Forum Activity for @Clay

Omar:

I have never used either of these machines to make pralin, so I don't know from experience.

There's not a whole lot of difference between to the two outside the configuration of the stones.

The one at nutbuttergrinder.com is more like a small Santha. I would go with the CocoaTown 12SLTA over the straight SL as I think it's more robust and the tension is more easily adjustable.

I have used the CocoaTowns to make nut butters using unrefined evaporated cane juice and I can say that they do a good job of making a rustic pralin, which is what I was looking to do. You still have the same problem of jamming the rollers if you try to fill the machines too quickly - there's just not enough torque provided by the motor/belt. So you do have to start out slowly and add the nuts a little bit at a time. I never ran the pralin for more than a couple of hours, but I imagine that if you ran it long enough you'd be able to grind the sugar to the point it wasn't detectable.

Greg:

I am in the midst of working on a relationship with an Italian roll mill manufacturer (stone rollers) that makes 2- and 3-roll mills designed for making nut pastes, smooth pralins, and giandujas that can also be used in making chocolate from the bean. The throat widths are > 300mm.

You can get small lab 2- and 3-roll (steel) mills made here in the US with 125mm (~5") throats designed for working with paints and cosmetics. These use steel rollers and are for lab use. They might have enough throughput for your need.

I will be getting prices shortly and let you know what I find.

Greg -

When you say praline I am assuming pralin. Nuts cooked in sugar?

If you were just grinding nuts then this would be no problem. The challenge is the caramelized sugar. That's what you're having trouble grinding fine. The style for this kind of pralin is a l'Ancienne. You may find that you want/need a roll mill to refine this.

Domantas:

I've tasted a fair amount undeodorized cocoa butter and I can tell you from my experience that the butter does have a taste of its own and it depends on the recipe and other factors whether the taste and aromas of the undeodorized cocoa butter have any effect on the finished flavor and aroma of the finished chocolate. You would have to experiment to find this out.

As I pointed out in my response to Brian, I personally don't think (and I actively advocate for this view) that you can't call a chocolate made with beans from one origin and butter from another origin as "single-origin."

Another thing to consider in the butter debate is that butters from different regions have different ratios of the fatty acids that make up the triglyceride structure. This leads to different melting points (or hardnesses). If the butter you are adding has a different melting point from the butter in the beans you're using, this blending of fat melting points can result in a chocolate with a very different texture than a chocolate made from beans and butter from the same location or the same melting point. Sometimes this is a bad thing as the mixing process (an effect called eutectics) can lead to textures that are not desirable. So - if you are adding deodorized cocoa butter, take a close look at the hardness of the butter and try to find a match for the butter in the beans you're using.

Finally (for this post anyway), the vast majority of chocolate makers (small and large) do not press their own butter or use undeodorized cocoa butter, if they use butter at all. So, no, a butter press is not an absolutely necessary piece of equipment.

Brian -

Shawn Askinosie, among a very small handful of other craft chocolate makers, has a cocoa butter press and he presses butter and powder from the same beans used to make the chocolate, after roasting and grinding. So, your argument does not hold up in these specific cases.

However, yes, in general I have to agree with you. Most butter is pressed from beans of very low quality - not only not fermented, but also probably moldy and mildewed and maybe even rancid. The butter is pressed from liquor that is from beans that have not been roasted. Therefore the deodorizing process is absolutely necessary in order to be able to make a butter that does not have the defects you describe.

That said, I still stand by my point, which is that if someone is making a "single-origin" chocolate from beans grown in Peru and using cocoa butter made from beans grown in Ghana it's not a "single" origin chocolate.

Domantas:

In the opinion of many, it is impossible to make a "true" single-origin chocolate if the cocoa butter is pressed from beans that are different from the beans used to make the chocolate; it doesn't matter if the butter is deodorized or undeodorized from that perspective.

One reason that some chocolate makers give as a reason for not using added deodorized cocoa butter is that it "dilutes" the flavor of the finished chocolate. Maybe ... if you're adding a lot of cocoa butter. I haven't seen many taste tests to prove this definitively when the manufacturer is only adding a couple of percent to decrease viscosity.

The argument against using an undeodorized cocoa butter is that the flavors and aromas are different from the beans used to make the chocolate, so you have a blending issue ... does the flavor of the cocoa butter affect the flavor of the chocolate, positively, or negatively? Again, I have never taken part in a definitive taste test one way or another, but part of the answer depends on how much cocoa butter is being added.

I know of several small producers who have purchased cocoa butter presses made in South Korea and reported that they are satisfied with the production throughput and quality. The Type B press linked to is about US$11,000 ex-warehouse.

I know of an Italian-made two-pot press, but it costs over US$70,000. At that price I think you'd have a hard time justifying the investment giving the level of production you are at.

Vladislav -

Most of the chocolate makers who are members of TheChocolateLife are small producers - under 10MT/annually, and few of them make more than modest amounts of caramels, marmalades, etc.

If you want to make tonnes of caramels, pates de fruits, and nougat you are going to want specialized equipment. If you were here in the US I would recommend Savage Brothers as one source. In Europe I don't know, however there is a used equipment broker in Milan that probably has what you're looking for. Contact me privately for the link.

Merry Happy 2014!

Those of you who pay attention to such things will notice that I haven't sent a member newsletter in quite some time. There are many reasons for this, but the biggest one is that, if you're like me, you started receiving holiday emails in early November. The flood continued on on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. And on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

Enough already. I did not want to contribute to that flood.

So here it is, Sunday, January 5th where I live, and this is the first member newsletter of 2014.

The 6th Anniversary of TheChocolateLife

Mid-January marks the 6th anniversary of TheChocolateLife. It's hard to believe that we've reached this milestone. I think TheChocolateLife is where it is because it offers experiences and opportunities that other sites don't. TheChocolateLife is not just about reviews and it's not just about beantobar production. Those are both topics for discussion, but really, there is no limit to the discussion as long as it's about chocolate.

My main reason for writing this message is to say Thank You to everyone who contributed in any way to TheChocolateLife in 2013.

I did not start out wanting to grow TheChocolateLife into some huge behemoth generating millions of page views per month, for me it has always been about building community and focusing on quality over quantity.Nonetheless, wetopped the 8000 member mark and now count members in well over 150 countries.

While I knew a good deal about chocolate when I started TheChocolateLife, I know a lot more now and I can chalk it up in large part to the discussions I've read here. TheChocolateLife is a place for people to learn, share what they know, and share their passion for chocolate. Thank you all, again.

What's Most Popular on TheChocolateLife

The most popular parts of the site, by far, are the main Forum discussion area on the Home Page and the Classifieds Group.

In addition, over 8,700 photos have been uploaded and more than 240 videos have been posted. There are nearly 3000 discussion topics and uncounted comments (I estimate that the number approaches 50,000!), nearly 600 blog posts, and over 400 event listings.

Taken as a totality, I think that TheChocolateLife represents one of the largest, if not the largest, bodies of collected wisdom about chocolate on the Internet. That's a pretty remarkable achievement, and one that we can all be proud of.

What's New on TheChocolateLife

I have started a new feature that I hope will become a monthly series. These are "Group Reviews" of chocolates. These reviews are designed to foster discussion about specific chocolates that are very popular, have been hyped in the media, or that have performed well in awards programs. For January 2014, the chocolate I have chosen is Fortunato #4. Click here to learn more about Group Reviews and to contribute .

What New Things do YOU Want to See on TheChocolateLife in 2014?

I am always open to new suggestions for features and functionality as well as new groups, forum topics, and more. I do what I can to implement the features within the limitations of the software. One thing I am very interested in working on is creating some sort of cocoa bean exchange that will help connect buyers and sellers of cocoa beans.

Post your thoughts there for all to see and comment on. The more discussion there is about a particular feature, the better I can gauge the popularity of a request. So - don't be shy, especially if you have never contributed before.

Thanks To ...

I also want to take a moment to thank those businesses that have shown their support of TheChocolateLife in 2013 by taking out Member Marketplace ads and Sponsorships. The monies collected from these placements primarily go to covering the hard costs of hosting and maintaining TheChocolateLife. They make it possible for me to not incorporate third-party advertising. These include Truffly Made, Micelli Molds, and CocoaTown.

My ongoing relationships with FBM, Chocovision, Packint, and others also make it possible for me to work on and grow TheChocolateLife. I will be expanding these relationships in 2014 in some new areas with the intent of providing new equipment for the confectionery kitchen as well as bean-to-bar chocolate makers.

No Thanks To ...

Spammers and others who want to take advantage of TheChocolateLife community in 2013. As you know, I work hard to keep TheChocolateLife free from spam and spammers. I am not perfect, and there were a small handful of incidents in 2013 where I got fooled. Every single request for membership is reviewed manually before being approved. At one point, spambot membership requests outnumbered real requests by 50:1 or more. Some days, I would sit down to review requests and find that not one came from a person. That can be disheartening at times as you might imagine. But it it a part of my commitment to the community to continue to do so.

Want more ChocolateLife?

There are other ways to follow TheChocolateLife:

Twitter @DiscoverChoc
Facebook page
Facebook group LaVidaCocoa
Google+ community
Paper.li digest

Here's to a Merry Happy Chocolate-y 2014 and beyond,
:: Clay

We're getting far afield from asking members to contribute their impressions of a particular chocolate. We can discuss the merits of creating a "new" rating system that addresses these very important issues - but let's do it in a different discussion thread.

Sebastian:

It is something to consider, and something that could grow organically out of the responses. I have been a judge on two different occasions at the International Chocolate Awards (ICA) and I think what they might be doing the best job of "managing subjectivity" at the moment. One of things they can do is in their analysis is to spot statistical outliers - a judge whose rankings are consistently different from the average. The judging forms are posted on their web site.

I know that for the 2013 ICA round more than 300 different judges participated.I don't have the expertise to devise a formal statistical analysis method so it would be difficult for me to work on the normalization and calibration of such an approach. However, I do agree that taking a standardized ballot and having a decent-sized pool of people rate some specific, well-known, chocolates (e.g., Valrhona Manjari, which is one of the reference chocolates at the ICA), would be a good start. That's a different exercise, and one that probably would be worthwhile, in and of itself.

What would other reference (standard) chocolates be do you think?

This is the first in what I hope will be a regular series (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.

This month's chocolate - Fortunato #4

Fortunato #4 is made by Felchlin (Switzerland) from beans sourced in Peru by Maraon chocolate.

While it hasn't received a lot of love from international chocolate awards (though this might be be because it was not entered, not that judges did not like it), few chocolates have been more overhyped in the media in the past five years than Fortunato #4. Some of the claims made are true (a distinct genetic variety of Nacional thought to have disappeared in the early 1900s) while others clearly are not (the rarest chocolate in the world).

Think about your response in three parts.

Part 1 :: Present your sensory impressions - Aroma, Taste, and Texture -of the chocolate.

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 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.

Beth -

Sebastian is right to consult with someone. Starting out, you want to think about the flow of production, from accepting shipments to shipping out. The organization of your space needs to accommodate the flow of materials through the space. You are going to want to separate out the space(s) where un-roasted beans are from the rest of your space (to prevent contamination), and then you are going to want separate zones for hot and cold operations, dry storage, and temperature-controlled storage. This gives you your functional zones.

When it comes to equipment, I can tell you that the place to start thinking is from the amount of production you plan to do. If you need to produce 50kg of finished product per day that suggests one or more different production paths. If you need to produce 250kg per day, then other paths need to be considered. I would not recommend scaling up much past 2 or 4 CocoaTown/Spectra "universals" as it's actually a comparatively inefficient way to go (rather than lots of small "universals" it's best to get equipment dedicated to each step in the process - or go with "real" universals. Real universals will be loud so you should consider putting them some place that can be sound proofed.

I was at Alain Ducasse's workshop and they have a half-bag gas roaster into an antique winnower. They grind the nibs in a colloid mill ( here's a video of what a small colloid mill looks like ) and then put the liquor into a mixer to add sugar to the liquor. The resulting paste is put through a three-roll mill into an old-style Carle and Montanari conche (250kg capacity but they are looking to upgrade to 400kg). With this method they can easily fill the conche in an 8-hour working day.

Think not just in terms of weight of production (kg/day) but also in terms of the number of units. It doesn't take much longer to do 1000 80gr bar than 1000 50gr bars. But think in terms of molds and cavities. If you can fill on average 1 mold/minute with four cavities/mold that's 60 molds/240 bars/hr. 1000, 50gr bars will take about 4 hours at that rate to mold. You don't need a tempering machine capable of tempering 100kg/hr (e.g., a continuous tempering machine with a 25kg working bowl) to reach that capacity.

Until you get into large volume production, cooling tunnels are very expensive propositions. Many small chocolate makers make a "cool room" and you can do this with a conventional through-wall air conditioner and a CoolBot [ referral link ]. Elsewhere here on TheChocolateLife I've posted conceptual plans for a "static cooling tunnel" that several ChocolateLife members have made and are using successfully.

Diane:

Have you contacted Savage?

What's the inclusion? What's the chocolate?

:: Clay

Miguel:

What equipment you can (and can't get away with) will depend on the amount of production you want to do and what the end product is.

Roasting - you can use any oven, and a comal (a flat steel plate over a fire) is traditional.

Cracking - I've never heard of anyone using a frying pan to crack. If you're making small amounts you can hand peel the whole beans while they are still warm.

Winnow - you can use a hair dryer or you can winnow traditionally by putting the nib/shell into a something that look likes a wok and toss.

You can pre-grind (sort of) in a food processor or coffee grinder. You cannot refine or conche in either of those devices. What you will end up with is a very coarse paste.

You can use the microwave to melt the chocolate, but you will need to know how to hand-temper the chocolate (on a slab).

All in all, you might be able to make chocolate balls for drinking on a small scale this way but you won't be able to make a smooth, creamy, chocolate without investing more in equipment.

Miquel -

If you look around the site, I think you will find the answers you are looking for. They are not in any one post or in any one category however.

For a more focused description of process and equipment, you might want to take a look over at Chocolate Alchemy - www.chocolatealchemy.com .

The steps for making chocolate (from beans, Hispaniola or Sanchez) include:

- Roasting
- Cracking
- Winnowing
- Grinding
- Refining
- Conching
- Tempering

You will need some sort of equipment for each one of these steps (though most people starting out use a single machine for grinding/refining/conching).

:: Clay

John -

Some people focus on price, others size, others fit and finish, and others on the chocolate that is used to make the shells. Another thing to consider is availability - does the company you're buying them from have them in stock all the time? You'd hate to have a big production run in front of you only to learn that the dealer was out of stock for 30-60 days.

In the end, you want the product that works best for what you are trying to achieve. Personally, I focus on fit and finish (e.g., what are the seams like), and how even and how thick is the chocolate shell itself? I tend to prefer thinner shells (as I don't have any control over the taste of the chocolate).

Also take into account production considerations. Broken/sticking shells are another thing to consider and the thinner the shell the more delicate it is and the more vulnerable to breakage it will be in shipping.

My suggestion - try them all and pick the one that works best for you. The investment in starting up is not that huge, all things considered.

That's my interpretation.

One thing to note is that if you sell (for example) a one-ounce bar and an eight-ounce bar of the exact same chocolate then the eight-ounce bar counts as eight units towards the 10,000 limit.

However, if you use the same chocolate, and make bars with different inclusions or flavorings, then each recipe counts as a unique product, each with its own 10,000 unit limit.

Here's the link to the FDA page on the small business nutrition labeling exemption.

The batch/lot tracking is a form of insurance if/when it ever comes to having to recall product. Though it does cost money, you may actually lower the cost of the liability premium if you can show your insurer that you have these procedures in place.

Corey -

These are separate things.

You can purchase UPC codes from brokers and then just print them directly on your labels or print UPS labels and stick them on your packaging. You don't need inventory management software to do that.

I am not exactly sure why you are focused on scanners that connect to a PC. You certainly don't need a barcode scanner to track ingredients for recipes. What you do want is lot traceability and the ability to calculate the cost of a recipe based on what is spent for a particular batch of ingredients, not what you last paid.

I was recently introduced to a service from a company called Mobia Solutions ( www.mobiasolutions.com ). I would check them out to see if they can do what you need. There are also some really helpful resources under the Links tab on food safety, labeling, and more.

BTW, you probably qualify for a small-business exemption to the FDA nutrition labeling laws - but you do need to apply for it if you haven't already.

Corey -

There's a lot more to inventory management than just bar codes. Are there any other features you are looking for?

There are several cloud-based solutions (run in a browser) that can do things like track ingredient costs across purchases so know exactly how much a particular recipe costs.

The tempering machines used in the Ritter Sport shop are from a company called LCM. They are very good machines, but they are also very expensive and even the smallest size may be more capacity than you need. Ritter obviously has a lot of money to spend, so it makes sense for them to go with LCM.

If you are just starting out and you don't know your demand (you are in Cyprus), it makes sense to be a lot more conservative.

Tabletop continuous tempering machines can cost as little as 5000 ex-works and be able to temper up to 10kg per hour of chocolate (enough to make 100, 100gr bars). Floor-standing tempering machines that can temper up to 20kg per hour start at about 6900, again, ex-works.

Three smaller machines (one for milk chocolate, one for dark chocolate, and one for white chocolate) could give you the capacity to produce hundreds of bars per hour cost effectively. If you are interested, I have a relationship with FBM (Italy) that enables me to offer a 10% discount on tempering machines to ChocolateLife members.

Larry -

The issue is NOT NECESSARILY a larger tempering machine. If you put 500 pieces/hr through the enrober at (given the size) 5gr of chocolate per piece, you only need 2.5kg chocolate/hr. A 30kg working bowl capacity wheel machine (batch) should keep you going for 10 hours easily. A 7kg working bowl continuous temperer will keep you going for as long as you want to work if you keep the working bowl topped up as you go. You cannot begin to use the capacity of a 25kg working bowl continuous tempering machine with a 6 or 7" belt.

20 belt feet/hr is 1/3 foot per minute. Slowest most machines run is about 1.5 feet/minute. You have a lot of headroom here to grow production. If your work is organized well you can think about 2000-2500 pieces in 4-6 hours without pushing things.

Make sure that whatever belt you get has a blower to remove excess chocolate or be prepared to make one DIY.

Larry:

You've got a pretty good handle on how to figure production, which is more dependent on the width of the belt than it is on the capacity of the working bowl.

If your pieces are 7/8" square, with practice you'd be able to get 4 pieces on a 6" belt and 5 pieces on a 7" belt. At the same spacing you'd be able to get 8 rows/foot with practice.

That's between 30-40 pieces per foot with a belt running at between 1.5- 3 feet per minute.

Now you are right that taking the product off the belt will slow things down, but that's also a factor of what kinds of decorating you're doing and how many people are working the belt.

300 pieces/hr is not a lot of production for an enrober.

A new Selmi R200 belt, all by itself, is more than your entire budget (list is 6900/$9400).

A new Hilliard's Six Inch Coater cost about US$18,000 last time I priced them (2011).

FBM offers a 7kg bowl capacity machine with a 7" enrober belt for about 11,000 (less 10% for ChocolateLife members) new.

A new machine that might be in your price range is a Bakon wheel tempering machine with mini-enrober. Last time I looked it was squarely in your price range and I have been able to offer discounts to ChocolateLife members in the past, I would have to contact Bakon to see what current pricing is and if there is still a discount program I can offer. In looking at the video I notice there is no air blower but there is a de-tailer. I would call a blower a requirement, so I would ask them about that. If you want to DIY a blower, it'll be easier than trying to hook up a Choco-TT to a Selmi R200 belt.

Larry:

Like many things, it can probably be done - but it's probably not as straightforward as you think it's going to be.

One thing that I would like to know is ... what's your production throughput requirement? Pieces per hour? Kilos of chocolate per hour. There may be off-the-shelf integrated solutions that are in your price range.

:: Clay

Doing two minutes' research on the internet is always problematic because you don't know what sources are reliable.

Bongaan's interest in making chocolate is not a commercial venture, it's because he has a particular disease called histaminosis and wants to make chocolate so it's safe for him to eat. Histaminosis is a spectrum disorder ranging from mild to lethal in terms of responses. Histamines are related to allergies so it may be that bongaan is allergic to something in commercial chocolate. Through experimentation he has found that "raw" chocolate does not trigger his histaminosis.

The original set of responses was driven, in part, because we did not know the nature of bongaan's illness. Now that we have some clues, we can provide more relevant answers.

It occurs to me that what may be happening is that the process of roasting cocoa beans generates a chemical that is not present in un-roasted beans that triggers histaminosis in some people . The article linked to above suggests that a reaction to chocolate that is similar to red wine headaches.

The challenge facing bongaan, then, is to make chocolate from un-roasted beans and to make sure that the chocolate is safe from other forms of potentially harmful bacterial contamination, which is the concern that Sebastian raises .

Chocolate Alchemy is a great resource for making chocolate on a small scale for not that much money. Many members of TheChocolateLife have started out using Chocolate Alchemy as a resource. However, it don't think the discussions adequately address the potential risks of using those same processes to make chocolate with un-roasted beans.

The investment in making chocolate from the bean can be under US$1000 if a conventional oven is used and supporting equipment (like the winnower) is very much DIY. Even though buying organic raw paste and liquor may be expensive, the question is how long is it going to take to recoup the investment in equipment and make that approach worthwhile? Cost is very much a factor for bongaan and the Rand is near a four-year low against the US$ making things almost 50% more expensive than they were just two years ago.

Bongaan:

You are a newbie on this site. Sebastian is a very highly-respected member of the site who has contributed to many discussions and always has something insightful - and relevant - to say.

As a newcomer, it makes sense for you to do some research about the site. If you had, you might have found the answers you were looking for. Over the course of the last nearly six years now there have been extensive discussions on raw chocolate.

There is no Chocolate 101 section on TheChocolateLife. I thought about it for a long time and in the end it turned out that I'd need to have several different "101" sections - one for confectionery, one for chocolate making, one for "raw" chocolate, and maybe several more.

I would also take Sebastian's advice about "raw" chocolate to heart. It is highly unlikely that you are allergic to cacao ... which is why you can make your own chocolate using "raw" paste/powder and butter. It is highly likely that you are sensitive to some other ingredient in the commercial chocolate. You probably don't need to go raw, you could get commercial cocoa paste (chocolate liquor) and cocoa butter - organic, and do exactly the same thing.

:: Clay

Mattias -

This is one of the main reasons I started TheChocolateLife - "crowd sourcing" the answers to questions about chocolate in a forum that makes the questions and answers publicly available and searchable. The more people who contribute, the more valuable TheChocolateLife becomes for everyone - member or not.

:: Clay

Chocolate is not an emulsion, it's a suspension - there's little to no water in chocolate.

Adding water thickens/seizes the suspension.

Adding a fat that is liquid at room temperature reduces crystal formation in the chocolate as it cools, leading to chocolate that is soft, does not snap, and may not be as stable. (Anhydrous butter fat is added to chocolate in industrial production to make it more stable but I don't know about using it in small quantities in hand production.)

I can't see how adding the balsamic to dairy butter or olive oil will work. Maybe to cocoa butter. I know that many "raw" chocolate makers add agave syrup to their chocolate and agave syrup has a high water content and they are still able to temper the chocolate, but they are not adding any other form of fat other than cocoa butter. So that might work with you.

You want to make flavored, solid bars, right? Most people using ingredients like balsamic and olive oil are making ganaches and then covering them. You can do that in bar form - as Zotter does.

Have you tried dehydrating the vinegar and turning it into a powder?

Priscilla:

1 tonne (MT, 1000kg, 2204 lbs) of chocolate is about 10,000, 100gr bars.

Your capital equipment costs will depend on what approaches you take: are you interested in a "real" roaster or are you going to be using a convection oven? Are you going work with wet-mill style grinders, a universal, or some other method?

You'll need tempering and bar molding equipment and at this scale you may want some sort of wrapping machine.

Your choices here will determine how much space you need. Are you in an industrial park (cheap but no ambiance) or in a retail location (expensive)?

Many of the people who have opened small chocolate businesses are what I would call under-capitalized with total budgets for equipment and space of under $100k. You may not need a million, but you probably want to have enough capital to see you through at least two years' rent and salaries, plus capital expenditure, build-out, ingredients, utilities, marketing and advertising, etc.

Priscilla -

Andrea's recommendation is quite good. You can work from a zero-basis and figure out what it's going to cost, or you can start out with a sum you're willing to invest, and then figure out what you can do for that money. In either case you need to know what your costs are going to be. I don't know what commercial rents are in the part of Maryland you're talking about and I don't know the extent of the products you intend to make (and/or buy in) and sell. Your question is ambiguous, even: are you going to making chocolate from the bean or are you going to be selling bars from craft chocolate makers? If you're making chocolate from the bean then you need to have an idea of how much chocolate you need to make in order for you to have a real business.

One of the challenges I see all the time is that people wanting to go the bean-to-bar route start out thinking that all the two biggest capital expenses are a $7000 CocoaTown grinder and a $2500 Chocovision tempering machine. That may be the case if you want to make 70kg of chocolate a week, but that's not a business.

Also - get some experience somewhere before you begin. Work in a retail store and in a candy kitchen. Make sure you really know what you're going to be getting yourself into.

:: Clay

Jonathan -

What you're looking for is called a co-packer. There are co-packers that can handle small production runs (and the definition of small - or minimum - runs varies widely) and there are co-packers that want huge minimums - 50,000 pieces or more, and that's if you limit yourself to the chocolates that they use and they're going to want to run the entire lot in one go, not spread production out over weeks or months.

The more specialized your product is, the harder it is going to be to find someone to make it for you. For example, do you need certifications? Do you need a special chocolate (this is often a deal-breaker)?

Without knowing more about what you want to produce and the quantities you're talking about it's hard to know where to go. Are these chocolate bars with flavorings or inclusions? Are you adding powders that need to be ground into the chocolate? What sort of packaging do you require? All of these factors - and more - go into finding a co-packer that's right for you.

Now, Brad is right if you were talking about going to a chocolate manufacturer (e.g., Debelis) and wanted them to make a custom chocolate for you. Minimum orders there usually run to 20 tons, though some companies will do minimums of 5 tons. However if you are talking about starting with an existing chocolate and then adding stuff to it, the minimums are going to be lower; however they may not be low enough to meet your budget.

Somewhere in the case there should be a label that indicates who made the case. Contacting the manufacturer (it's not Bakery Dry).

You can also post a picture of the case showing the area(s) around the fixtures. Someone may recognize the manufacturer. But at this point we don't have enough information about the case to begin suggesting solutions.

John:

Have you contacted Mr Wybauw? Is he available to consult? Can you afford his rates? Is he interested in helping you?

There are many consulting chef/chocolatiers who can help you in this regard. Professor Greweling is one - Drew Shotts is another. They, and the person I am thinking of, are in the US and are more likely to be available than JP is.

JPW's second book has lots of good advice about how to increase shelf life using a variety of techniques. You can use the techniques and the recipes in the book(s) as starting points.

If you are looking for a consulting chef/chocolatier, I would be happy to make an introduction to someone based in the NYC area. He isclassically trained in Spain with much practical experience (and with a great flavor sensibility and work ethic) and can help you in your recipe development.

If you are interested, please send me a PM and I will respond with the contact information after checking in with him.

:: Clay

John:

I think you are asking the wrong questions.

Are the recipes any good? Technically yes. They are, however, traditional and tend to be on the sweet side according to many. The real answer to that question is ... do you like them?

JPW is not considered one of the best chocolatiers in the world. However, he is a very good technician and an extremely good teacher. His recipes and books are a foundation, a guide; not a bible to be followed literally. You want perspective, so also get Greweling and Shotts. Compare different approaches. You will learn a lot of technique.

In the end, do you really want to be known as a Wybauw clone? Just duplicating his recipes? Go out and make them - over and over again - learn what works for you and then apply your own taste sensibilities to the technical lessons you have learned and the market you serve.

Annika -

Most smaller continuous tempering machines are two-zone, some are three. In a two-zone machine you set the temperature of the working bowl and then the temperature of the cooling pipe. The temperature of the working bowl is set high enough to melt out all the crystals. The temperature of the cooling pipe is set to generate enough crystals so that the chocolate is properly tempered when it exits the spout. Any chocolate that is not used goes back into the bowl where the crystals are melted out before the chocolate re-enters the cooling pipe. The cycle is not interrupted which is why it's called continuous (as opposed to batch) tempering.,

The actual temperatures you arrive it will probably be different from the ones you use in a batch tempering machine like a Chocovision. You can use the high and low temperatures the manufacturer recommends as the starting points, but don't expect them to be right. You will need to experiment to find the correct temperatures. What those are depends on a complex set of factors - the viscosity/rheology of the chocolate, the overall size of the machine (capacity), the power of the compressor, and more.

Also, never expect the temperature of the chocolate in the working bowl to be even, or the same temperature from the sides to the center and the top to the bottom. What you care about is the temperature of the chocolate as it leaves the working bowl and if all the crystals are melted out. (Think about it - you are dropping chocolate from the cool point into the top of the chocolate in the work bowl, which is warmer, and mixing it up. It takes time for the chocolate to warm up, and that will be towards the bottom of the working bowl.)

In general, as you modify temperatures, you want to work towards the lowest temperature in the working bowl that works for you, and the narrowest range of temperatures between the working bowl and the tempering pipe. This will reduce overall energy consumption and mean that the compressor is not working harder than it needs to.

In case anyone is interested, here is the link to the main GrainPro bag page . There are many other interesting products here, so I encourage people to take a look at them.

This discussion has been closed and the link removed because the link is to an MLM company/product.

I will be giving presentations on Friday and Saturday, so look me up and introduce yourself.

Thomas:

I am going to be at the Salons in London and Paris but not Lyon. In between I will be attending the Origin Chocolate conference in Amsterdam - which has a very different audience.

This is the 1st year for the Salon in London (previously Chocolate Unwrapped). This will be my 3rd visit to the Salon in Paris and my 3rd visit overall to Unwrapped/SdC in London (where I will be giving presentations on Friday and Saturday).

Paris is certainly the largest of the three. You probably get the widest variety of participants (as exhibitors), and this year the Salon du Chocolat Professionnel overlaps the consumer Salon on the 30th.

That said - you'll end up learning mostly about French chocolate. The reason to consider London is that it probably has the most vibrant chocolate scene in Europe at the moment - maybe even the world. It will attract mostly smaller companies doing more interesting work, but you don't get any of the French stars.

A lot of the exhibitors in Paris are large companies from other parts of the country. Their appeal is to people who grew up in those cities who now live in Paris and who want to go buy "childhood favorites." LOTS of varieties of guimauve - shapes, sizes, and flavors.

So it really depends on what you're looking for. In Paris you can meet Stephane Bonnat, Franois Pralus, Jean-Paul Hevin, several of the younger generation of the Cluizels, and more. I don't know who's going to be at Lyon. In London you will meet Paul A Young and a host of others doing lots of really interesting work, but who mostly don't have the same status as some of the French.

Brad -

You are absolutely right that it's completely possible to take chocolate out of any temperer, add inclusions, and hand mold.

My experience in selling continuous tempering machines tells me that one of the early questions that arises is, "Can I directly deposit inclusions by adding them to the chocolate in the working bowl?" People are looking to continuous tempering machines to get away from the need to have to hand mix and pour. This is what I think Steve is looking to do.

For everyone reading this thread - what are the various different ways you handle inclusions? And what sort of tempering approach are you using (hand, small batch machine, continuous, etc)?