Hi all, I have them a query.
what temperature should reach the chocolate when finished molding.
How long to wait for that chocolate is ready to be packed?
If I need to save for long a milk chocolate, at what temperature is the most correct?
gracias, thanks!
brad prefect, very good thanks for your help!
Thank you Ben! This is helpfull. Just finished editing my chocolate truffle book. I have your upala bar as a recommended chocolate for one of the truffles :-) It was supposed to be 125 pages. But it is 250 pages without photos :-( So I have a little reducing to do. Will be ebook published first, then do a limited print run.
Interesting, I think that could be it. So then to rememdy the situation I should keep the walls thicker, and try to keep the base the same thickness as the walls?
You are correct. I should have said expanding/contracting at different rates. It looks like the bottom "stuck", but snapped off where the base is.
Yes I noticed these walls were pretty thin. What do you mean the bottom is expanding? I was under the assumption chocolate contacted slightly once set.
Could it be the walls were too cold when I appied the cap and it was not able to melt and reset into one piece?
Just a guess here...It looks like your walls are very thin and your bottom very thick. Perhaps the bottom is expanding at a different rate than the sides and popping.
Hi,
So I have been making chocolate bon bons and the area where the cap and the walls of the bonbon are suppost to meet and melt together have not been lately. There is a hairline crack going all the way around the chocolate and therefore the bottoms fall off when I unmold them. Are my walls too thin? I am not sure how to correct this? Photos attached, any comments appreciated.
Mariano;
I don't think so, although if you live in a very warm climate it may work, but will take a long time. At this point in time, the acetic acid is in crystal form and thoroughly embedded in the shell and the bean. Heat from roasting is the best bet, and then a long conche.
My porcelana is VERY acidic and I have found that I have to roast those beans at a low temperature for almost 3 times longer than any other bean I have. It seems to work very well, but even then I still have to conche for several days. The end result however is an amazing, fruity, smooth chocolate.
Brad
Thanks Brad, you think that if I put the sun delete vinegar
The [76] reference in the book I linked is to this book:
http://www.amazon.com/chemistry-flavouring-manufacture-chocolate-confectionery/dp/B00086FPC4
Hi Robert,
I found this reference in 'Chocolate: History, Culture and Heritage' (page 1672 in the link, but page 620 in the hardcover version):
It doesn't say much, though.
-Ben
p.s. good to 'see' you! I hope things are going well.
Thanks. I will try to temper again. The moulds are at RT. Is it possible of wrong cooling?
Fat bloom.
Either chocolate not correctly tempered or moulds at wrong temperature.
I hope I can help a little bit here...
The vinegar smell you are getting is actually acetic acid, a by-product of the fermentation process. Depending on what the farmer does, some beans can be quite acidic.
There are two processes that you can take advantage of to lower the acidity of your chocolate:
Hope that helps.
Cheers.
Brad
I got my Delta machine and started brand new batch. I used default Milk, and try to temper 5lb chocolate as a trial. See the picture..... Is it sugar/fat bloom? Or it is simply not tempered? The default setting is far off the temperature chart from the vendor.
Thanks!
Hi everyone at Chocolife! I am between going to the intensive ICE 5 day course in NY {chocolate tecnique 1 and 2] or going to the Chocolate academy in Chicago...for the basic course.
I have some experience, but need to freshen up with technique in general,molding,filling, ganaches,etc.
Does anyone have an opinion regarding which course is better?
riends, I have problem, buy a bag of cocoa and chocolate when I did I realized I had a very acidic taste ..
It was when I realized that the seeds have vinegar smell. as I can get this smell to make chocolate?
thanks
We had sampled a few of the Mast Bro's chocolate bar for sale at my chocolate store. We carried over 1000 of the best chocolate products in the world. We wanted to like Mast Bro's and were excited for our first tasting.
The rule we had in place was that all the employees at the tasting had to come to 100% agreement on liking a chocolate product before we included it for sale in our store. Our thought was there is no point in trying to sell something that someone doesn't like. All our product line was created this way.
When we started our tasting process we were all surprised by each others reactions. Bottom line: none, no, none of us liked it for numerous reasons from taste, quality, texture, etc. We were dumbfounded. There were 8 of us tasting that evening. We had already unanimously approved 2 other bars from different makers. We saved this for last. So we had to eat other chocolate to lift our spirits.
Greetings,
I have found copius volumes of information on the scientific process of tempering. However I cannot seem to find and verifiable information on the actual history of how the tempering process was developed as it relates to chocolate. The closest I have gotten is that it may have been developed by Lindt as an end process to conching. If anyone can point me in the right direction I would be most grateful.
Kind regards,
Robert
Ok....
At Clay's request I read almost every one of the 500+ comments on the article. Heck, I even read the article!
I'll sum it up for you: Superfluous Jibber Jabber.
Of the 500+ comments to the article I only found a couple of (at best) luke warm compliments to their chocolate, and ignored the plethora of comments insulting their beards. Wow... I had no idea people hated beards that much! Who knew??
Here is a summary of the comments I DID find on their chocolate - the words and phrases are pulled directly from the posts:
This company and it's founders are truly the poster children for what I've been preaching about on this site for years: LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS!!!!
Knowing the types of machines they have, and how much volume (of PROPERLY conched chocolate) on a weekly basis each machine can produce, I can definitively tell you that Mast Bros. are taking shortcuts with respect to product in order to address demand issues.
Those shortcuts will spell their demise. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but within the next 5 years. Mark my words.
I'm sure at one time they produced great chocolate. However today, according to people who have bought it and tried it, they aren't and that very unsilent majority is spreading the word that it's crap. They have already spread out significantly into surrounding communities. WHY? Because nobody in THEIR community is buying their chocolate anymore. NOBODY LIKES IT.
Rick Mast may disagree with me. Maybe you do too. But think about this for a second: There are 2.6 million people in Brookly alone. That means in just Brooklyn approximately 25.1 million lbs of chocolate gets consumed every year. One would think that if they made "the best", it wouldn't be hard to completely sell out AT FULL RETAIL PRICE of the tiny amount they make with a consumption pool of that size surrounding them.
Yet they don't sell out in their shop, and have branched out to other communities, selling their bars at a wholesale price, instead of focusing locally and selling out at full retail and being more profitable.
As an analyst, this tells me their product ISN'T the best (or even close), and that they don't give a flying pinch of pigeon poop what their customers think or want - justifying their ignorance by spouting off about not caring about what the critics say, or pushing their own beliefs of good chocolate down the throats of those who enter their shop once, and most likely won't come back, as they 'aren't sophisticated enough'.
In business, refusing to listen to your customers is a great recipe for failure, and while they will make some headway in the next few years due to their funky look and the media interest in the craft chocolate industry, I assure you they won't be the media darling for much longer. When the cameras disappear, and the media dust settles, they'll be left standing there scratching their hipster beards and saying to each other, "Hey dude... where did everyone go?".
I make and sell chocolate too, and in a city that is a fraction of the size of Brooklyn. My team and current equipment can't keep up with local demand and it's a hell of a lot more industrial than the units the Mast Bros use. I CAN'T expand without taking a giant leap and building a large factory, and I'm certainly not going to sell a single bar at a discount if I know we can sell it at full retail pop in the next few days! Doing otherwise is truly stupid. In a city of only a million people Choklat has become so popular that my shop holds chocolate and wine tasting events 4 nights a week in Calgary, and twice a week in Edmonton, and we are sold out until 2016. Yup. You heard it! You can't reserve a seat in any of our events until NEXT YEAR!!!
The bottom line here is that somebody will always stand out from the crowd, and unfortunately it's all too often that the media dictates who that somebody is. (Remember a few years ago those douches named Sacred Steve and David Wolfe, who were spouting off about "raw chocolate" all over the place?).
In this case it's the bearded hipsters in Brooklyn, and while I don't personally think the attention they are getting is a bad thing for the craft chocolate industry (after all it's creating awareness in the marketplace), I think that in time the market will dictate what it wants, and if Mast Bros. doesn't give it what it wants, they will join Sacred Steve and his funky hat somewhere in "Faded Fad Land" where they can debate the popularity of their beards vs. Steve's hat.
In the meantime I too will continue ignoring the self indulgent, pretentious critics, just as I have done in the past. However, at the same time I WILL be listening to my customers and selling a boatload of chocolate because of it.
Cheers
Brad
With the subtitle: "Why do specialty shops refuse to carry one of the best-known craft chocolate brands in the country?"
While "hate" is a very strong word that I don't agree with, it certainly has attracted a lot of attention and comment on Slate, Facebook, and other outlets.
Here's the link to the article and I recommend reading the comments before sharing your thoughts with ChocolateLife members.
I also have a real quick question which regards to tempering chocolate. Do you need to temper chocolate that contains cocoa butter and vegetable fats altogether?
This problem is not related temperature. It's related to physics, and understanding the behaviour of the chocolate you are working with.
When making chocolate confections, you have two compounds with different properties and different behaviours: You have your centers, and you have your coatings.
As the centers warm and cool, they just sit there and for the most part, do nothing. However it's important to keep in mind that some centers are softer than others, and also have more air incorporated into them than others, while other centers are dense, and less inclined to give in to slight compression.
Then you have your chocolate. THIS IS THE CULPRIT. As the cocoa butter in the chocolate crystalizes, it shrinks (which is why it comes out of molds very easily when properly tempered). Chocolate with a high cocoa butter content (such as good quality couverture) shrinks LOTS, and when properly tempered, has zero maleability.
Your truffles are rolled round.
When a sphere shrinks, it shrinks inward.
You cover a round ball with tempered chocolate, and as the chocolate sets it tries to shrink. However when it can't, something has to give, and as a result a crack appears. It really IS that simple.
A very soft center with air incorporated into it (such as a whipped/piped ganache), will allow the chocolate to compress it and as a result will not crack. A hard center will not give the chocolate an opportunity to shrink, and as a result many will crack.
Understanding the behaviour of your ingredients, you have a number of options:
This lesson here is further supported by the process of molding chocolates. The molds are poured, emptied, and scraped, and allowed to set before the filling is piped in (this gives the thin chocolate shell time to shrink). The center is piped in, and the bottoms are poured. Thick bottoms can cause cracking whereas uniform bottoms very seldom ever do.
Cheers and Happy Chocolate Making
Brad
The problem in this case has nothing to do with mold temperature, or fridge temperature, or even humidity. It has to do with the type of crystal the cocoa butter has formed in the tempering cycle.
I've seen this happen many times when I'm teaching a new employee to temper chocolate. They go through the tempering cycle too quickly, and then bar up the chocolate. The bars at first come out of the cooler with a super nice shine, but within 24 hours, the inside of the bar turns all grainy, and eventually all look exactly like the photo.
Solving this problem is very simple. When taking the chocolate through it's tempering cycle either:
The problem you are having is that you are not allowing enough time for the appropriate types of crystals to propogate, BEFORE you reheat yoru chocolate to the working temperature to mold up your bars.
You also need to remember that when working with different kinds of beans and making single source varieties of chocolate, the cocoa butter in each will exhibit different behaviours, and will temper slightly differently from the others. The tempering cycle is more of a "rule of thumb" for tempering all chocolate, but with experience, you will see that each chocolate you make will temper slightly differently. It's not something you can just apply a boiler plate heat/cool/reheat cycle to (although for small batches you will get VERY close).
I hope this helps.
Cheers and Happy Chocolate Making!
Brad
I am able to find sources for milk chocolate truffle shells but want I really want is the shape of somethign like the cherry cordial.
This way I can place the fruit and fondant in and seal the bottom. The truffle shells have I think too small of a hole from what I can see int he pictures.
I could mold these myself, but at this point in time, I want to make a large batch with minimal effort.
So, if you know of any sources that would be great.
Thanks,
Joe C.
(1) Savage Bros- 125lb/55kg, chocolate melter/tempering unit $5,500
(1) Cotton Candy machine- Econo Floss $350
(1) Sephra chocolate fountain- 34in commercial, $2200
(1) 6ft Federal chocolate case- FCCR-6, 72in/ Black and silver display- LED lights $6000
Climate Controlled & Humidity Controlled,
(1) 4ft Federal chocolate case FCC-4 $3800
138 polycarbonate chocolate molds- (all shapes and sizes) $1,932 = 14.00ea
(3) Double sided Easter egg molds- 10in mold $150= $50ea
(1) Extra Large Easter mold- Great for display creations! $100
(1) turbo air- under counter- 2 door freezer. $900
(1) M3 Turbo Air –single door freezer, Sub Zero $900
180 -Grape wine hangers boxes (includes candy trays) $90 = .55ea
110 -white wine hangers boxes $55 = .55ea
185 -white window baliton box $55.50= .30ea
30 – 4in square white box $2
475 -brown macaroon trays, 4pc $52.25= .11ea
22- bunny boxes $30.8= 1.40ea
23- egg boxes $25.3 = 1.10ea
26- 18pc red truffle box, (Chocolat’ Chocolat’ box) $59.80= 2.30ea
11- pink truffle box- can be used as a 9pc or 16pc , (Chocolat’ Chocolat’ box) $14.85=1.35ea
149- sm clear heart boxes- 4pc truffle $111.75 =.75ea
750- pretzel bags - 3”x11” bag $22.50= .03ea
200- candy pads $15.00= .07ea
125- candy signs $312.50= 2.50ea
10- silver heart boxes $10.0= 1.00ea
4- flower buckets $4.00 = 1.00ea
20- lg pink and brown striped window box $25= 1.25ea
925- 5pc clear box $462= .50ea
100- spools of ribbon $200= 2.00ea
90- white gable boxes $40.50= .45ea
240- clear cylinders 4x4in $120= .50ea
400-black balliton boxes $120= .30ea
3- hot chocolate dispensers $75= 25.00ea
300- chocolate spoon sticks $9= .03ea
75- kraft boxes- 12pc truffles $26.25= .35
30- holiday boxes 24pc truffle $45= 1.5ea
75- red window box , (holds a standard 9pc or 16pc tray) 93.75= 1.25ea
150- red window box- 4pc $112= .75ea
1850 gold stretch bows $55.50= .03ea
70-pull bows $17.50= .25ea
150- business card chocolate boxes $30= .20ea
550- 2pc white boxes $99= .18ea
18,000- brown candy cups $48= .002ea
50- gold trays, 4pc $5.50 = .11ea
75- black balliton boxes- 1/2lb $22.5.=.30ea
250- 9pc trays brown $30= .12ea
250- 16pc trays brown $30= .12ea
100- black balliton boxes-1lb $30= .30ea
26- sm pink & brown $19.5= .75ea
30- gift baskets- assorted sizes $30= 1.00ea
3- feximat baking sheets $225= 75ea
1200- clear wedding favor box- 4pc truffle $600= .50
100- clear cylinders 2in x 6in $ 50.00= .50ea
500- clear 7pc truffle boxes $250= .50ea
1,000- clear 3pc truffle boxes $500= .50
200- burgundy boxes- 4pc truffle $100= .50
80- lg gift basket boxes $45= .45ea
40- sm gift basket boxes $18= .45ea
175- XL red window box $218.75= 1.25ea
10- plastic case trays $20= 2.00ea
150- brown bags $22.50= .15ea
6- steel tables $600= 100ea
3 part chocolate warmer $150
150 shipping Ice packs $90= .75ea
I will separate or as a complete package. Let me know your interest
Ph# 239-980-9753 Call or Text
Email: jschaffer@irresistibleconfections.com
Justin
This has been fascinating and I've learned so much from this one thread. And for all the technical conversation, I'm getting that two things may be happening with Alain's chocolate:
)Hopefully you can solve your tempering troubles soon Alain!
so, i just looked around zürich and found some chocolate stores. Mostly Sprüngli stores but also Läderach, Teuscher and Vollenweider. Sprüngli has a big Shop in the Center at Bahnhofstraße with a cafe on the first floor.
like the other answers , the ganache is evidently too cold and, in my own experience, too soft. I have a rhubarb ganache that was really soft at room temperature so I froze it to be able to scoop it. I refroze the balls and dipped them in untempered chocolate as a first coat , the second,tempered, layer I did the following day having stored them at room temperature and one or two out of 50 bonbons cracked. I adjusted the ratio of chocolate to make it firmer and they no longer crack. I'm no physicist but the combination of freezing and lower viscosity seems to do it because I have soft filled molded pieces and they never crack or leak....
Hello Vera. We got the Papua Kerafat, Beni Wild Harvest & Piura Porcelana. And we're happy to sell them.
Recognized your name also from your commentary on the Tibor Szántó bars on the chocoweb-site 
Nice to hear from you !
The speed you cool the chocolate is key to keeping in temper. When the chocolate is tempered, only ~3-5% of the cocoa butter is crystallized. Doesn't sound like much until you realize shortening is only about 15%. If these seed crystals are small and well dispersed you're at ideal temper. When cooling you want it to be gradual enough to pull the heat created with further crystallization and slowly cool. If it cools too quickly it will start forming unwanted crystals, typically type IV, causing early fat bloom. Once set you gradually warm back to room temperature. Sugar bloom is initiated when the surface temperature of the chocolate is below the dew point temperature for the room. You see it on the surface of a glass of ice water. This moisture formed will start to dissolve the sugars. One percent moisture will create three percent syrup. This surface syrup then dries out and crystallizes, giving you the sugar bloom.
I'm commenting on this thread b/c I think we have a similar problem (our exterior environment is not as humid right now (in a few months it will be high) but still perhaps too much & too high of room temp.) For our last few batches (and after reading this as well as other sources), I believe we have lots of sugar bloom - white dots, tackiness, and crumbliness. We've been following the practice of putting the moulds into the fridge to "set" the crystals in the chocolate. Is this the best practice to use in the first place? However, I do think it is when we take it out of the fridge to room temperature (70F) that the problem arises. Would 65F room temp be reasonably low enough for the moulds & chocolate to come back up gradually? Or, could we leave the moulds out at that or another temperature and avoid the fridge all together?
I accidentally added an extra 75% cream than what was called for to a caramel I made recently. While texturally it seems fine right now, I wonder if there might be any negative impact in the shelf life? Perhaps it will just have better, richer taste? Better 'stand up' quallity? Would you use it? Thanks!
Hi Joe,
Thank you for sharing your formula, i will have to try it tomorrow and let you know how i like it.
Maybe its done that way commercially by the big guys because its easier for foil wrapping machines to fold against a flat back? And then its just become the norm - no idea.
But its a valid point.
Hi Clay - great site and thanks for all your work to get it running and with your troubleshooting.
A couple of things I've noticed about the Groups:
1: as Ben mentions above, the discussion threads are sorted by Start Date rather than Last Contribution Date.
2: I don't seem to be getting e-mail notifications for new Group discussion threads when they are started like I did with the old site (I've tried looking through my profile to make sure everything is set to send me e-mails, but maybe I've missed some notification setting).
I've never understood why almost everyone does this. Utterly weird.
Hi Clay,
I just noticed something when doing a search. I did a search on 'pricing' looking for an old thread to send to a friend and several of the results didn't display a title or link. So, it was impossible to actually click through to the thread.
There are a couple on the third page of results:
https://www.thechocolatelife.com/search/results/jrForum/3/10/search_string=pricing
There's one by me and one further down by Matt Caputo that aren't working. There's also one on the second page of results.
Thanks,
Ben
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