EZtemper

Thank your for your nformations kerry. I am using 10 % of cacao butter in my chocolate.

Ok - gotta check this out - I've figured out how the bean to bar two ingredient guys can extract their own cocoa butter easily with no special equipment.

http://forums.egullet.org/topic/151287-eztemper-the-help-you-need-to-achieve-perfectly-tempered-chocolate-fast/?p=2030981

Is the "silk" just cocoa butter or does it have any other ingredients? How and when would you add lecithin to the chocolate?

The silk is indeed just cocoa butter with no additional ingredients - in a form that will provide a sufficient amount of form V crystals to almost instantly temper your chocolate. If you are making bean to bar with lecithin you would add it whenever you normally add it to your chocolate under construction. The 'silk' is added at the very end when you are ready to mold your product.

Wow, it's taken a few days to go over all the info in this and the egullet threads.  This sounds like it is exactly what I'm looking for as a tempering solution. 

I'm curious now, I'm a bean to bar maker that is just starting out. Cocoa butter is added to all of my chocolate bars, largely so that it has the consistency that I like when eating and working with to mold and dip.  So from this standpoint, it sounds like if I had the eztemper I'd just subtract the cocoa butter on the front end, and add the amount subtracted in the form of silk once I'm done, so it wouldnt alter my recipe at all.

The reason I'm posting though, is the trials of using chocolate in the eztemper seems to be using the 2 ingredient bean-to-bar chocolate for the trials. Have any tests been done to use anything with a higher cocoa butter content, such as using a commercial couverture?   Based on what I've read I'm already sold, so I guess it'd be more of a trial and error sort of thing, no?

Tim - for your own as you suggest just decrease your added cocoa butter by 1% and add 1% silk.

Using commercial couverture I just add the 1% at the tail end - not worrying about the additional cocoa butter. If I've put aside a little bit of dark chocolate for painting eyes on bunnies I have often added a whole lot of 1%'s when I reheat and temper over and over and sometimes end up with pretty thin chocolate! But it still works fine on the eyes!

Today I tempered a batch of bean to bar that isn't two ingredient by just adding the 1% - here's a picture of it.

Awesome.  I guess I meant by using the chocolate as a seed silk. Using the bean-to-bar, the experiments showed that it was very thick and difficult to mix in, and tempering was less than stellar.  I was curious if you'd tried that with a higher cb content chocolate.  I figure once I get my machine (I'll be placing an order towards the end of the month) I can try that with a smaller batch size and see how it works out but was curious to know if it was the cocoa solids causing the thickness or if it was just the lower cb content of the bean to bar chocolate you were using. Hence the asking about commercial couvertures - which will typically have a much higher cb content than some eating chocolates.

Nah - using the chocolate was basically a bust! I did try it with commercial coverature as well - didn't really work any better.

EZtemper got a little write up in the Hot Chocolate section of Dessert Professional this month.

(Source:  Dessert Professional  Aug/Sept 2015 page 112)

Hi

This sounds a great alternative for artisan chocolatiers like myself. However I am wondering about the difference between using this and Mycryo? A visiting French chef showed us this technique a few years ago and I have used it a few times. Same percentage, just sprinkle it in and stir. I have found that it can take a bit of stirring to dissolve at times, and may be more expensive ( but the machine is $1000), so that's a Lot of Mycryo. Is it just the convenience of having the silk ready to go?

I am no expert, but i can tell you what my experience has been. I have used Mycryo for 8+ years, and the EZ for 5 months. Mycryo is very hard to get to mix in without lumps. The temperatures are more critical. With the EZ, the silk mixes in at a wider range of temps, and is so much easier to mix in. When I teach tempering classes, I do side-by-side comparisons and different methods of tempering: seeding with tempered chocoolate, Mycryo, and EZ. There is no contest!! The EZ wins every time. The Mycryo is certainly a cheaper method, but not as effective. I think some of the problem is that as the Mycryo ages, it turns into beta 6 and it doesn't melt as easily as it should. It is a little spendy, but anything that makes my life easier is worth it:)

Yes I can relate to that. I use the seeding method and sometimes it takes ages to get it right.  And I know what you mean about the lumps. Sounds ike the EZtemper is worth the money. Thanks for your insights

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Making Cocoa Butter

Finally put together a YouTube video on extracting cocoa butter from chocolate liquor - a way for 2 ingredient bean to bar folks to produce their own cocoa butter so they can use the EZtemper!

Kerry - what do you think would happen if you took the remaining nib mass (after you removed that first 25g or so of butter), put it into a fine-mesh nut bag (or something equivalent), placed it in a strainer over a bowl, and dropped a weight on it? Do you think you might squeeze out another 10%-20%? Or would you just end up with a chocolate-stained nut bag?

I suspect the chocolate stained nut bag you mentioned! Apparently 25% is a good amount to get out with a hydralic press so we aren't doing too bad without one!