help on how to use a chocolate melter/tempering machine

Hi,

I've got a 12kg professional chocolate melter using bain-marie and I'm struggling to make a correct use of it. 

What I do now is tempering my chocolate using the bain marie method (but not my melter), then put it in the melter in order to maintain it's temperature, and start working.

But I'm pretty sure I could use it more appropriately. Here are a few questions :

1. I'm usually tempering and working with small batches of chocolates (around 2kg). So as making bars is very quick once the chocolate is tempered, I end up with the temperature of the melter being very quickly too high for the quantity of choc I have in. So the choc grows too high in temp and out of temper. How can I fix that ?

2. Do you use that kind of machine to temper your chocolate ? If yes, how ?

3. If you have to temper outside the machine, how do you manage to get your 12kg in the machine ? I meaning do you temper 6 batches of 2kg that you pour in ? I don't think so...

It seems silly but I can't seem to figure out how to use this machine in the most effective way possible. Your help is very welcome.

Thanks !

Dominique

Temper more chocolate than you plan to use.  The temperature fluctuations will be less drastic and take much longer.

Chocolate is forgiving in that you can retemper it many times over, so you have nothing to lose by melting more than you need, and like I said, with a larger volume in your machine, the changes in temperature will take much longer to occur, thereby allowing you to work with it more.

Brad