Milk chocolate changing color

Hello All. I've been using Peters Broc milk chocolate for about a year with no problem. Today I pulled the third bar out of a box that I've been using this week. I tempered it and it remained in the machine (Delta) for about an hour before I use it to cover pretzels. When the chocolate dried it was considerably lighter than the bar I used yesterday. It was very milky and muddy colored - very noticeable. Even the leftover chocolate remaining in the Delta was the same milky color. Any thoughts as to what's happening with it? It tastes ok. Thanks, John

Could be a few things. I'm assuming the tempered bar you started with was the same color as the rest of the bars in the batch. Temper is not a yes/no state of being - it's a range - quite a wide range, actually. Color of chocolate can vary significantly one one 'end' of the temper continuum vs the other end - so my suspicion is that you've simply got a significantly different degree of temper today vs yesterday.

Of course, it could be number of other things. If you're melting other ingredients (inadvertently) into the tempered chocolate, that'll obviously change things as well.

Thanks Sebastian. I did dip a few of the pretzels directly into the tempered machine - inside the Delta. Could the salt have altered the color significantly? John

Nope, wouldn't be the salt. Pictures always help, but if the starting color of the bar was the same as the others, there's not much else i don't think that could have gone wrong. You can always get the lot number and call Cargill Chocolate, ask to speak to Kim or Josh, and they can verify it's not a problem with production (but again, if there was, all bars would be odd, not just one)

Thanks Sebastian. I still have a piece of the bar left over so I'll try to re-temper it by hand. Maybe I didn't add enough seed to the machine the first time.

Not sure if this is in the same category as your problem or not, but I took notice of your post. I'm using Peter's Broc as well. For my peanut butter eggs, I'm getting a "marbled" look on only some of the eggs in the tray, while most of them are just right. Does it sound the same to you?

Hi Nicole. Could be the same problem as I was having. I re-ran the batch, using the same bar of Peter's, and found that it was a tempering issue, although I've never seen un-tempered chocolate look that completely "gray"; usually it's streaky, similar to how yours turned out. Originally, I thought the problem was going to be defective chocolate, but now I'm pretty sure it was my problem of not adding enough seed to the chocolate during the tempering phase.

I've always had blooming issues when I try to produce anything thick, like eggs. I think it's caused by the latent heat not being able to escape. They've always been challanging to me. Thanks, John

Generally speaking, it's almost impossible for a single bar of chocolate to be 'defective' due to the way their processed.