac Chocolate and have a tour of his compact basement chocolate factory. The man is a powerhouse! And a delight to meet.
I can't figure out how to add a link to a Gallery here - but if you look for the photo gallery 'Potomac Chocolate' you will find some pictures I took of Ben's amazing setup.
Just one teaser photo - the roasting basket from his roaster that he had built from a convection oven.
hi i am rahman i like to send my indian cocoa single yard 70% dark chocolate to taste and give me a feed back the experts in chocolate tasting kindly guide me
Does anybody have any idea how you might make a milk chocolate using real milk, maybe even just evaporated milk? We've never been overly impressed with the recipes we've found online using powdered milk. Cadbury, in the UK, makes a superior milk chocolate that it is hard to stop eating. As a matter of fact, many places in the UK make superior milk chocolate. In the US, Cadbury chocolate is made by Hershey's, and it is not UK quality. You can by tasting, or by reading the ingredient label.
Cadbury UK Milk Chocolate
Ingredients: Full Cream Milk, Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Cocoa Mass, Milk Solids, Emulsifiers (Soy Lecithin, 476), Flavours.
"A glass and a half of milk in every half pound bar of chocolate"
Cadbury/Hershey's US Milk Chocolate
I do understand, and have heard, that getting liquid into chocolate means you cannot make it set/mold in solid form. I don't know if that's just water if it applies to any liquid.
Has anyone here ever used real milk, or canned milk, to make milk chocolate? Any tips on this?
I've checked my spam logs and don't see any chatter but I'm not getting any updates when people post to groups I'm a member of. I'd like to be more active but its usually as others are active or seeking help. Hard for me to pay attention otherwise. I checked the settings and its supposed to email out updates--but I'm just not sure. I'll add each group to my old rss reader but I don't pay attention as much to that any more as well.
I will add that im in British Columbia, Canada.
The conch costs USD4560.00 plus 1,200 shipping.
The air-4 is 7990$ + 185$ for crating + Shipping (Budget 350$)
So the time has come for me to step up production. I have been using the ECGC 12-SL from Cocoatown and tempering by hand. The bars have been great but the machine is not fit for this leve of production. I suggest working with another company than Cocoatown as the owner was completely useless in helping me solve the problems of extreme wear issues with plastic and metal wearing into the chocolate. The machine helped me get to this point and for that im grateful, its just a little unfortunate that finding a melange this size of good quality is so hard to find.
I am currently looking at stepping up to the JMJ40 from Mantte Industrial Co. out of China. It holds 40 L (about 60 lbs? is that about correct?)
WIth that I need a tempering machine to match that with the Air-4 from Perfect Equpment wiath a 90 lbs holding capacity.
I will also now need a fridge to aid in the cooling, im still taking imput for the best quality/cheapest fridge made for chocolate production.
For this I will be constructing a kitchen here on the land to meet this huge increase in volume. I am excited to make the leap and would love any imput on these peices of equipment, the companies and potentially anything you think I might need extra that I would consider vital once I step up.
Many thanks for any advice!
Evan
looking forward to hearing how it goes!
I've come to realize that's why a lot of people caution me, even vendors of hammer mills, on grinding cocoa. What our screw press churns out is pretty dry and I have run it in our grinder several times. The grinder does get too hot to touch, but the powder always comes out as powder, grainy, but powdery nonetheless, not pasty.
Otherwise, thanks for the vote of confidence. I think it will probably be slow as well, but we are really small scale right now anyway. For the brownie mixes we make, we do not need a 400 mesh powder. For mixing into ice cream, I think a 400 mesh powder will suffice based on what I've seen with earlier experiments. The ice cream is brown, but it has grains. We just have to keep the larger grains out.
Maybe someday we'll get a hammer mill, but I am hoping the investment will make obvious sense by then.
Hi Sebastian.
Sorry no I dont have a way of measuring it. Its thick. No emulsifier.
Cheers
When you say 'viscous chocolate' - do you have any measurements to indicate what that means?
I suspect that'll work, but it'll be slow going. Only potential watch out i'd see is that if your cocoa press cake isn't low enough in cocoa butter, said cocoa butter may heat up during grinding and turn to a paste in your spice grinder, at which point grinding effectively stops. If you see that happening, you'll just need to grind in shorter bursts (or add a small amount of dry ice to grinding), but i do suspect it'll work.
OK, I have small, 200g spice grinder that turns at 28000 RPM. I was hoping it would work well enough for cocoa powder, but the problem is that some grains are larger, others are small. There is no mesh/screen on it. You just set the timer, it starts spinning and you take what you get, not good enough. The result is still too grainy for ice cream.
I am going to try a low tech solution, which is common in this country. Will rubber band strap a piece of 400 mesh screen where the lid of this machine would go, with a good rubber band, and put a plastic bag over that. Turn it on, tilt it back and forth and see what comes out. The screen comes next week. Hoping for a breakthrough, a cheap one.
400 mesh screen is sold on eBay in 12"x12" pieces, for $9, free shipping. If this works I might consider writing a book on single source chocolate, for under $1000. (not really)
We can already make good chocolate, single source, but we have leftover cocoa powder that is not fine enough.
24 months is a very, very long time for a milk chocolate shelf life. Bulk chocolate mfrs will put long shelf lives on their chocolate that they sell, well, because it's in their financial interest to do so (inventory and all). Most of them have not done extensive shelf life testing on their bulk chocolates. While you may find a milk chocolate that is still edible at 24 months (and quite possibly even good, depending on how robust the packaging is, which has more to do with gas permittivity than light, assuming opaque pacakging), I'd absolutely argue that it's the not the norm or even realistic for most products.
Given that shelf life in pure chocolate will always be a sensory, not a food safety, item - it's important to note that sensory is in the eye of the beholder, and there are few folks trained in sensory evaluation. Many folks believe they are excellent tasters, when in fact they're quite terrible at it. If an untrained individual who is poor at self evaluation (but believes they are adept) is conducting the sensory evaluation, they could quite easily come to a conclusion that a products sensory attributes are acceptable long past the time when they are, in fact, not...
YMMV Thanks BartBasi!
MJ, thank you for your response. The question arose out of a marketing meeting, not a production group. It was hypothetical, not procedural. I always feel it is in the best interest of all to extend questions beyond the inner circle to avoid confirmation bias.
Whoops I forgot to mention an important thing.
I have 5 different origins all at different percentages ranging from 66 to 75.
And my weekly production is about 150kg (just starting up)
and I dont have a melter
cheers for your feedback
Must say I was a bit surprised to read this question posted from someone whose company Davis Chocolate is manufacturing products, private labelling, co-packing and I assume selling in interstate commerce?
You business model puts you firmly in the category of a commercial concern that is required to be registered at FDA as a 'Food facility' and also required to fully observe and understand the CFR (Code of Federal regulations) that apply to chocolate and related food stuffs.
To answer your question checking the FDA website will help with the questions you posed. As a starter the following is taken directly from the FDA site and might help?
"With the exception of infant formula, the laws that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) administers do not preclude the sale of food that is past the expiration date indicated on the label. FDA does not require food firms to place "expired by", "use by" or "best before" dates on food products. This information is entirely at the discretion of the manufacturer.
"A principle of U.S. food law is that foods in U.S. commerce must be wholesome and fit for consumption. A "best by", "use by" or expiration date does not relieve a firm from this obligation. A product that is dangerous to consumers would be subject to potential action by FDA to remove it from commerce regardless of any date printed on a label."
Some other thoughts....
Using any 'expired' or 'aged out' materials in a manufactured product is very poor manufacturing practice. "Good manufacturing practice" for both an artisan confectioner or a large commercial operation would require a bill of materials with the specifications and traceability / lot number of items like 'dried milk powder' recorded including expiry dating. That said, in fact dried milk powder (DMP) is actually long lasting if stored dry and dark, it has been stored for years as a food for emergency relief use, or as part of the European commodity price protection program. In the 1980's the European intervention stores (huge warehouses) were full of sacks of DMP. Personally, I'd use dried milk or milk crumb well in date for making milk chocolate. Once all incorporated as final compound the combination of DMP, sugar and chocolate liquor yields a aW (water activity) usually well below 0.65 and milk chocolate is a shelf stable food from a microbiological standpoint, that's without considering the changes in temper / sensory qualities that with occur during storage.
By convention a product's 'shelf life' starts the day it completes manufacturing and is 'product released' from the production area / factory. Your formulated product.... Milk chocolate I'm assuming in your case? should have a shelf life assigned from your experience of prior batches held and examined for quality after X months (bloom / temper other issues?) Alternatively, a conservative short dated 'Use by" set and perhaps updated using results of a 'real time' stability study of a sample of your current production (hold back sample) could be used. (Personally I'd not be a fan of this approach.)
Typically well made quality milk chocolate has a shelf life assigned by an experienced manufacturer of around 18 - 24 months from date of manufacture when stored at 68F in impermeable packaging protected from light. Shelf life is an issue for bulk purchasing for small companies, if I buy in bulk to get decent prices and then hold in stock, I'd typically ask for the product production dating when ordering 500lb lots and would reject short dated goods.
MJ
Freddo, Sebastian -
I get asked the question about depositing thick chocolates (aka 2-ingredient chocolates, or chocolate with little or no added cocoa butter and/or lecithin) all the time. In fact, I - in conjunction with intrepid and stalwart customers - worked with FBM to develop upgrades to some of their continuous machines specifically to handle thick chocolate.
The basics are a heavier-duty motor in conjunction with a gear box at a different ratio to deliver more low-RPM torque driving the temepring auger, plus beefed up bearings to handle the load. These machines also offer the ability to change the speed of the tempering auger (increasing the dwell time in the tempering pipe results in more even spread of crystals through the chocolate) in 1% increments. Finally, through the use of a pneumatic valve that diverts the flow of chocolate, the continuous tempering cycle is never interrupted, as it is when the auger is stopped and started to regulate the flow for depositing. Taken together, this means that the FBM machines handle chocolates that other brands of continuous tempering machines struggle with.
That said, the smallest machine has a tempering capacity of up to 75kg/hr which is quite a bit more than 50kg/day. Assuming 4, 70gr cavities/mold and 2 molds/minute, that's a throughput of about 65kg/hr assuming you have enough molds and can work without interruption. That means you can do an entire week's worth of bar production in a single day rather than spending an hour or three every day molding bars.
I can tell you from experience - as can several users of these machines - that getting the dosing heads right for these high-viscosity chocolates can be a challenge.
FBM does have timed depositors on all of their machines, and we've found that the smaller machines can be used with two-ingredient chocolate, but it can take some finessing with the settings of the machine to get them to work consistently. We have chocolate makers using machines with 4 and 12kg working bowls successfully depositing 2-ingredient chocolate but it takes time and patience to dial in on the correct procedures. Over the past two years we've learned a lot about how to do it and do a pretty good job.
Something like a Savage melter will work but you'd want their measured doser, which has its own challenges with staying warm enough to keep the chocolate fluid ... but not too warm. If you don't use a measured depositor then you need to figure out an efficient way to fill the molds.
You could buy a volumetric depositor with a heated hopper. You want one cylinder per mold cavity for even dosing. The advantage is that these are incredibly accurate and can easily handle high-viscosity products. They work with an existing tempering machine, but the combination (e.g., Savage kettle and depositor with four heads) is going to cost close to $20k. FBM's Unica is in the same price range.
:: Clay
