Hi,

I'm just starting making chocolate at home and use my "Ultra Grinder+" for the second time and I have a small problem about the stones, when I had ingredients, one or the other stop spinning. It is always only one who stop. I cannot see any sugar stock somewhere or anything else, the chocolate isfluidso I don't understand, why one stone doesn't spinne.

Should I worries about that or not and is there anything I can do to fix that? Even if this doesn't damage anything, I imagine this slow down the process as only one stone do the work!

Any advice will be welcome, thanks by advance.
Best regards,
Thomas

updated by @delcour-thomas: 04/12/15 13:56:43

you must control adding cocoa belong. do not put all the cocoa together, first start adding some, and then a few more, and few more.

I dont have the machine, and I ask regards because my english is not well. And its late i am tired.

david

The thing is all the chocolate was in since 12h,I added the sugar and butter and let it run for 4h and it is only when I added the powder milk, the stone before the scraper stopped after 1h.

And since then the stone spin when I turn the drum by hand but stay fix when I start the grinder!?

I have 2.1kg in the drum in total, is it to much maybe?

Do you think so? Maybe already it is too much.

When you added the milk powder the mixture became too thick.

There is not enough pressure being exerted on the stones - evenly - against the bottom of the bowl - so one or more of the stones stops turning.

If you take out some (or most) of the chocolate does this solve your problem? If you can get the chocolate started and fluid you may be able to add the rest back in in small amounts.

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clay - http://www.thechocolatelife.com/clay/

You've got a lot of variables here. You need both stones to be rolling for sure. It sounds like too much chocolate in the bowl or the chocolate is not warm enough. Not knowing your percentages of ingredients, only suggestion would be to make sure the chocolate mass is warm enough to keep it moving. You are probably going to want temps over 125f to help with viscosity unless you are using additional ingredients to improve viscosity. Was the sugar warm when added? If not, it could take longer than 4 hours for the temp to recover.

I probably had little bit to much in the drum.

The temperature was around 55c so I don't think it was that.

I just realise the humidity was quite high, around 65%, do you think this could make the chocolate thicker? As I had trouble for tempering, the chocolate started to thicken a lot at 27c.

I know the ideal humidity is 50% or less. Is 65% already to much for work with chocolate?

Still have trouble with my Ultra Grind+, the last batches was alright because I added cocoa butter, so the chocolate was enough fluid, then the wheels didn't have to much trouble to spin.

But I would like to make chocolate without adding any cocoa butter. So I'm facing the same problem, the wheels stopped again.

I runned the grinder with the liquor ( 1kg) until it was well fluid, and then I added the sugar on three laps of time, little by little. Waiting between each time to see the liquor getting enough fluid.

It was going well for an 1h30 and then one wheel stopped, so I took off half of the liquor and it started to spin again so I left it run during the night and when I woke up, not good!!!! both wheels were stock.

I wonder if the sugar could make the mix sticky, or maybe it start caramelise a little , but the temperature never go over 136F, so i don't think so.

Is it the me doing something wrong or is it necessary to have a bigger melanger to be able to make chocolate without cocoa butter?

I finally found the solution to my problem.

Too much pressure.

I talked about it on the alchemist forum, and someone told me he solved this problem by releasing some pressure on the wheels, when I was trying to add lots of pressure. He made me realise I was going to worn the stone much faster. So I tried the opposite, which is going easy on the pressure. It worked very well! The wheels started to spin full speed again.

Now I just have to find a fix system, to be able to adjust the pressure.

Hope this will serve to someone.

Thanks everyone.

If someone is interest about a system for adjust the pressure on the arm of the melangeur.




I didn't try it yet, I'll tell you more after using it.

I have a santha and had the same problem the axle that the stone spins on gets chocolate in it and cools down. I also use a hair dryer to keep the chocolate hot and fluid

I did check the temperature, it goes between 55-58C (131-136F) so it wasn't the problem for me. Releasing the pressure on it fix the problem and like that it add an adjustment on the melangeur.

BUt thanks for pointing this out it could be part of the problem.

How goes the chocolate business inPennsylvania by the way?