Forum Activity for @Sebastian

Talamanca - sorry for the late response.  I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that you've never actually conducted an analytical study of heavy metals in cocoa shells, have you?  It's incredibly well understood in the chocolate world that heavy metals are concentrated in the shell of cocoa beans from two sources:

1) In C. (and in some places in S.) America, where the soils are volcanic - its very well established that volcanic soils are higher in heavy metals vs their non-volcanic counterparts.  Specifically cadmium.  Plants will incorporate the nutrients of the soils in which they grow into their biology - and for cocoa, cadmium becomes concentrated in the cocoa bean shell.

2) Many origins incorporate drying of the beans along the roadside.  In areas of the world where leaded gasoline is still used, that lead is deposited onto the road surface and subsequently transferred to whatever foodstuffs are dried on said road.

I'd suggest that the arguement of 'i've made cocoa tea personally and i loved it!' and 'i've fed it to tourists and they said it was quite nice' and 'many people do it' is not a solid scientific proof that heavy metals are absent from the shells.  By those arguements cigarette smoking would be classifed as a healthy practice.  If you have the ability to control the growing conditions as well as the drying conditions (ala mycotoxins - i'll not repost info relative to that as it's already on the boards somewhere), then by all means consume the shells.  However, after spending a couple of decades leading cocoa research around the world at arguably the highest level possible, i've yet to see any cocoa grower/fermenter that has the capability to sufficiently control this to guarantee a food safe practice.  You can reference all the above studies that you wish (i've written many of them) - I guarantee you will not find anyone who is actually in the industry that has published a scientific, peer reviewed journal that suggests the practice is food safe.

If you choose to ingest poisions, that is your personal choice.  For you to suggest that it is safe for others to do so and offer it for sale to them while simultanesouly assuring them it's safe and yet not having conducted any studies (worse yet, actively ignoring all the studies that indicate otherwise) to validate that it is indeed so is highly, highly irresponsible and immoral.  

I'd say the entire practice is a single lawsuit away from oblivion.  I certainly wouldn't build a business on it.

i'm not familiar with them.  i think it's safe to say that every day, people do things that they shouldn't do simply because they don't know any better.  If the burden of safety was applied universally, cigarettes would not exist 8-)  Studies have shown over and over again that if you believe something's ok, you're going to do it regardsess of what the actual data says.  Thats' the reason we've got a raw chocolate movement that won't go away.  And the reason why people will keep trying to drink things loaded with heavy metals, pesticides, and mycotoxins.

It has to do with your temperatures.  I'd suggest contacting the chocolate company to inquire about their recommendation, since we don't know the formulation of the chocolate.  After dipping them, return the dipped bars to your blast freezer quickly if possible.

Yes.  Consumption of shell based products is a fantastically terrible idea.  Lots of discussion here already on the boards covering the why's of that.

Completely fine to use as compost.  Fantastically terrible idea to use as a brewed item for consumption.

Here - this will be a good resource for you mate.  Let me know when you've got something you're happy with and i'll buy some 8-)

http://nca.files.cms-plus.com/ResidentCourse/Week2/Labs/ResCourseWk2LbCH10&11Caramel,Fudge&Toffee.pdf

it does.  you'll need to compensate by adding milk fat (or a soft fat of your choosing).

Every day for years.  Some of the best caramels in the world are made that way.

I wouldn't think so Ruth, but it never hurts to do the test - that's how we learn new things sometimes!  

Kerry - the only reason Aw would be lower because of mixing would be that there were 'pockets' of high Aw areas, and testing done happened to hit one of those pockets.  It's not a function of mixing lowering Aw, it's more a function of ensuring homogeniety.  I see chefs all the time make technical errors as they're trying to explain why this or that technique is better than the other guys' technique.  The fusion of culinary and technology's a pretty cool place to be, but a lot of people don't really understand it, and as such it ends up being theater to some degree.

I wouldn't expect the form of the cocoa butter to have any impact on Aw of the finished product.

I've never tasted their bar, nor do i know them personally.  But some chocolate can benefit greatly from age.  I've aged bars as long as 8 years that have been fantastic.  It depends a great deal on your raw materials, how they were processed, the specifics of the packaging, and the storage temperatures.  I've also stored bars that were terrible after 2 months.

Do their bars benefit from age?  Possibly - I have no idea.  My suspiscion is neither do they.  Long live marketing.

Everyone was doing this yesterday 8-)

I couldn't fit the ribs and brisket into the photo, but they were there!

Never hurts to ask - that's one of the few plants i've not been in i'm afraid. i'd suspect they have one  however

If you're using a stone grinder, because they're so terribly porous, it's almost impossible to clean them fully.  That could be y our issue.  I still suspect it's beans however.

Big ol' trap in that line of thinking mate - beans can be HUGELY variable.  Even in the same bag, much less the same lot.  Localized clustering/clumping issues can happen all the time.  How certain are you that you have a homogenous lot of material to work with?

Cocoa beans aren't like finding a company that sells a shirt that fits you, so you konw you're 'safe' buying that shirt because it'll consistently give you a perfect fit.  Big companies devote a tremendous amount of time and effort to trying to control consistency and develop statistically sound sampling methods to attempt to minimize intra lot problems - but since you can't test 100%, it's sort of the nature of the beast that you'll find issues.  The smaller your purchase, the harder that becomes as you don't have any level of control over sourcing, nor can you even be certain the beans in your bag are all from the same region, country, or even growing year.  Nature of the beast mate.

Hmm.. maybe call the folks at tricor and see if they can direct you to someone in your area that has one?  If not, any of the large mfrs will have them, be it mfr of chocolate (such as cargill, callebaut), or finished product (hershey, mars, etc).  Not sure if you have relationships with any of them...

It'd be interesting to see if someone would loan you a tricor to get some slope and ctu information on the comparisions...

It is almost certainly the beans.  W/o knowing the specifics of your formula, process, and most importantly - how the beans were made - it's going to be difficult to determine exactly what's going on.  What do you know about the origin and processing of the cocoa beans themselves?

Cool stuff Kerry!

If you're asking me what's the best production setup for a high viscosity chocolate, i'd probably suggest something that's in a price range that'll send you screaming.  I always advocate trying equipment before buying it - i can understand how you may not want/be able to travel to china to do so - perhaps they'd be willing to put you in contact with other customers of theirs who might be willing to lease you a unit they've purchased to take it for a test run?  It's hard to talk generics, because my idea of 'high viscosity' may be different than yours, and i not everyone has a haake viscometer or a brookfield to get a numerical value of it.

Ack i just noticed i made a mistake in my previous post - i said it was not good for low viscosity formulations - that's wrong, it is.  it's not great for HIGH viscosity formulations.  egads.

Many.  They're generally known as universal or mcyntinre type conches.  My experience is that they're difficult to consistently achieve sub 20um particle sizes.  Every so often you'll need to resurface the inside of them as the gap between the rotors and the wall will abrade away over time. They can be a decent piece of equipment.  Not good for low viscosity formulations.

My strong advice would be to not continue on this path for safety reasons.

Take very good care to thoroughly clean that grinder out, and sanitize it.  remember you've put fluid milk into an environment with LOTS of holes, crevices, and cracks - and lots of food (sugar, protein) for bacteria to eat.  Would hate to see you have a microbiological nightmare on your hands.

A suggestion, if i may - if you have the ability of taking the unit for a 'test drive' - ie putting your raw materials into it and having it complete a process cycle before you buy - i always recommend doing so.  While i have no direct experience with this unit nor this manufacturer, it's not uncommon for equipment mfrs to overstate the capabilities of their equipment, and often times equipment from that part of the world may have more variability than one might expect from unit to unit.  If possible, always a good idea to try before you buy to ensure it's really what you want.

Ok, what you're talking about here is something called milk crumb.  It's a very difficult process, and there's a lot of trade secret info around it.

Obviously when you start with fluid milk, you've got a scenario where there's a lot of water, and oil (cocoa butter) and water don't mix.  You need a way to get rid of the moisture in the fluid milk.  That process almost always involves a vacuum and heat.  Starting with sweetened condensed milk is often preferred because there's high solids (less moisture), and higher sugares, which caramalize during the process.  You'll need to get your moisture down to single digit %'s.  Because you're working with a fluid dairy product, many countries will have stricter requirements as a result - the fluid dairy industry is highly regulated for safety reasons - there's an aweful lot that can go wrong microbiologically if you don't get it right.

I'd absolutely, unequiviocally not recommend this approach as a do it your selfer.  Rather, there's a series of manufacturers who produce crumb for resale.  All of them use different process and thus achieve different results.  You could try Fazer in Finland.  Cargill in the US  may be willing to sell some of the crumb they make in Canada, and Fonterra has a line of co-spray dried milk powders/fructose that is crumblike in flavor in one of their New Zealand facilities.

looking forward to hearing how it goes!

When you say 'viscous chocolate' - do you have any measurements to indicate what that means?

I suspect that'll work, but it'll be slow going.  Only potential watch out i'd see is that if your cocoa press cake isn't low enough in cocoa butter, said cocoa butter may heat up during grinding and turn to a paste in your spice grinder, at which point grinding effectively stops.  If you see that happening, you'll just need to grind in shorter bursts (or add a small amount of dry ice to grinding), but i do suspect it'll work.

24 months is a very, very long time for a milk chocolate shelf life.  Bulk chocolate mfrs will put long shelf lives on their chocolate that they sell, well, because it's in their financial interest to do so (inventory and all).  Most of them have not done extensive shelf life testing on their bulk chocolates.   While you may find a milk chocolate that is still edible at 24 months (and quite possibly even good, depending on how robust the packaging is, which has more to do with gas permittivity than light, assuming opaque pacakging), I'd absolutely argue that it's the not the norm or even realistic for most products.

Given that shelf life in pure chocolate will always be a sensory, not a food safety, item - it's important to note that sensory is in the eye of the beholder, and there are few folks trained in sensory evaluation.  Many folks believe they are excellent tasters, when in fact they're quite terrible at it.  If an untrained individual who is poor at self evaluation (but believes they are adept) is conducting the sensory evaluation, they could quite easily come to a conclusion that a products sensory attributes are acceptable long past the time when they are, in fact, not...

I might suggest a savage kettle, and use it's heat controls to maintain temper once it's achieved.  It's a batch system, but if monitored you can keep temper it in all day.  I suspect you're going to have challenges finding a continuous tempering machine to handle what's a relatively small volume.

That's a bit of a complicated question.  It's a combination of how you store and process your raw materials,  how you store your finished goods, and ultimately what the sensory on them looks like at a given date (and what you consider to be acceptable for sensory)...

Have you considered starting with powdered milk (NFDM), and adding butter and water to reconstitute it, but to a lower level of moisture than you'd have with your standard fluid milk to reduce the time needed for moisture removal?

Oh i know the weaver nut folks very well - small world it is!

No store for me- but i'm about an hour west of you.  I'll need to stop by sometime!

John - what's your business called?  It sounds like you're not far from me at all..

Wide - perhaps - not sure about wise 8-)  Certainly it could be used for fertilizer.  I'm not sure how much nitrogen or phosphorous it has, but shells do have a fair amount of potassium in them.

What to do with the shell?  Mulch (but it will attract bugs).  Burn it?

Absolutely do NOT use it for anything edible.  Shell is notoriously high in heavy metals and mycotoxins and all sorts of stuff that you don't want to eat.

I can make the cocoa beans taste like almost anything, depending on how they're grown, fermented, and dried.  Best thing to do is get a sample and taste them to see how that particular grower's beans taste.

Glad it was helpful - good luck!

I had a robot coupe (industrial size) that could have hours long run cycles.  The larger ones are more versatile.

de nada!