Forum Activity for @Carlos Eichenberger

I need the rubber piston, heater, check valves and o-rings for a Savage Bros. depositor for a 50-lb tempering kettle.  After contacting them, they refused to sell me any parts and insisted I send in the pump (from Guatemala!) and pay a $100/hour labor/diagnostics fee.  I know what's wrong, I just need the parts!  Talk about absolutely appalling customer service!  This is the last thing I ever buy from Savage Bros! 

Take a look at the Sylph Winnower plans from Chocolate Alchemy. It's pretty simple to build and only need a vacuum cleaner as a power source. I have one and use it for small batches. Pura vida from Flamingo Beach!

Try going even lower, 27.5 or 27, possibly your chocolate is under-crystallized.

Another option is using some properly tempered seed chocolate.

Very simple to do: Get a 10cc syringe, weigh it and with the syringe on the scale set your scale to 0. Fill the syringe up to 10cc and weigh it. Divide by 10 and there's your density. In my experience it is around 1.27g/cc.

Mary, check out this extensive discussion on warm-weather shipping:

http://www.thechocolatelife.com/forum/topics/summer-shipping-tips-tricks

I agree with Miguel about buying used equipment. Unless it's refurbished or I was planning on refurbishing it, I wouldn't buy used. This is the "rough service" stuff like a melangeur or conche/refiner. Basic chocolate equipment like tempering machines and such I believe it's OK (and have done so) to buy used.

For starter operations, Chocolate Alchemy has a decent array of equipment.

Cocoa Butter. The other stuff is for cakes mostly.

A cremino is just a 3-layer stack of white, milk and dark chocolategianduja. Some chefs vary the type of nuts, but traditional Italian Cremini are normally done with hazelnuts. A gianduja is normally 60% chocolate and 40% nut paste.

Just dissolve the cannabis oil in melted cocoa butter instead of MCT oil, and mix thoroughlyinto the chocolate with a stick blender, before tempering.

I forgot to mention that the cannabis oil must be decarboxylated for edibles. This is done by slowly heating the oil to about 210-220F, until you see small, uniform bubbles appear. Continue for about 3-5 mins or until the bubbles stop. Now your oil is ready for proper processing by the human digestive system.

Cannabis chocolate is already very common in Holland, where it's mostly sold as a souvenir. It's just a matter of time until it becomes a popular product in legal and medical states in the US.

My suggestion for achieving controlled and repeatable results is to skip the infusion process altogether, and use already extracted cannabis oils. The ones made by reputable companies have been tested for potency and purity.

My personal experience with chocolate medical edibles was making a few batches of bonbons with a cannabis oil ganache filling. For the filling I just dissolved some CO2 extracted oil (4 grams for every 32 bonbons) in MCT oil, and then incorporated that into the melted chocolate. Ganache was made as any other. This was for a double-lung transplant patient who could no longer use inhalation as a delivery system. He wanted them mostly for anxiety relief, so these were made with a high-THC oil, but it can certainly be substituted with a high-CBD oil for other medical needs.

Sorry but the description is pretty clear in the very first line: Brazil Dark Dipping Chocolate (in the chocolate industry also known as Melting Chocolate or Confectioner's Coating) 25 lbs.

I see nothing misleading there.

Yep, Mexican corn mill = Nixtamal

Here in Guatemala a lot of people use Nixtamal grinders to grind cacao. There are many models for sale in the US. There's a video in my profile about artisanal cocoa butter where you can see one in operation. Check around the 1:30 mark.

Union Machinery makes a small coating pan for under $2000. I bought one about two months ago. It has no heating/cooling.

I use my air conditioner, a fan and a hair dryer as my cooling/heating sources.

Here's a picture of some milk-chocolate panned macadamias done in this pan.

This is by far one of the best contributions anyone has made here on TCL. Thank you for this. For a beginner panner this is invaluable information.

While on a training course in Italy, we were taught how to make tool replicas by molding them in cocoa powder -- very similar to starch molding. Basically what you do is make a nice deep bed of cocoa powder, smooth it down, and then press the wrench into the powder. Extract from the powder with a magnet and pour in the chocolate. This can be repeated very easily.

The T5 is a continuous machine, in that it takes care of the heating/cooling/heating inside a set of coils. IIRC you only need to set the high and working temperatures.

I press all my own butters... and I go so far as them being Plantation-Specific, not just origin-specific. It is outrageously expensive to do this, and if I weren't in the country of origin, I would not do it. There's a video in my profile of the process.

And I don't use it in all of my chocolate, only in eating chocolate. For couverture we use a local butter that is still quite nice, but nowhere near as awesome as the butters pressed from prime beans.

Even so, deodorized butter has its place in our operation. For beans that we can't get enough of to press the butter from, in goes the DO butter. We also use it for making a white chocolate that goes in ganaches and fillings.

We only freeze it to grate it. So no, it does not throw off the temper.

I have used it before. Has worked best freezing the chunks of tempered CB and then grating them with a Microplane. Start adding at ~95. Used at 1% of the total chocolate weight.

Sarah, just be aware that October is THE absolute wettest month of the year in Costa Rica. With that said, I can suggest at least one place where you can ask if they will have you. If interested, contact me privately.

No, food grade Teflon is not toxic. How else would there be millions of Teflon-coated nonstick pans out in the market?

Cocoatown will sell you the stones with the original crappy plastic bushings. Up to you to have new bushings made. Be warned, solid Teflon is pricey, and add to that the machining costs, you may be just better off buying the new stones every year or so.

The bushings wear out. Either get new stones or have the old ones refitted with new, Teflon bushings.

You are disassembling and cleaning the stones after each use right?

What high-low temperatures are you reaching? Also, 89 seems a little low for a working temp for dark chocolate. Try 91-92.

Have you tried cocoasupply? (.com)

I buy both deodorized and undeodorized from them. They do sell amounts as small as 5-lb bags for pretty decent prices.

In the multiple links posted above your comment...

No need for anything like that.

What you need to do is warm the bowl, stones and nibs to about 115F and then add the nibs slowly until they start to release some fat. Once that happens you can go a little faster until all the nibs are in the grinder. This should take about an hour total to fill it up, and then in about another half hour you should have a batch of usable liquor. The Santha can fit about 8lbs total. Why do you not want to use cocoa butter?

Too little for my uses and way too rich for my blood... too bad!

1cc=~1.27 grams. This is at least for my dark 60% couverture.

I can make you a 7-lb batch if you want. Send me a private message if you're interested.

Either a large colander or a wet cloth... Rub the hazelnuts against the screen of the colander or put them in the wet cloth, fold over itself and rub.

It does and that will work perfectly. It only takes a few hours to get the paste super-fine. Remember to de-hull the nuts!

Gap... I only roast the hazelnuts... if caramelized I would then be making pralin (which I actually do make by caramelizing, running through the Champion with the blocking plate in and finishing for a half hour or so in the Santha)

Basically just thoroughly mix the melted chocolate with the hazelnut paste. I've seen some makers in Italy refine/conche them together and others just mix. Personally I just mix well with a stick blender.

Here's a shot of our cremini, as you can see the gianduja is nice and smooth. Any roughness visible in this pic is from the cutting.

You need to open up the machine and you will see the places where belt tension can be adjusted. The fiberglass link-belt can be bought at any decent hardware store or Amazon . IIRC I used 3/8". The great thing is that it's just what the name says: it's not a continuous belt but rather a series of links that you can adjust to length.

I've been making chocolate with Santha/Ultra grinders since 2008. The machines are in constant use. I have yet to experience separation of the bowl(s) and as stated before, since my second batch of chocolate, I don't pre-grind. My biggest wear item are the bushings in the stones.

We have a warming box set to 115F and just leave the nibs in there overnight. Warming them in a microwave seems kind of counterproductive, as the nibs' very low water content will make them difficult to warm.

Sebastian has a very good point... we actually replaced the craptastic black rubber belts with fiberglass link belts which last 10x as long.

And still the belts need to be retightened about once every two months.

Absolutely. They do need to be quite warm, 115-120 F at a minimum, as must be the bowl and stones!

You can't dump the entire recipe's worth of nibs in all at once either, it takes about half an hour of slowly adding them in.

It also helps to add some of your supplemental cocoa butter at the beginning to lube things up a bit.

I don't really see why you need a pregrinder. Both the Santha and Ultra can perfectly handle (warmed) nibs. I haven't used the Champion (or any other device) to pre-grind since my second batch of chocolate in 2008!

www.tomric.com

Try making a cold infusion. Just put your tea and cream in a jar and leave in the fridge for 24-36 hours. DO NOT SQUEEZE THE TEA when done, just let it drain. Use as you would use any normal cream. Use a little more than you would need to compensate for what will be absorbed by the tea.

Totally agree with George. Any money you save on the plastic guitars you'll spend buying replacement wires for them...