This is my first post and I'm just starting out working with chocolate. I've beenexperimentingwith honey (liquid, creamed and raw). I've gotten some decent results but the texture of my chocolate always seems to start getting gritty and crumbly after about a week. I'm trying to figure out if this is due to not being tempered properly, because of the moisture content of the honey or possibly both and some other reasons?
Long story short, I have a tempering machine on the way. I've been using blocks of cocoa liquor, cocoa butter and a small amount of honey to make my chocolate. I'm considering buying a melanger (looking at the cocoatown ECCG-12sl). Does anyone know if it would be worthwhile to use one to get the honey and cocoaliquorbutter more evenly mixed before going into the tempering machine? I was also thinking that the heat generated from the melanger might evaporate some of the moisture out of the honey/cocoa mix? I was also considering trying to find dehydrated honey to mix in, would a melanger still be useful in the process regardless?
updated by @russ-apotheker: 04/24/15 01:15:16