hello from french guiana

I am happy to find a site with people sharing my passion of making chocolate. I feel somehow lonely coming from south america and not have already seen any discussion of any south american members...Maybe I didn't search enough.

I started to be interrested by cacao when i had the opportunity to discover that french guiana had ancient abandonned cacao plantations since the colonisation period.For almost one year and a half I tryed with a friend to make at first the traditionnal cacao"baton"(don't know how to translate). Basically it is the nibs less or more fermented,dryed , less or more torrefied and grinded manually making a pastry rolled into a stick and served for traditionnal cacao drink after grating it into boilling milk with addition of sugar and spice.At that moment we just had the equipment for doing that.

Soon after we started to aim the chocolate making. Looking after internet , trying different fermentations, discovering the type of cacao we used (though it was forasteros but...discovering according to litterature and experiences that there were a lot of hybridation since the colonial period...)

We visited another chocolate maker in the country,and in a bordering country (suriname) both artisans .

We did experimentations until we discovered the melanger of cacaotown.I went to england to buy it(double price to shipping from the usa and more to pay at the customs here)...And tempering with marble and "bain marie".

Tests of tasting with the local and europeans inhabitants...Waiting for us to sell...from tree to bar. There is a lack of a lot of things over here and it is a patient and hard labour to fulfill our aims because we are very exigeant with the product and with ourselves.

What else to say ?My company is about to be created (small skale from tree to bar) and in spite of my mediocre english expression, i hope you will understand my introduction .

Hi Angenieux,

I am in Chile so on the other side of South America but I just wanted to let you know there are members from South America. Je parle franais y tambien castellano.

Nice to meet you olivier, I wanted to share chocolate making with members who deal with the heat and the humidity of their country, I supposed that the tempering is done in a air conditionning room, i don't have that privilege for the moment, so i tried to do the temper in the evening but my chocolate..."trs bons..." is melting too fast when i took it out of the fridge (15 min after). Obviously i miss something in the tempering process (i make only dark chocolate). I have started to plant cacao trees, do you plant also?( my name is drupa).

A bientt.

Hello Angenieux,

If you are making bars this chocolate loving girl would love to be able to try a bar and buy.

I live in New York City and always looking to try new bars. I tried some bars from Australia and the two out of the

four I really liked but the bars were interesting to try and glad I did.I would also share your bars with other chocolate loving friends here.

hello Adrienne,

I will be happy to send you a bar but i am wondering in what form it will reach to you. I have no idea yet how to do the package to travel towards you without the chocolate melt.Especially because of the problems i have mentionned in my last reply. Can someone help?

I know when I send bars I put them in an envelope or with bubble wrap but also the people who make bars know how to temper and that keeps it from melting.I don't make chocolate except for myself for fun and my tempering is not good,has to be near the cold or it gets too soft,but I would love to be able to try your bar and I know another person who would also be interested.I love being able to discover new bars and to keep on tasting and see things from a consumer point of view.I leave the chocolate making to the people who know how to do it.

Drupa,

It sounds like your problem is in the tempering - it's challenging to temper in a humid environment and you may find that you continue to have problems until you can get an air conditioned space set up to temper. But in the meantime can you tell us how you are tempering your chocolate so we can help you troubleshoot?

Hi Kerry I agree with you. Here is the way i do the tempering" au bain marie". I use an electris tajin to do it. I put the recipient with the chocolate liquor in it. I control the temperature until 48 C (dark chocolate) after i

Sorry, i ate the end of the discussion:-). So after i put the recipient with the hot liquor in another with cool water until the liquor reaches 27C and put it back to hot until 31C in the tajin.Then I mould the chocolate. I keep stirring the liquor all along this process.

So?

Sounds on the surface like it should work. When you get down to 27 C - how thick is the mixture? Also how certain are you of the calibration of your thermometer?

The mixture is thick and without stirring it it woult stay (solidified) on the edge of the recipient. my thermometer is electric with a probe (sonde in french).

Do you have a way of checking the temperature of your thermometer or perhaps using another to compare?

I will try to find a way.Thank u Kerry for your advices.I will temper some liquor today and will observ better how it is going.