I just returned from a week in D. C. at a chocolate workshop. We had the opportunity of learning from Mark Heim. What vast knowledge he has. One of the new toys we played with is the EZtemper. It is a seed generator for cocoa butter. It maintains CB at a constant 33.7C. It was amazing to see this in action. I have never seen chocolate tempered any faster. You just cool your chocolate to working temp, and stir in .5-1% CB seed and stir a few times. Wait a minute and your chocolate is ready to go. We also made ganache and added it at the end. Ganaches set up in a few hours, even white chocolate ones. We also made gianduja and meltaways. This is new technology to me and I think it will change the way many of us play with chocolate.

FullSizeRender.jpg  •  106KB

I'm pretty thrilled that it finally got off the ground - I've been using my prototypes to temper chocolate, ganaches, meltaways and coloured cocoa butters for almost a year now. Thought it would never be finished!  

Seems only fair that artisan chocolatiers get to take advantage of the same technology that industry uses to pre-crystallize but on a small scale.

Full disclosure - Ruth took one home and I hope she'll post here what she is doing with it. Funny - I've been keeping it a secret so long that I've been hesitant to post about it - but I guess I should get some pictures of what it can do here as well.  

Cool stuff Kerry!

Thanks Sebastian.

Thought I'd post a picture of some chocolate I tempered using the EZtemper - on the left I dipped chocolate that had been cooled to 33.5, on the right - the same chocolate from about 1 minute later after pre-crystallizing with 1% generated seed.

Of course tempering chocolate is a bonus - it's real super power is tempering ganaches, allowing you to cut them within hours instead of days. 

Doing some experiments today using chocolate as the seed rather than cocoa butter (for the bean to bar people who don't want to add any additonal cocoa butter). Makes a very stiff paste. Preliminary results seem positive. Bugger to stir in though.

. 

  Hard to see clearly in these but the left offset in before seeding and it marks with the heat of your finger, the test on the right does not.

seems like this is the same technology as the "Magic Temper" Device from CCMS, but smaller and cheaper(?)

Both are based on a similar concept but without taking one apart I wouldn't be able to say if theirs uses the same technology. In terms of capacity there is not much to choose between them.

Ours does use multiple containers - you can continue to use generated seed from one container while you are waiting for the seed to generate in another container - rather than adding cocoa butter straight in to the already generated seed. And you can actually wash the containers after you have emptied them. Theirs has all the cocoa butter in one vessel and I'm not sure if you can take it apart for cleaning.

Here's what those tests from last night looked like this morning. Much clearer that preseeding was badly out of temper.

I'm awaiting delivery of some bean to bar hopefully 'badly out of temper' chocolate to continue my experiments.

It'd be interesting to see if someone would loan you a tricor to get some slope and ctu information on the comparisions...

It would - know anyone with one?  I tried to make my own tempermeter - but it was an abject failure!

Hmm.. maybe call the folks at tricor and see if they can direct you to someone in your area that has one?  If not, any of the large mfrs will have them, be it mfr of chocolate (such as cargill, callebaut), or finished product (hershey, mars, etc).  Not sure if you have relationships with any of them...

I'm not really in the hotbed of chocolate manufacturing - but a call to tricor might just find me someone not too far away. If I'm not mistaken Cadbury had something in Hamilton years ago - perhaps they are still close by producing.

Never hurts to ask - that's one of the few plants i've not been in i'm afraid. i'd suspect they have one  however

Forgot it was a holiday in that big country south of us today when I tried to call Tricor!

Everyone was doing this yesterday 8-)

I couldn't fit the ribs and brisket into the photo, but they were there!

While others were BBQing yesterday, I was making my version of Dulcey. I sealed 1000g of white chocolate in a Food Saver bag and pressure cooked for 90 minutes on high. Stirred thick mass and it thinned as it cooled. Added the EZtemper silk when temp was 89f. Moulded bars just so I have a tempered breakup bar. The eztemper silk made this a quick process.

A little fooling around - I set one of my EZtemper units at 35 - put coloured cocoa butter in overnight and splattered and sprayed with my Fuji. Tempered some dark chocolate with the silk - added some silk to the ganache which allowed me to back them off in less than 30 minutes.

Kerry, Have you checked aW to see if it has changed?

So - I'm trying to make some video footage (can you say frustrated beyond belief!) - so this morning I had some ganache to which I had added silk and some that I had not.  The aW differerence was no more than 0.01 between them - but I'd love it if you would do some tests as well.

I wonder if on sitting it will change over time? Have to experiment and report.

I wouldn't expect the form of the cocoa butter to have any impact on Aw of the finished product.

Sebastian, I was just wondering if it allows you to get a really good emulsion, and sets quickly, if it would affect it in anyway. Probably not:)

Interesting though - Valrhona claims that is you mix your ganache the way that Frederick Bau shows in the video - that the aW will be lower. I have plans to test the theory!

I wouldn't think so Ruth, but it never hurts to do the test - that's how we learn new things sometimes!  

Kerry - the only reason Aw would be lower because of mixing would be that there were 'pockets' of high Aw areas, and testing done happened to hit one of those pockets.  It's not a function of mixing lowering Aw, it's more a function of ensuring homogeniety.  I see chefs all the time make technical errors as they're trying to explain why this or that technique is better than the other guys' technique.  The fusion of culinary and technology's a pretty cool place to be, but a lot of people don't really understand it, and as such it ends up being theater to some degree.

Wish there was a 'Like' button Sebastian! 

I can just picture how they discovered that technique led to better ganaches.  Someone screwed up - the ganache was clumpy and almost impossible to work with - someone added a bit more cream - beat the hell out of it and voila - the BEST ganache that was ever made!

A bit of a challenge - but I made a video showing tempering and working with white chocolate using EZtemper - shows working with the chocolate at a much higher temperature allowing you to get a nice thin shell.

Plugging away editing video for the website - finally got this one up.

Ganache with EZtemper

Further experiments with chocolate as seed in place of cocoa butter - using bean to bar chocolate.  http://forums.egullet.org/topic/151287-eztemper-the-help-you-need-to-achieve-perfectly-tempered-chocolate-fast/?p=2021063  - will just link rather than duplicating here.

If you are going to be at the FCIA this weekend - drop by the booth (cocktail table), say hey to Rodney and Jess - get them to talk to you about the EZtemper and put your business card in the draw for a free unit.  

https://www.facebook.com/FineChocolateIndustryAssociation?fref=nf

Here's Rodney Alleguede (www.rodneyalleguede.com) at the FCIA event in NYC manning the 'cocktail table booth' for the introduction of the EZtemper. Lots of interest generated - and one lucky individual - Elaine Boxer of @voilaChocolat took one home!

Water ganache using the EZtemper silk - http://forums.egullet.org/topic/151287-eztemper-the-help-you-need-to-achieve-perfectly-tempered-chocolate-fast/?p=2022800

Does anyone know of a similar unit available in the UK? I have been looking at an automatic tempering machine to help speed the process up but this looks like it would be a lot more useful to me overall. Any advice would be much appreciated 

The EZtemper ships worldwide and works with all voltages. It's the only one of it's kind in the world in this price range!

I will delve deeper, a quick look on the web sight only stated Canada/USA, thank you 

I will delve deeper, a quick look on the web sight only stated Canada/USA, thank you 

Results of experiments so far - http://forums.egullet.org/topic/151287-eztemper-the-help-you-need-to-achieve-perfectly-tempered-chocolate-fast/?p=2024120

I've been using my EZtemper to help me make some favours for the wedding of a friend's son.

http://forums.egullet.org/topic/151520-manitoulin-if-i-can-make-it-there…/?p=2024956

Exciting week for EZtemper -  @Rodney Alleguede  went to the Chocolate Acadamy in Montreal to teach them all about their new EZtemper.

Tempered up some dark milk chocolate with the EZtemper last night and made a batch of freeze dried corn bark - yummy stuff! Ready to package in no time.

Hello kerry,

I have just receive my eztemper, i was looking for some infos before using it. Actually i was using "mycryo" cocoa butter to do my tempering before and i supposed that the eztemper will avoid me buying that (i am living in french guiana and have to order all my stuff to make chocolate abroad). I have a little experience about tempering wich i do with "bain marie". Now i am aiming to make more chocolate (i have a little scale of artisanale chocolate from tree to bar). I was thinking about buying an automatic temperer but don't really know what kind of the two methods (eztemper or automatic temperer) will be suitable for me.Any advice? Hope i made myself understood as my english is limited.

I'm not sure if you add additional cocoa butter to your bean to bar chocolate - but one of the things that many bean to bar producers have found is that their chocolate is too viscous for an automatic temperer. Another issue with the smaller automatic temperers (such as the Revolation) is that they require tempered seed chocolate placed behind the baffle to temper your chocolate - and most bean to bar manufacturers don't have tempered chocolate to use for this.

So to start - clean one of the stainless containers - fill it with cocoa butter and place in the EZtemper overnight. Give it a stir in the morning and make sure it has reached a creamy consistancy.  

Weigh and melt some of your bean to bar chocolate - let cool to 33.5 degrees C and add 1% of the weight of the chocolate of cocoa butter silk. Give it a stir. It will be tempered and ready to use. If you are molding it into bars I'd suggest that as soon as you see evidence of crystallization around the edges that you put the bar molds into the fridge for 10 to 15 minutes to carry off the latent heat of crystallization.