Good evening!

Right now my candy shop makes every product by hand, including dipping truffles. We have grown too big for our britches

I am looking to purchase my first piece of equipment and think an enrober is the way to go. I am looking at the Perfect 6", however, as I think about how I works I am concerned about sanitation of the chocolate.

When using a hard item like a cookie or biscuit, you may get a few crumbs that come off under the chocolate "waterfall" or from the blower.... but my largest concern is when enrobing truffles. We make a Mayan truffle, which contains a lot of chili pepper in the ganache. When we hand dip them, I can clearly see the outermost layer of ganache melt slightly as the warm chocolate coats it. Eventually the dipping bowl becomes so filled with chili powder build up from the melting ganache centers that we have to throw the coating away and begin with new.

My thought here is that when using the enrober with a large hopper as it were, will also experience a slight melt of ganache centers during the coating process. As that chocolate is rotated back into the hopper, hasn't that introduced both flavor contamination and water contamination (ganache contains cream, cream contains water), thereby inviting bacterial growth into your chocolate tank? I know there are tons of companies that must use enrobers for truffles but I can't figure out how they get around the likelihood of contamination of the coating chocolate. I feel like I have to be missing something very obvious.I make a number of truffles with strong flavors, so the worry of bothflavor and bacteria contamination are making me second-guess this idea.

Am I missing something? Can anyone tell me their process in order to avoid this concern? Thank you!!!

updated by @shannon-campbell: 04/16/15 06:58:01

You're over thinking it. We use a Perfect and make some varieties of pronounced flavor truffles. We segregate gluten batches into different chocolate reservoir to keep from gluten cross contamination but for truffles have never seen flavor blending.Considerations,-- a 35# chocolate res can take minuscule truffle bleed out. Think of how much greater the dilution is than your current setup.-- You will need to refill your res during large runs. There is a happy place the machine draws most effectively from. If you don't refill you will be left with 5-7# at the end and have to add a new 30# the next time. Again, dilution. You'll also find a rhythm for resetting a res from time to time.-- Enrobers are steady and swift. 2-3s under the falls. Hand dipping is a little more jerky and potentially a longer immersion time.With that in mind I doubt you'll ever notice any issues. You'll have far more issues early on learning the nuances of the workflow and keeping the chocolate happy. Good luck!