Forum Activity for @Clay

Following

I agree that this would be very useful. I will ask about this. Seems like a big hole in the UI/UX.

Classifieds

That's true. Classifieds is closed, but it will be back as soon as I can move the development site to a production server, my goal is before the end of the month. In the meantime, this request is from last October, which is one of my issues about trying to manage Classifieds using software not designed to do that -- the posts never disappear if the person who posts them doesn't manually delete them. In the new Classifieds, posts will automatically age out of the system after 30 or 60 days.

Old Messages

No, none of the messages from the old site was transferred over, as I explained in at least one of my emails about the switch.

Howewer, they are still can be found on the old site, which is at discoverchocolate.ning.com. Log in with your old email address and password.

The site will up until at least the end of February so people can review their message box and take any necessary steps. Once I close that site down everything there will be lost forever.

How to make Photoblog using Image Galleries

While it is possible to embed images into posts and comments, if you have a photo-intense travel story, think about creating a Gallery with the images from your trip. You can post  the setup and some short narrative in the Travels and Adventures Forum category, and then link to the Gallery. The effect is best when members look at the photos in the Lightbox in a slide show.

The key to making the slideshow work is to have a short, descriptive title, for each image. Then copy that title into the description field and keep the description fairly short. Under 200-300 words is ideal. The title will be visible when anyone mouses over an image in any view but Lightbox, and the description will be shown under the image in Lightbox mode.

eg:
Looking forward to exploring the new site. Just a quick FYI, the menus on mobile view are black on charcoal - almost impossible to read.

@eg - thanks for letting me know about the menu color selection on mobile devices. I will look into it ASAP. Bigger fish to fry first. Now that lots of people are hitting the site I need to figure out how to solve the poor database performance.

This is now fixed - it was a configuration option I overlooked, so my bad. You have the option to embed media - images and videos! - you have already uploaded or you can upload an image from your local computer. While it adds another step, uploading it to your image gallery and adding a title and description first means that members can see it in other contexts, which would be good, but is not necessary. Please note that you have to specify an image size ... and that is the image size in the post and it does not appear as if it can be edited after the fact. You'd have to delete and re-upload.

Thomas -

I doubt that it has anything to do with you. I have been in touch with the Jamroom dev team and we are working on a fix. I will let you know when this is done - obviously it's not workable in the long run (or even the short run).

It Occurred To Me Many Times, In 2014 ...

... that maybe we were having arguments about things that really weren't the argument we should be having, still. What is the definition of bean-to-bar? Really? What does it mean to be a Craft chocolate maker? While these definitions may be important to a very small percentage of chocolate enthusiasts, 90+ percent of people who eat chocolate don't care and get easily bored and, in the end, get pushed away from wanting to learn to appreciate fine flavor chocolate.

For that reason, I started using the following definitions over the course of 2014 when talking and writing about chocolate and intend to do so moving forward. Let me know what you think.

What It Means To Be Bean-To-Bar

I hate the phrase bean-to-bar because the discussion centers around what really constitutes working from the bean really means. For some people (most, I think), it means owning all the equipment and personally doing all the work on the equpiment you own. Many people have problems with the TCHO approach where they send their chocolate maker to origin to personally oversee the roasting and grinding and then finish the chocolate in their factory. How could that possibly be "bean-to-bar" when roasting is done thousands of miles away on someone else's equipment?

I personally don't see any problems with a chocolate maker calling themselves "bean-to-bar" as long as they are transparent about what they are really doing and they personally oversee every step of the process from roasting to conching and don't just phone it in. I can also make the argument that it returns more to the local community because the cost of roasting and grinding is captured locally, and I can also make the argument that transportation costs are lowered because the weight of what's being shipped is reduced by around 20%. So, by this definition, TCHO is positively bean-to-bar.

But what does this mean for industrial companies. Is Cargill bean-to-bar? Callebaut?

Here's where I want to shift the debate a bit. In my opinion, in order to call a chocolate maker "bean-to-bar" they must produce a retail bar under their own brand. Can you go to a Whole Foods and get a Cargill or ICAM/Agostoni-branded chocolate bar? Kakao Berlin? No? Then they are not bean-to-bar. This makes it very simple to know who is bean-to-bar ~~ focus on the output, not the input. By this definition, TCHO is positively bean-to-bar, as are Cluizel, Valrhona, Bonnat, Guittard, and many others. But Felchlin is not.

On the input side, I now preferentially use the phrase from-the-bean. A company can make chocolate starting from beans, starting from nibs (from nibs), or starting from liquor (from liquor), etc.

If you combine these two concepts then the confusion goes away, there's nothing to argue about, and we can get past it and on to things that really matter, like what does it taste like?

What It Means To Be A Craft/Artisan Chocolate Maker

I think most people equate craft/artisan with batch size and hand-made. The question is, at what batch size are you no longer a craft chocolate maker? Again, I now think that this is the wrong place to focus attention.

For me, the dividing line between being a craft chocolate maker and an industrial chocolate maker is when consistency and repeatability become the primary concerns. This is because it's also important for their customers. If the rheology of a chocolate changes from one shipment to the next it creates a major problem in recipes and tempering parameters change. Flavor differences are also problematic.

For a company like Valrhona, it's important that Manjari tastes like Manjari, even when the beans taste different from harvest-to-harvest and year-over-year. For their customers who use it to enrobe, they trust it to behave the same way day in and day out. Thus Valrhona uses blending among other techniques and a lot of complicated science to hit a specific flavor profile, within a narrow margin, batch after batch, year after year. And yes, it's easier to do it when working tonnes at a time instead of tens of kilos at  time.

Craft chocolate makers, on the other hand, are less concerned (if they are concerned at all) about consistency from batch to batch and more concerned about bringing out the essence of the bean (as they interpret it). Because their chocolate is not being used for industrial-scale enrobing (it's probably not used to enrobe at all), there is no need for consistent rheology. (However, consistent rheology would make tempering and molding a lot easier.)

However, being a "craft" chocolate maker does not mean it's okay to hide behind the fact that the chocolate is being made in small batches (and the essential nature of small batch manufacturing means each batch is different), to keep from having to learn the craft - the art and the science - of chocolate making.

To me, while a craft chocolate may not be striving for consistency from batch to batch, they should be able to pull it off, if asked. I personally don't buy into the notion that chocolate made from beans from the same lot should has to taste different from batch to batch. If a chocolate maker buys five tonnes of the same beans at the same time from the same harvest, they should be able to make chocolate that is substantially the same from all five tonnes of beans. The wine analogy is if wine from the same vineyard and winemaker would taste different from barrel to barrel (which could mean from one bottle to another in different cases). 

From this perspective it's much easier to tell who's a true craft chocolate maker and who's not. I also think it's possible for a chocolate maker to exist in both camps at the same time. Guittard is mostly an industrial chocolate maker - that's where most of their products and sales fit. With the E Guittard line? Possible to argue that they fit into the craft category. With the E Guittard line they are not only from-the-bean but they are also bean-to-bar because you can purchase E Guittard-branded bars at retail. They are not bean-to-bar for their industrial products.

What It Means To Be A Single-Origin Chocolate

The phrase single-origin can be quite misleading. It can refer to a country, a growing region, or a single estate or farm. What does it mean to be single-origin Venezuela? All the beans come from somewhere in Venezuela (or maybe not, a lot of cross-border smuggling occurs), but where in Venezuela?  

So, about five years ago I started using just the word origin. The origin can be quite broad – Indonesia – or it can be quite narrow – Hacienda el Rosario (single-estate Venezuela) or Guasare (single varietal Venezuela). The specificity gets added on as a qualifier to the word origin. Let's drop the use of "single" because it can be used to confuse.

Also, for the record, an origin chocolate that uses cocoa butter in the recipe where the cocoa butter comes from a different origin may not be "single-origin." If I make chocolate from beans from around Lake Maracaibo and the cocoa butter is made from beans grown in Carenero, then the chocolate can be single-origin Venezuelan, but not single-origin Maracaibo (or Sur del Lago). If the beans are from Maracaibo and the butter from West Africa then it's not single-origin anything.

[ Edited on Dec 27, 2015 to fix typos and for clarity. ]

What do you do if you can't access your account?

One of the admin features of the Jamroom software is the ability to update email addresses and reset passwords. On Ning, your account on TheChocolateLife did not "belong" to me because you could use the same login information to join multiple Ning communities. With Jamroom, this is one community, not a community that shares its member database with thousands of other communities.

If you have trouble accessing your account, send email to accounthelp (at) thechocolatelife (dot) com. In order to be able to help you I need to know the email address of your existing account AND your membername. You should be able to get these from any old email sent to you from from the old Ning web site if you don't remember them. 

New Capability - Image Editing (not just Data editing) from within The Image Editor

Added Saturday, January 17th.

On the image editor page there is now an "Edit Image" button. Clicking on this button now loads the image inside a photo editor window. The editor used to be called Aviary (for those of you who might have it on your smartphone) but it's now a part of the Adobe Creative Suite. There are many things you can do to images so I encourge you to explore the possibilities.

One thing that still remains in place is an upper limit of the size of image that can be uploaded - 2MB (if you are still in the Unassigned member quota it's 1MB. If you have an image that is larger than 2MB you must resize it before uploading it to TheChocolateLife. Once it is uploaded you can edit the image online.

Your Profile is Now Your center of Activity

On the old site, most new content posting was either done from the Home page or from the content type page. That is, if you wanted to add a new Forum post there was a link under the displayed forum posts to add a new forum post.

On the new Home Page there are no direct links to add new content.

• If you want to add a new Forum Post you have to do it from within the Forum Category that you want the post to appear in.
• If you want to add a new Blog post, create a memo, add an Activity entry in your timeline, and more - you have to do it from within that area of your profile.
• If you want to add an entry to a Group you must do it within that Group.

Classifieds Will Move to a new Site -  TheChocolateLife.Info

Arguably the biggest content change is that I am moving the entire Classifieds section to a new site by the end of January.

The Ning platform did not support the Classifieds at all well and neither does Jamroom. I could write a module (or pay someone to write one for me), but I took this opportunity to think bigger than just move the classifieds to a new platform.

The larger context is that there is no Yellow Pages for the cocoa and chocolate industry. That's what TheChocolateLife.info will become - The Chocolate Pages! Businesses of all types and sizes can create (and manage) their own directory listings and make it easy for people to find them. I am starting out the directory by adding hundreds of companies that I've found over the course of the research I have done over the past dozen years or so.

Friending and Sending messages to Members

The concept of Friends here is different than on the old site.  Unfortunately, Friend relationships was not something that was included in the export archive so you'll have to manually go back and re-establish those connections.  Here it works more like Twitter following. You can follow a member but they don't have to Follow you back. Furthermore, you don't have to accept a Follow. There is an option on your profile page to approve Followers. When someone follows you you will get a notification and you can choose to accept or reject the Follow.

The Send a Message feature can now be found by hovering over your member name in the top nav and selecting Private Notes from the drop down menu. However, you can only send Private Notes to members that Follow you. If you want to get in touch with a member and ask them to follow you, you can leave a comment on their profile.

Merged Forum Categories

Discussions in the  Micro-Batch "Homebrew" Chocolate  and Tips, Tricks, and Techniques Forums have been merged with the Tech Help Forum, which has been renamed to Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, & Techniques . The empty Forum categories  have been deleted.

limits to the size of Image Uploads

One thing I noticed during the transfer is that some members had uploaded HUGE images for their profile photos - in some cases over 10MB! There is now a 2MB limit on all image posts (1MB for members still in the Unassigned member Quota).

Ning (the old software) had the concept of Albums. Jamroom (the new software) uses Galleries and they are much more powerful and much easier to use at the same time.

When your images were uploaded, any album associations you made were lost, and the decision was made to upload all of the images into a single gallery that was named the same as your user name. This could cause some confusion, so I recommend changing the name of the gallery to something easy to remember. I used Loose Images.

To Rename a Gallery

1. Go to your Profile Page by clicking on your name in the top nav.
2. Click on Galleries in the menu to view all of the galleries. Immediately after import there is only one and it has the same name as your member name.
   (( If you can't see Galleries in the menu it means you are still in the Unassigned member quota. You will have to go to your profile (hover over your name in the top nav and select Account Settings, it's in the Profile tab) and change that first. ))
3. To the right of the bar with the Gallery name in it is an icon with a gear in it. Click it to bring up the Gallery edit page.
4. All of the images in the Gallery will be displayed and you have the ability to edit each image (detail) and delete images from this view.
5. On the page is a text box with the Gallery name in it.
6. Type in the new Gallery name you want to use (e.g., Loose Images).
7. Scroll down to the bottom.
8. Uncheck "Add to Timeline" (unless you want to tell everyone on TheChocolateLife that you renamed the Gallery).
9. Click Save Changes and you're done.
10. Other things you can do from this page include adding one or more images directiy into this library.

To Add a Gallery

1. Go to your Profile Page by clicking on your name in the top nav.
2. Click on Galleries in the menu to view all of the galleries.
3. In the bar that says Image Galleries, click on the plus sign icon.
4. Type in the name for the Gallery.
5. Upload images (if you want to - it's not necessary at this time).
6. Uncheck "Add to Timeline" (unless you want to tell everyone on TheChocolateLife that you renamed the Gallery).
7. Click Save Changes and you're done.

To Rearrange Images in a Gallery

1. Go to your Profile Page by clicking on your name in the top nav.
2. Click on Galleries in the menu to view all of the galleries.
3. Click on the name of the Gallery you want to rearrange to display it.
4. Drag and drop the pictures into the order you want.
5. That's it.

To Edit an Image

Editing an image (for now) means editing the data associated with the image. This includes the title and the description as well as the gallery the image is in.

1. Go to your Profile Page by clicking on your name in the top nav.
2. Click on Galleries in the menu to view all of the galleries.
3. Click on the name of the Gallery that contains the image(s) you want to edit.
   (( If you prefer, you can click on the Images:### button in the Stats area to see all of the images in one view. If you have a lot of images this could take a long time to download. ))
4. Click on the image you want to edit. If you've opted to view all of the images, you might want to right-click and open the image in a new tab so you don't have to keep re-loading the Images page.
5. To the right of bar above the image (it may contain the gallery name), click on the gear icon to edit the image details.
6. If you want, you can upload an image to replace the current image.
7. Add or edit the image title.
8. Add or edit the image description.
9. Add the image to an existing Gallery (select from the pop-up list) or enter a name for a new Gallery.
10. Click on Save Changes.
11. Repeat as necessary.

Helpful Hint ~~ While you can see the title of each image when you mouse over it, you can't see the image title when you are moving back and forth through the images in lightbox mode. For that reason, I copy the image title into the image description field - even if it's the only thing in the description field. What's in the description field is displayed below the image in lightbox mode. So - no matter what - your visitors will know what the image is about.

Other Things You Can Do When Looking at Images

• The numbers to the right (2,3,4,6,8) refer to the number of images shown in each row. Click on a number to resize the images ~~ without reloading the page!
• Below each image should be five stars. These are used to rate images. All of the ratings for each image gets averaged.
• When looking at an image on its page, scroll down below the image.
  • You can Like it (use the thumb). However, you cannot like images that you uploaded. You can only like other members' images.
  • You can also share the image on Facebook, Twitter, etc. The first time you decide to Share something you will be asked to give permission to link that service with TheChocolateLife using a service called ShareThis.
• When looking at an image you uploaded you can add a tag. Tags can be some descriptor that's not in the title or description already. Tags will be added to your Profile tag cloud and to the Community tag cloud on the home page.

Have a Question? Is Something Not Clear? Have a Tip of Your Own?

Add it in the comments below.

Is something not working the way you think it should ...

or not working at all? This is the place to post them so they can be looked into and taken care of.

Usernames and Profile Photos

I want to encourage all members to take a look at their usernames to see if there is a way to make them more personal and more descriptive to other members.

I also want to encourage members to consider shortening their username if it is more than 16-20 characters. Longer names (and there are some much longer ones) interfere with the formatting and display of some content. When I see that this is the case I will send a message - but I appreciate your taking a look.

Profile Quota groups

One great new change is Profile Quotas. You can select these by editing your Profile. By default, members are put into the Unassigned quota. You can select from a number of different quotas based on your primary interest for being a member of TheChocolateLife. I can assign different functionality to each group. For example, members in the Unassigned have very restricted capabilities to add new content until they choose a quota to belong to.

Among other things, I will be able to send targeted member emails to profile groups so don't miss out and make sure to move out of the Unassigned quota ASAP.

1. Hover over your name in the top nav.
2. Select Account Settings from the drop-down menu.
3. Click on the Profile tab.
4. Scroll down and select the Quota group you want to belong to.
5. While you are on this page you can add a short bio, select a privacy option, and decide whether you want to approve followers or not. (These work more like Facebook. If you want to be able to exchange Private Notes you can only send notes to someone who follows you.)

Improved Search within Forums (and elsewhere)

There is now a search at the top of the Forums page. This will search for a word or phrase in every Forum category. Within a Forum, the search scope is limited to that Forum. If you click on Images and then search (try " pods "), you will see every image with the word pods in the title or description.

Tags

Tags can be added to any item. Tags are words or short phrases (1, 2, or 3 words) that do NOT appear in the title or description. Tags appear in your profile's tag cloud as well as in the Community tag cloud on the home page. If you see an image with pods in it (for example) and the word pod(s) does not appear in the title or description. Tag it " pods " so people can find them all with a single click!

Profile Shortcuts

Wherever you see a membername with an @ in front of it - @clay for example - it is a live link to that members profile page.

Multiple profiles per account

The most powerful use of this is when the account belongs to a company and the company would like to have a number of profiles be able to add and update the content. The feature arose because Jamroom was created to support bands. The band would be the main account and the profiles would be the band members, managers, and trusted others. I have this turned off by default, but if you want to set it up for you account please ask. If your company or group already has two or more members on TheChocolateLife and you'd like to link them to the same account, please let me know and I will link them.

Smileys 

It's a small thing, but the text editor now enables you to add Smileys. There's only a small set now, but I may be adding more over time.

Image Galleries with "Lightbox" viewing

The old Ning had the ability to put images into albums. This has been replaced with the Jamroom Image Gallery feature. Jamroom makes it much easier to create multi-image galleries and provides the ability to view galleries in a lightbox overlay without having to leave the page you're on. If you don't see the Lightbox icon it means that the image you are looking at is in a gallery all by itself.

I encourage members to edit their images and galleries and to spend a few moments editing the titles and descriptions of the images because there is now context-specific searching. To see how this works, click on Images in the top nav and then search for " pods " (without the quote marks). This will return all of the images that contain pods in the title or description.

For more information on Images and Galleries, visit the >> Images and Galleries FAQ  << .

Publishing Dates

You can schedule a post for a future date and time in the editor.

Why can't I ...

• Rate an image or post or other content?
• Like a piece of content?
• Upload a video?

Answer:

You are still a part of the " unassigned " member group. To change that:

1. Go to your profile by clicking your username on the top nav.
2. Click on the gear icon at the upper right of your profile.
3. Scroll down to the bottom of the page.
4. Select the member groups from the Profile Quota (member group) popup that best describes the personal or business reason for being a member of TheChocolateLife.
   1. All of the profile quotas shown have the same features and functionality.
5. Click the " Save Changes " button.
6. You should now see the missing features.

In general ...

Most content is added from the related content section on your profile so the first thing to do is click on your username in the top nav to go to your profile page.

The main exception to this rule is creating Forum discussions.

Images and Image Galleries

Images really want to sit within galleries. There are tools on each image page for moving images not associated with galleries into galleries. Click on the gear icon to get to the editing menu.

To view your image galleries, click on the Gallery link at the top of your profile.

To look at your images, click on the Images: ### link under the Stats header.

Forum Discussions

Click on the Forums link in the top nav or at the top of your profile to see the list of all Forum categories.

This step is different from the old ChocolateLife. You have to select the category you want to add the discussion to before you can add the discussion, rather than selecting a category field at the bottom of the page after you enter the text.

Select the Forum category.

Use the Search function to see if there are already discussions that might answer your question.

If not, click on the + icon to add a new discussion.

In many places in the world where cocoa is grown, water security is still a major challenge. Small solar purification plants are one solution to the problem but they tend to be very expensive and many can't be used in places where brackish - salty - water is a problem.

There's an Indiegogo campaign going on right now for an innovative small-scale solar water purifier. Called the Desolenator , this award-winning project has been under development for several years and is calling for support to move it from the prototype phase into production.

We can help the campaign in several ways:

1) Tell your friends about the project and ask them to tell their friends and go to the campaign page and pledge a perk.

2) Buy a Desolenator at $650 each (pays for delivery, installation, and training). I don't think that many people reading this need one, and many of the rest of us don't have the resources, especially at this time of year, to go out and buy one to give one away.

3) #1 + #2 - This is where the power of our global community comes in. Tell your friends to tell their friends to help TheChocolateLife purchase at least one

I am happy to collect donations (through PayPal) from members of the community and then purchase a Desolenator on behalf of the worldwide ChocolateLife membership. If I receive enough to purchase two Desolenators then I will purchase two of them for the community. (Any monies below/above evenly divisible multiples of $650 will be donated for other perks in the name of TheChocolateLife community.

Once I make the pledge we will have a discussion about where to deliver the Desolenator to a location in India and Africa.

To make a donation, please send it via PayPal to paypal@discoverchocolate.com. PLEASE earmark your donation as a donation or personal payment. PayPal does not charge transaction fees for donations. If you want to mail a check, please contact me privately. I will keep track, here on this post, of the amount collected, plus provide updates on the campaign.

There campaign closes on January 14th, so please help me in supporting this extremely worthwhile campaign.

:: Clay

Andre:

Whatever works, works. If the refrigerator works for you then you don't need to invest in other equipment.

The real solution is to find a way to work in a room that's 20C. While it will take longer for the molds to cool than at 15C, you will find that tempering will be easier and much more consistent when the room is around this temperature. You should a temperature and humidity gauge in the working area and take notes as you work. If you have problems you may find that changes in temp/humidity may be the cause.

Andre -

The temperature will affect the time it takes to cool. As important is airflow above and below the mold to remove the heat. The combination of temperature and airflow will determine the amount of time it takes to cool completely.

55F-60F is a good place to start.

You do need to think about humidity. If the difference in temperature between ambient and the cooling environment is great enough condensation can form on the bars - and this is a bad thing.

Calum -

Vantage House sells and services FBM in the UK. Have you been in contact with them?

First off, throughput is on FBM machines is closer to 3x bowl capacity per hour than 5x. To get close to this throughput you do need to keep topping up the bowl as you go. You don't want to let the bowl get below 1/3 empty in normal operation as the machine is at its most efficient and stable when it's full (this applies to all continuous tempering machines of this type).

There is no way that you are going to use even close to 35kg an hour with an enrober. Think about it. 1000 pieces per hour at 10gr per piece is 10kg of chocolate. That's well within the Prima's range and far more than you can crank through the machine.

The hourly limit is reachable when filling molds. If you are hand-depositing 2 molds/minute and each mold has four, 60gr cavities then this is about .5kg/minute or 30kg/hr. In practice it's a challenge to work uninterrupted for this amount of time, so you'd pace the work accordingly.

There's another factor. 100kg/week is about 2.5 kg/hr on average. 250kg in a busy week is 6kg/hr. If this is in fact your production throughput then the Prima is more than suitable for your operation.

In practical terms, the machine is less difficult to clean than the enrober belt. Yes, there is chocolate waste but good working habits can keep it to a minimum - a couple of hundred grams per changeover, maybe. The best approach is to only changeover at the end of the day. The machines can be cleaned (washed if necessary) and left to dry overnight. If you don't wash then getting any enrober belt perfectly clean is nigh on impossible. The best you can do is to work with a heat gun and remove the majority of the current chocolate before swapping in the new. What you can do is capture the initial chocolate that is mixed and use it in a ganache or something like that - rework, not waste.

Bryan -

Just a quick technical note to follow on to what Andrea mentioned about the technique she uses: Chocolate does not dry as there is little to no water in it. When chocolate cools down the cocoa butter crystallizes. There are several forms of crystals, and proper tempering ensures that the right crystals set up.

Melanie (and all ChocolateLife members):

Posts like these belong in the Classifieds.

Thanks,
:: Clay

To All ChocolateLife members:

Posts such as these belong in Classifieds.

Thanks,
:: Clay

The front of the box says 50gr in one of the pictures on the site, which is beautiful and may be one of the best produced and illustrative sites of its kind I have seen.

I may have tasted this while I was in Per in July. I base this solely on the fact that one of the quotes about the chocolate was from Idaly Farfn - and she tasted me on some new project she was working on. I will have to email her and ask. If these are one and the same then this is a pretty special chocolate but I don't know that $5000/kg is where I would peg the starting price (which they say barely covers the cost of production).

My issues with the presentation are simple, yet deep:

1) The point of the $100 bar is that the chocolate itself has to be the reason for the price. The Spanish Elm box and the tweezers (has anybody else ever heard about fingerprint oils despoiling the aroma of chocolate?) are a bit too over the top for me.

2) When I read their stuff I get the impression these guys think they invented the analogy between chocolate and wine. But they do hit on a lot of important points that indicate they've been well schooled. 2014 Wet Harvest. The prose seems more than a little over the top. Which segues into the next point:

3) In an online article about this bar the makers are reported to have been talking about the evolution of chocolate tasting/pairing events and how in 5 years they will be all over the place. Hello? What's been going on for the past dozen years? This is something I saw coming 20 years ago and have been actively promoting since 2001 - along with hundreds of other people, many of whom I know. These days, the press just seems to run with any statement and does little or no fact checking or background research to verify statements that get made.

4) I've heard of artificial scarcity before, but 574, 50gr bars takes it to a new place entirely. In case no one else did the math, that is 28.7 kilos of chocolate. At 81% even using Nacional trees, that might be 100 trees? At $260/bar the maximum retail value of the project is about $150,000. That said, even at this price, with only 574 units to sell and they hype around it - they are likely to sell out.

The topic of the $100 bar came up while I was in London at the Academy of Chocolate conference. One of the points I make - and this bar does not address that point at all - is that there needs to be money in the system to pay for critics and educators to tell people why it's okay to spend $50, $100, $260 on a no-compromise chocolate made without any gimmicks (and there are at least two elements of gimmickry here - the tweezers and the very limited availability). Unfortunately, the lack of availability does not address the much larger issues - at least as I see them.

:: Clay

PS.Iwouldlike to know if samples are available for bona fide members of the press to taste and write about.

Helen (and all other ChocolateLife members):

Posts such as these belong in Classifieds.

Thanks,
:: Clay

Make sure to attend the NW Chocolate Show this weekend - you should find what you are looking for there.

Don -

This belongs in the Classifieds section. Please repost.

:: Clay

Courtney -

Discussions like this really belong in the Classifieds section and it's ALWAYS a good idea to let people know where you are located in a post like this. If you're outside the US (you're not, you're in Maryland) then the recommendations would not be useful to you.

You can get chocolate dipping sets online through Chocovision . They're not terribly expensive but if you contact Chocovision and speak to Ian and let him know the charitable nature of the work you're doing (and that you are a ChocolateLife member), he may be able to help you on the price.

How much cocoa butter do you need? In NYC David Rosen Bakery Supply sells Blommer undeodorized butter in 35lb tubs at a good price. I've bought over a ton of this over the years so I must think it's pretty good (it is). Call Blommer at (215) 679-4472 and ask if there's someone closer to you that sells it.

:: Clay

Mariano:

I would not buy directly from China unless you are prepared, immediately upon arrival, to examine all of the electrics and electronics and completely re-wire the machine. I would also make sure to ask what material the blades and the inner surfaces of the machine are made of. They have to be made from extremely hard (expensive) steel. Otherwise they will wear down quickly and you will get a lot of metal in the chocolate. Ask what kind of steel and then let me know, I can tell you if it's the right kind.

These are the sorts of details that the Peruvian company I work with takes care of for you. We also work hard to ensure the quality and finish of the welding is good. They are little things - but unless you are prepared to do the work yourself, it makes sense to spend the extra money and have them done for you.

Mariano:

This type machine is called a Universal and it can be used to grind, refine, and conche chocolate.

If you are interested in a machine of this type I work with a supplier down in Peru who can provide them in either 40L or 100L capacities and ship directly to you in Honduras. I have worked with the supplier to make minor modifications on the smaller machine to improve air flow (and therefore conching ability).

:: Clay

Cacao from Turkey?

Origins?

The Black Inca beer is from Australia and you can contact ChocolateLife member Igor van Gerwen about getting some. We're registered for sale in California, so I need to connect to figure out how you can order. I will get back to you.

Ash -

One of the projects I am working on is Solbeso - the world's first distilled beverage made from 100% fresh cacao fruit juice. We're registered for sale in NY, FL, and CA and ship to most states. It's 40% ABV, not 5-12% which is what a wine or beer would be, but it is very tasty. Let me know if you are interested and I can give you contact info for how to purchase.

:: Clay

This is the second in a regular series (ultimately at least quarterly) of Group Reviews , a new feature for 2014 here on TheChocolateLife.

The idea behind the reviews is to get members to contribute their opinions about chocolates that are either very popular, have been heavily hyped, and/or that have received strong positive reviews from rating and reviewing web sites and/or awards programs.

The inspiration for the feature comes from Jos Ortega y Gassets 1929 book, The Revolt of the Masses [ Amazon affiliate link ]. In this book, Gasset predicts that future generations will come to rely more heavily on the recommendations of friends, colleagues, and even strangers over those of experts. If asked to choose between the advice of "experts" and the impressions of "regular" people, the majority will turn to the latter. This helps explain why many people tend to trust crowd-sourced aggregate reviews over those from reviewers in established media outlets.

For this Group Review - Anything made by the Mast Bros

Think about your response in three parts.

Part 1 :: Present your sensory impressions - Aroma, Taste, and Texture -of one or more of the chocolates.

Part 2 :: Give a rating of the chocolate on whatever scale you want (or that you use for your own purposes) - 1 (low) through 10 (high), 1 through 100, or an impressionistic scale from low (This chocolate is so bad that if I were gifted it I would not even regift it to someone I did not care about); to high (This chocolate is so good that I would have to think three times before sharing any, or This is a desert island chocolate).

Part 3 :: This part is optional but is very important for this review and can include a discussion about other aspects of the chocolate - including your thoughts on packaging, marketing -- topics that are not central to the chocolate itself.

Maroun:

I have to counsel you again here on the way you represent your machines and business. You have a particular type of batch tempering machine - one with a wheel. You do not have the best machine for all startup businesses.

:: Clay

Maroun:

Your English here is not correct. Your recommendation to Sabrina is just that, a recommendation - it is not that she "must" buy from you the machine you advise her on. Also, other people in the future may be interested in what you recommend to Sabrina, so I would appreciate your keeping the answers public - and not asking members to email you privately.

:: Clay

Both are very simple machines when you get right down to it. The major difference in price is that the outer shell of the Mol d'Arts are made from plastic and the Bakons are all stainless steel. There have been some reports that the thermostats of the Mol d'Arts are not as robust (or accurate) as they could be.

So, you are getting when you pay for when you get a Bakon. Another source for similar machines that could be slightly cheaper is Desin et Realization (DR.ca).

I know people who use standard buffet warmers and regular hotel pans (make sure to get one that does not require water). These have the advantage of being very cheap but the temperature controls are not all that precise. If you can get a two-input PID controller you can put one probe on the heating element to keep it from getting too hot and the other in the chocolate to control the temperature.

Sebastian:

Thanks! If/when it gets to that stage I will reach out for some connections and introductions.

To all ChocolateLife members:

I have made a connection with travel company that specializes in affinity group, philanthropic, and donor travel programs. They have a strong business working with company and organizations interested in providing their members one-of-a-kind travel programs with some sort of sustainability and/or corporate social responsibility component.

They are asking me to be a subject matter expert when it comes to offering programs around cacao and chocolate and sustainable production.

It occurs to me that these are travel opportunities that ChocolateLife members might like, and that we could be an affinity group and organize our own travel programs.

The question is, "Where would you like to go?"

The company works all over the world except in developed countries. So, no destinations in the US or Europe and some countries in SE Asia. But that leaves all of Central and South America, the Caribbean, East and West Africa, Indonesia (Bali!), and more.

So I'd like to hear from members where they would most like to go. Based on your input I will work with the company to select some destinations and work up a rough list of the experiences we could have while we're there.

And then I will invite ChocolateLife members to join me on fabulous journeys to learn about cacao and chocolate all over the world.

Here's to travel and adventure,
:: Clay

Brad -

We are talking something different here I think.

Here at Choklat we don't age it at all, and it's just as good day one out of the refiner as it is having sat on a shelf in a 50lb block for 2 months.

The question at hand is, in part, "Does aging affect chocolate and if so, in what way(s)?"

Are there any discernible changes that take place in your chocolate over the two months? I agree that those changes might be smaller in a large block of 25kg than they would be in a bar of 50 grams, but I have a lot of trouble believing that the two chocolates taste identical.

I have personally tasted bars from Friis Holm (made by Bonnat) and bars from Marco Colzani (C|Amaro outside of Milan in Cassago Brianza) where there were profound differences in the chocolates that could be attributed to aging. I tasted a new bar from Bryan Graham at Fruition a couple of weeks ago that was four days out of the conche. It was wildly interesting (the best thing I've tasted from the Maraon beans) but it had a distinct tannic structure and a "green" taste. Bryan gave me two bars and I am looking forward to tasting it anew, in about 2-3 weeks because I know it will be different.

But I do think it may have to do with style. Many chocolate makers like to make chocolates that don't have all the edges rounded off. They leave in acids and tannins because they think the resulting chocolates are more interesting. You don't I can make a pretty good case that your chocolate may change less via aging because of the way you roast and conche.

It is possible to over-age chocolate and in my experience, delicate top notes are the first to go.

They are all different chocolates, one is not necessarily better than another - they appeal to different consumers.

So no, I don't think aging is a gimmick. Letting it "rest" in the conche for 24 hours and attributing some magic benefits to that rest, is.

Junior:

This appears to me to be a solicitation to sell equipment hidden in a post with some history - or are the conches you are liquidating for sale?

Do you have a source? Or did you author this yourself?

Technically, this is a blog post, so not a forum discussion, so it does not belong here. If you want to sell you conches (and anything else) to members, you have to do it in the classifieds section. If this is your business, then you cannot post classifieds at no charge.

So - is it in poor taste? Maybe. Contact me.