Precision Control Help! Cocoa Butter To Reduce Chocolate Viscosity...
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Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, & Techniques
Hello fellow chocolatiers! This is my first post here at this amazing website (which I've used to garner information from delving into prior forum posts a great many a time). Seeing as I had a somewhat specific question for which I couldn't find an adequate answer, I've decided to ask you, the experts, directly!
Here's the deal: My buddy and I, we like to hand-dip pretzels into chocolate which is tempered using a Chocovision Tempering Unit. We track data on the pretzels in order to learn about how time and type of chocolate can affect the coating that is applied to the pretzel itself.
When using a pretty high grade Dark Chocolate (from Germany), the chocolate tends to be of low thickness; viscosity, creating a coating on each pretzel of about 2.00 grams (with fluctuation from human-error in the hand-dipping process, of course.) This tends to work out fine, as we generally can finish our batch in a reasonable time before the chocolate thickens to the point of creating too gaudy of a coating.
We are currently now working on a Milk Chocolate coating from the great land of Norway (Freia, if you've heard of or tried it). Regardless of brand, we knew that Milk Chocolate would be a bit more difficult to work with due to its more viscous nature. After dipping and collecting the results, the average coating fell into the territory of around 3.11 grams; a more than 50 percent increase.
We have heard that adding cocoa butter to a batch will decrease its viscosity without too much hindrance to flavor or appearance (which we've also heard it can be a boon to...in that it can help temper the chocolate possibly!) So...
Questions!
1) We are fairly satisfied with the Dark Chocolate's viscosity, which again, yields an average coating on each pretzel of about 2.00 grams. With the Milk Chocolate's average coating of 3.11 grams, and an average batch size of 900 grams of chocolate, how much cocoa butter would you recommend adding to the Milk Chocolate to lower its viscosity to equal to that of the Dark Chocolate (recalling that the Milk Chocolate seems to be 50 percent more viscous, if the amount of coating were the judge.)
2) Is there a particular brand or type of cocoa butter one should purchase if its sole use was for lowering the viscosity of specifically Milk Chocolate?
Thank all of you in advance for any and all advice that you can provide; It is very much appreciated! May I also wish you a great day // night, whichever may apply!
-JesNES
updated by @JesNES: 02/28/17 16:29:33
