Forum Activity for @Sebastian

You'll never achieve 25% fat in a spectra - so plan on a recipe of 35% total fat. Assume your liquor is 50% fat. For ease of sourcing, just use whole milk powder and assume it's fat content is 26%.

Part of learning how to make great chocolate is learning how to do the formulation math 8-) Homework assignment #1 - using the above formulation %'s and ingredient fat levels - calculate your formulation requirements for a milk chocolate that has approximately 35% total fat. You should also include 0.3% fluid lecithin if this is your first time. You may even wish to leave it in there forever.

Hi Franzi - you're going to find that most cocoa beans are sold in bulk by large exporters, as they've got the advantage of economics of scale on their side, and understand the various trans-country regulations. You're going to need to first identify your market - i'm assuming you're scale will be quite small, so i'd recommend targeting premium, smaller manufacturers as you're not going to have the volume to do anything but that. Next you'll need to understand the range of flavor profiles you can generate - this answers the 'why should they buy from you' question - if you can deliver a premium product consistently, you've got something valuable. You're going to need to spend some time understanding import/export regulations, as transporting raw agricultural commodities between countries can be a tricky business i'm afraid ("I'm with the government, and here to help - please fill out these 13,456 pages of information. in triplicate. in a language you don't understand. and get back to us"....)

I'm not sure it is an advantage at the scale you're looking to produce at. You'd indicated it was a feature that you liked, i was trying to get you to consider why that was important. Or rather if that was important...

let's ask this question - what advantage is there in continuously exposing the liquor to air without grinding it further? WHY is that important to you?

the site's not allowing me to respond to your last post, so i'll just do it here.

Trouble shooting remotely's always a tricky proposition. Yes temper meters are expensive, but they do pretty much guarantee success. There's no question as to if you have achieved temper or not. I suppose it's like many things - the value equation changes over time (and certainly with scale) - a tool that may have not made sense when you're very small may makes all kinds of sense as you grow.

It doesn't feel like we've identified what's causing your headaches. Sounds like you're pretty confident in your thermometers, the temperature of the nuts is under control, and the issue appears to be isolated to chocolates made using that one batch of liquor - which suggests it has something to do with the liquor. Perhaps it's fatty acid composition is sufficiently different than what you're accustomed to using (meaning your tempering profile will need to change). It may be that, if so, you could compensate a bit by adjusting your formulation to include some milk fat (2% - 3% at the expense of lowering the cocoa butter) to try to build in sufficient bloom resistance to mitigate whatever's causing the issue from the liquor.

RE: nut roasting, there are difference between air and oil roasting, but generally the lower temperatures you roast at, the slower oxidation occurs.

Remember, it's always time, temperature, or contamination.

Were you able to validate the accuracy of your thermometers?

If you'd achieved success historically, and if you're successful with the new batch of liquor - meaning you're problematic with only a specific lot of liquor - then i'd look very closely at that liquor. Remember not all liquor is created equal - the amount and type of cocoa butter in it can be different - which means that your tempering process and/or final formulation may need to be tweaked as a result. it's also possible (although unlikely) that you received a batch of liquor that had been contaminated with another type of fat. not know the supply chain you're using it's impossible for me to say.

are you receiving liquor, making your own chocolate, and then mixing/molding it? or are you purchasing finished chocolate from someone? if the latter, have you provided the original mfr lot information and detailed problem log so they can troubleshoot that specific lots production information? Do you have a temper meter you use to check temper?

I can rule out fungal issues w/o asking any more questions - it's not that.

Are you soaking the nuts to attempt to degrade phytic acid for nutritive reasons? if so, might i make a suggestion and eliminate that process - there no evidence it's effective (i've done the study), and increases the likelihood of micro issues quite a bit. You may find marketing value in it; however there's no scientific basis for it.

hmm.. it's always either time, temperature, or contamination. Are you confident your thermometers are accurate? If so, i suppose if your almonds are oil roasted, you may be seeing some residual surface oil from roasting result in surface bloom. Another thought - are you certain it's fat bloom (i.e. could it be sugar bloom? are you getting any condensation on the bars when removed from the cooler?)

i'm afraid i've got to travel for a few days, leaving today, so responses are likely to be delayed.

quite welcome - let us know if it doesn't work!

Soaked in what?

What's the temperature of your almonds when you put them in the chocolate - remember if they're too cold or too warm, they will result in localized over temper / under temper. ideally they'd be *slightly* warmer than your chocolate (for example, 89F)

Remember not all coconut oil's created the same. A natural coconut oil will harden at room temperature; while a fractionated will remain liquid. You may be getting 'lumps' as a result of using a natural, unfractionated coconut oil that solidifies at room temperature. Note: the fractionation process simply separates the higher melting point 'fractions' of oils from their lower melting point fractions. It does not suggest that because the starting material is referred to as 'natural' that fractionated oils are 'artificial'.

No need to start with it at 80 degrees. also no need to be so precise warming up to 123/105. just heat them both up to 120 or so regardless of if they're milk or dark. your milk may need to be cooled lower depending on how much milk fat is in it. the more milk fat, the cooler you need to work.

The technical answer to your question is yes, however in practice with hand tempering, it always boils down to time, temperature, or contamination. A heat gun is a combination of both time and temperature - i'd not be so quick to rule out it's role.

Are you using a thermometer? if not, why not? if yes, is it calibrated?

do you have any other formulation changes, or are nuts / soft centers involved?

I'd second this. Erika what types of fat are regularly available to you?

Remember, as far as the human body metabolism goes, sugar is sugar. if you're marketing directly for a diabetic market, please be sure you understand the impact of glycemic index and sugars (pretty much any of the pentoses and hexoses - such as sucrose) will impact insulin levels regardless of if it comes from cane, beet, coconuts, or maple trees. The body will see no difference between sugar in the raw, granulated white sugar, cane sugar, beet sugar, etc. High potency sweeteners such as stevia, are an entirely different class of compounds, and as such, the body metabolizes them differently. Lots of info here on these topics already, i'd encourage you to sift through the forums.

For a hobby? not at all.

For commercial purposes - depends on where you live, as the laws are different by country.

Herein lies the importance of effective winnowing - ensuring as much shell as possible is out of the testing stream is helpful in ensuring as much beans as possible pass.

no sir - rules are rules. the question was do any plantation owners do heavy metals testing, and while there may be one out there, i've yet to meet him. They normally don't have the technical capacity or competency to do so, and frankly it may not be in their best interest to do so even if they could. The responsibility to ensure compliance with the finished product rests with the person offering the finished product, or the person importing the raw material. larger exporters will conduct raw materials testing (pesticides, heavy metals, etc) for customers who are large enough to justify it - but again they're not going to do it for everyone as to be frank it creates a headache for them (a certain amount will fail - and then what? now they've got a pile of rejected beans that they have to find a home for - the more they test the larger the pile is going to be..and frankly they're not selling chocolate, they're selling a component of it, and have no idea at which usage level (i.e. dilution rate) you're going to use it, so they have no idea what level is appropriate for your usage rate..)

Many exporters and brand owners will do heavy metals testing, but i've never met a grower who does. S. and C. American soils are heavily volcanic, which in turn translates into the flesh of the bean. Lead - which often is on the shell - is relatively easy to remove and mitigate. Cadmium - which gets incorporated into the flesh to a higher degree than does lead - becomes more difficult to 'wash off', and blending strategies are employed if there are country specific regulations (Japan's another country with high hurdle regulations, for example)

I do not know of a single grower that routinely does heavy metal testing.

Note that when i mention consistency, i'm referring to wildly different each and every time; not so much exactly the same each time (which is almost impossible). It has less to do with size (remember that even the largest chocolate companies in the world rely on, by and large, individual farmers fermenting, which by definition is small scale). Small fermentations will vary considerably in moisture, fat, flavor, etc profiles i'm afraid.

look forward to hearing how it goes.

Hi Jim - i've actually written many of the manuals on cocoa fermentation, and while i may or may not be familiar with the specific one you're referencing, i will say that - generally speaking - the ministry of agriculture and rural development in Vietnam simply doesn't possess the technical acumen or depth of expertise when it comes to cocoa processing. They're improving, and i've worked there for many years to help them along. but they're not there yet.

generally speaking, small fermentations are not consistent or repeatable. They are difficult to scale. yes, i know people do it - but that does not mean they do so repeatably nor consistently. in almost every instance where someone swears they have a small repeatable and consistent fermentation, they have no frame of reference against which to compare a truly consistent and repeatable fermentation against (i.e. they *think* it works because it's the only thing they know). and heck, perhaps it actually does work for whatever local use they're pursuing - i've seen instances where repeatability and consistently simply don't matter for local usage.

In Hawaii, Dole has a plantation (mike conway manages it), where smaller fermentations were developed under the assistance of Guittard. they ferment in wood containers a few hundred lbs at a time, with drainage, just under a week.

Recently there has been a bit of patent activity (and will be more to come) on micro fermentations (very small mass fermentations) that are consistent and repeatable, as there's huge scale advantage should that be successful. we're quickly closing those technical hurdles, but to date they require some laboratory equipment to facilitate them, and certainly aren't viable in the field.

12" cubed? that'll only give you 2-3kg (ish) of beans. You're going the wrong direction i'm afraid.

I do not believe that at that box size and fill level, you will achieve steady state. your surface area to internal mass ratio is just too high, and it won't be able to retain the heat it's generating. it can be very difficult to extrapolate very small bean fermentations (which are tough to do) to larger sizes - it doesn't scale linearly (i.e. if you get results your happy with at a 15kg bean mass in a little box - fermenting 300kg in a big box isn't likely to give you similar results)

There is no 'right' answer. it all depends on what it is you're trying to accomplish, what profile you're after. personally, i do no advocate field fermentations < 150kg if you're looking for consistency. Mine were often 300-600kg. Where are you fermenting, dak lak? if you're up at that elevation, your challenges will be compounded by how cool it gets at night..

Not a whole lot of info to go on, but assuming you're using real chocolate and not adding any funky fats/oil, i'd suspect whatever cooling setup you used was too cold, resulting in the ends cooling quickly and before the middle did. when things cool, they contract, thus if your ends begin contracting before your middle - you get curvature. simply a guess.

Not so much polyphenols in the shell, there's a ton of fiber, and a good bit of theobromine. I know BC's process quite well. While it's better in principle than chewing up broken mercury thermometers, it was never commercially viable and - while i'm not as close to that as i used to be- i'm pretty sure it's no longer being pursued by them. Natra tried a whole bean powder - but again for the same safety reasons, it never became commercially viable. And while you're trying to forget about the heavy metals, try to forget about the aflatoxins as well (there's only 4 of them, so it's not so bad...). For giggles sometime, go into a dark room and shine a blacklight onto your cocoa shells to see how much fluorescence you get..

Yeah, we have a funny aversion to kidney failure and heavy metal poisoning. Odd collection of birds we have here.

It's probably the last thing you want to do. Shells are where most of the mycotoxins, aflatoxins, lead, salmonella, and bad things (tm) collect on the bean. highly discouraged.

Yes.

best case scenario is to mill your liquor fine enough separately that it doesn't need to go through the refiner, other than to act as a lubricant for your sugars.

you can certainly send coarse liquor + sugar through at 75% (making it 35%+ fat) - it's just gonna be a hairy mess. if that's the only option you have, however, it begins to look pretty attractive!

you want to feed 100% liquor through a roller mill to reduce the particle size? if that's your question, it'd work, but it'll be terribly messy. what you'll find is that, because your liquor is high in fat - the rolls will first 'press out' about 1/2 of the butter, at which point there's sufficient friction for the rolls to grasp the solids and begin to pull them through. the degree of particle size reduction you get at this stage will be different than the degree of PSR you get at the end due to the fat continuing to be expelled.

technically it'd work, but practically it'll be a messy, sloppy, uncontrolled nightmare. i'd avoid.

to mix the liquor and sugar? the hobart will do a great job. be careful to manage your fat levels (you'll want to refine at about 20-23% fat (ish) or else it'll be too 'sloppy' and not refine well). consider putting a jacket on the bowl for temperature control (water jacketed) or heat tape so you can keep the liquor melted (but not burned...)

Is it required? No. However, most set ups that have a refiner configuration do it opposite of what you suggest - i.e., there is a benefit to running it first through your pre refiner ( the one with 3 rollers), and then running it through the full 5 roll refiner. The reason is that doing so creates a more even particle size distribution, and you get less fine particles, which helps with viscosity control. your nibs won't go through a refiner very efficivly, so you'd want a hammer mill or some other way of milling the nibs into a liquor, then combine that liquor with the sugar, and THEN roll refine it.

Can you skip pre=refining altogether? absolutely. you'll just end up with lower capacity and higher viscosity

that's a very complicated question mate - different emulsifiers do different things, and how they work is hugely dependent upon many variables. Very generally speaking, E442 at 0.4-0.6% and E476 at 0.l%-0.3%. E442 will impact something called apparent viscosity while E476's main impact is on something called yield value. If you're uncertain of what those things mean, i'd suggest you consider the more conventional E332 at 0.5%..

Call the fine folks at Cargill or Blommer and they can walk you through what their current offerings are..

most of your standard milk chocolate is going to have about 12% liquor by default. you want a milk chocolate that has 1/2 the fat of standard milk chocolate? if so, while it's technically feasible, you're simply not going to find any supplier who has the knowledge or desire to do such a thing i'm afraid. about the lowest commercially available milk chocolate - finished fat level - that your'e going to find (assuming you want to enrobe or mold with it) will be about 28% ish.

How low in fat?

have fun, and post your results!

You'll want cocoa butter that has been taken from someone else's liquor to add to your own.

If you ever need a toffee tester... 8-) they say it's impossible for someone to just have one potato chip. I disagree. it's impossible to have just one piece of toffee - that stuff kills me, but oh how i love it!

generally speaking heat is an enemy of fat stability. Ghee is functionally not very different than anhydrous milk fat. it could be that enstrom's actually hasn't boiled off their moisture contained in the butter they're using, and the resulting toffee is higher in moisture than it should be - which, combined with heat, results in bad things (tm) happening to fats. of course, it could also be that if you don't refrigerate their product as they say you need to, it could be just fine. there's lots of urban legend and misconceptions out there as to what is necessary, or anecdotal evidence that has shaped current policy - as i tell my daughter all the time - just because someone SAYS you have to do something doesn't mean it's actually TRUE ...

Not sure i've got a technical answer for you mate... i've consumed more toffee than your average bear, and i don't think i've ever had a rancid one. I'm sure it can happen, i've just never seen it. I've seen lots and lots of toffee rolled in almonds that tasted terrible, but that was the problem of the nuts, not the toffee...

Take some of theirs and do an informal shelf life study yourself by sitting it on the counter and tasting it every week for 6 months?

Well, all toffee contains milk products, so by definition it contains dairy. The real question(s) are ones of water activity (is there sufficient free water in your formulation to support microbiological growth - typically toffee formulations are very low Aw - you'd need to answer that question for your formulation and process), and one of moisture absorption (toffee will absorb moisture from the air, changing it's texture) - It's typically not a food safety concern, more of a quality one. Mark from here is much more well versed in toffee than i and may chime in.