So I have been running chocolate in my Cocoa town, and we do a few 60% bars and a couple 70% bars. I have noticed that at a certain point the chocolate+sugar will get thick enough that the wheels will stop at these lower percentages. The drum keeps spinning and stays hot, but I thought this was odd. Anyone have any input?

updated by @steven-shipler: 04/15/15 23:24:16

I have been using 5% cacao butter which seems to loosen up the chocolate enough to keep the rollers moving. I find issues around seizing happening when I used milk powder much more than when I make dark chocolate.

Steven:

From your description of the problem I am guessing that you're using one of the 12 (5 kilo) machines.

What's happening is that there's not enough pressure exerted on the rollers to keep them reliably in contact with the bowl surface when the chocolate reaches a certain viscosity.

To some extent your telling us the percentage in your recipes doesn't help because we don't know the fat content of your beans and whether or not you add any cocoa butter to your recipes. You can have two recipes with the same cocoa content with very different viscosities.

Cocoatown is now offering machines that enables users to increase the pressure on the stones to help keep them in contact with the base. This might be what you need. However keep in mind that this extra pressure will probably reduce the life of the nylon bushings, which will cause other problems.

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clay - http://www.thechocolatelife.com/clay/

Yeah, Sounds like I will justhave to keep it how I have it, as I do not want to lose durability. I use this for my business.

And yes I am currently using 5oz of cacao butter for my 60% 70% and 84%, I keep it consistent, I like that number.