Forum Activity for @Louwegi

Scaling on up.. Oh Sh*T

Posted in: Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, & Techniques

@peter3

Thanks for the detailed response. 

1. Pouring tempered chocolate through the guillotine valve into a bowl. Mixing in inclusions. and pouring into 64g moulds with a portion scoop. 

This has worked well for us to date but its very inaccurate and is not possible with the amount of bars we need to make. 

Our product is Dark Chocolate bars/ Coconut Milk Chocolate bars, with inclusions like almonds, hazelnuts, jungle peanuts, coffee beans, etc

2. It will really depend on how well the stores do, but we feel that we need to have at the minimum of 2,500 bars produced per week in 3-4 8hr shifts. 

3. Already completed the audit earlier this year with UL Everclean

I will look into all of those depositors you mention. It seems that there is no small/mid size chocolate equipment that can handle large inclusions from my short bit of research. The volumetric depositors that we are looking at purchasing are made by Savage Bros. According to the company, it "may" handle very small inclusions, but have had so many issues with customers so they dont recommend it . 

Adding inclusions (temp of choc) to the kettle and pouring out of the valve seems pretty tricky. We have tried that technique with our products that dont have inclusions and things got very messy. I would also thing that it would be hard to have a even spread of inclusions in the bar. 

Cheers

Scaling on up.. Oh Sh*T

Posted in: Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, & Techniques

@chocotoymaker thanks for the response. Will look into the Selmi with removable a screw. We started off in one of their stores in Downtown LA as a trial, and have averaged 250 bars a month for the last 6 months. This is with at least one demo per week, but, only 7 skus. We anticipate the new stores to average 200 bars per month, as there won't be as many demos but 3 additional products. 

41*200= 8200 bars per month 

Scaling on up.. Oh Sh*T

Posted in: Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, & Techniques

Hi Everyone, 

After almost 4 years in business, we finally got our big break. Our 10 Chocolate bar skus have been picked up by a grocery chain in Southern California (41 stores) . As exciting as it is, we are scrambling to figure out how to increase production while staying true to our product/process which has got us here in the first place. 

Our biggest shift is moving from pouring bars by hand to using depositors. The issue is that most of our bars contain larger inclusions ( almonds, hazelnuts, etc) which of course aren't depositor friendly. 

We believe there is only 2 options: 

1. Sprinkle inclusions on back

2. Deposit 1/3 of chocolate into mould and then sprinkle inclusions then top off with chocolate. 

Any Ideas/help would be greatly appreciated  :)

Equipment currently have:

- 120 lb Auto Savage Bros Tempering Machine

- 200 lb Auto Savage Bros Tempering Machine

- Savage Bros Vibrating Table

- 100lb Stonegrinder

- 60lb Stonegrinder

updated by @Louwegi: 09/27/16 09:28:20

Fat Bloom, fat migration, under tempering? Wonder what it could be (pictures attached)

Posted in: Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, & Techniques

We bought a new thermometers, and checked the temps/humidity of the working environment and refrigerator. Everything seems fine, but the humidity in the refrigerator which gets quite high. I doubt the humidity is the issue as we haven't had any condensation form on the chocolate. The bars are removed as soon as they pull off from the moulds.

Our process involves receiving liquor, butter, and sugar then mixing,tempering and molding.

We talked to our supplier about this specific batch number of paste/butter and they haven't had any complaints from other customers.

Those pricey temper meters seemed unnecessary. Our thoughts have always been that a chocolate's temper is a (yes or no) type of thing which the eye and an easy test (knife tip) would suffice.

As far as the nuts, thats very interesting and will have to look into it. I was also under the opinion that roasting a nut would accelerate the oxidation process and would less stable. Please correct me if Im wrong, as Im no expert.

thanks

Fat Bloom, fat migration, under tempering? Wonder what it could be (pictures attached)

Posted in: Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, & Techniques

1. 80-100lbs

2. Usually let the machine continue to agitate the chocolate for 20-30 once its come to temper (88.7f). then> read below

3. we will dump 40lbs of the "tempered" chocolate from the Savage Bros machine into our large Chocovision set to 88.7f. Once in that machine, we will dip a clean knife in the chocolate and place in our modified refrigerator or cooling room.

4. The machine is fairly new and have never thought to check the instruments on it. How would one do so?

5. We have not. Our temp settings are currently Melt(120f)>Cool(84f)>Heat(88.7f)

I think you might be on to something Peter. We have just started doing larger batches 80-100lbs and since doing so our temper has been a bit all over the place. When the temper is less than Ideal, our thought was it just needed to be agitated longer for the correct tempered forms to proliferate.

Thanks

Fat Bloom, fat migration, under tempering? Wonder what it could be (pictures attached)

Posted in: Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, & Techniques

Hey Sebastian

The saga continues.....

We have tried just about everything, including setting up a dedicated "cool" room with a Tripp Lite AC blowing cold, dry 64f air over the bars, heating up the inclusions before adding them to the chocolate, heating up molds, etc.

The bars set up nice and quick but after only 6 hrs they show whitish grey marks where the inclusions are located. What looks like a localized issue eventually effects the whole bar. VERY STRANGE. -See picture-

It also turns out that even the Chocolate bars without inclusions after a week storedat a controlled 71f start to turn whitish grey.

Our next idea was to try using some over-the-counter couverture using our same inclusions and process. The bars turned out perfect! No white spots/blemishes.

Having done this, it got us thinking and it turns out our chocolate took a turn for the worse after receiving a new batch of Cacao Paste. AAAHAA

Have you every seen or heard of anything like this..? Could it really be fungus/mold?

Fat Bloom, fat migration, under tempering? Wonder what it could be (pictures attached)

Posted in: Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, & Techniques

Will check the temps again to rule that out.

Our inclusions are soaked and dehydrated which makes for a very stable nut that isn't oily like oil roasted nut or even dry roasted for that matter.

The bars don't appear to have any condensation on them when they are taken out of the cooler. Using the infrared thermometer, the bars are about 75f or so when taken out which is well above the dew point.

We are going to try a couples again today to try and figure the mess out.

Really appreciate the help

Safe travels

Fat Bloom, fat migration, under tempering? Wonder what it could be (pictures attached)

Posted in: Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, & Techniques

Another thought is the thermal mass of the entire refrigerator(pictured) when filled with molds.

Maybe the filled refrigerator isn't cold enough and doesn't cool the chocolate fast enough??

There is up to 90 molds in there at a time which probably give off quite a bit of heat

Fat Bloom, fat migration, under tempering? Wonder what it could be (pictures attached)

Posted in: Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, & Techniques

Hey Sebastian,

So we just did another huge production of 600 bars and they bloomed again within 24hrs:(

This time warming the inclusions to 88.7f, our tempered dark chocolate temp.

See pictures.

Its really frustrating because for the last year we have been in a shared commercial kitchen with less than ideal conditions (75-78f) and humidity over 50% sometimes. In that kitchen we successfully made over 30,000 bars with no issues. And now, since moving into our newly built out kitchen with supposedly perfect chocolate making condition, we are struggling like complete newbies..

In the attached picture you can see how badly the bars with inclusions have bloomed. For reference, I also posted a plain dark chocolate bar that came out absolutely perfect from the same batch of Chocolate.

Our process goes like this:

-Load Savage Brothers tempering machine with raw materials at night and set machine to have the chocolate tempered in the morning.

-In the morning we check the temper of the chocolate, if correct, we transfer 30# of tempered chocolate at a time to our Chocovison 3z machine for easier work flow.

-Tempered chocolate is portioned into warmed stainless steel bowl, inclusions are mixed in and then hand poured into molds with a portioning scoop.

-the molds are then put into the True-49 refrigerator(with a wine/choc thermostat) from the bottom up

-once the chocolate is set (pulled of from mold), they are removed from refrigerators and set on racks.

This process has worked well for us at our old kitchen but for some reason isn't working in our new one and its driving us crazy!

On the front of the bloomed chocolates, the white blemishes are directly above inclusions(in this case nuts).

Yesterday, we also tried a different method of setting up the chocolate whereby we filled the bar molds and then let the chocolate bars sit at room temp(69-70f) for 15 minutes until the backs went from liquid to solid matte. Then the bars were placed in the refrigerator(55-60f) to finished the cooling process. These bars unfortunately also had that nightmarish bloom.

Some other info that could help you diagnose this problem:

-64g Chocolate bars.

-1/4 inch thin molds

-vacuum formed molds from Tomric.

Really hope you can help us find the issue

Thanks in advance.

Fat Bloom, fat migration, under tempering? Wonder what it could be (pictures attached)

Posted in: Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, & Techniques

Soaked in filter water and then dehydrated at 170f for close to to 24 hrs to get rid of some of the enzyme inhibiters which affects digestion.

The almonds are room temp (68-70f).

Ive read over and over that inclusion should be the same temp as the tempered chocolate(88.7f) but for some reason I didn't think it was that big of a deal. In my mind, I thought having inclusions colder than the chocolate would just accelerate the crystallization of the chocolate but not affect the bar negatively.

Thank you so much for the help

Fat Bloom, fat migration, under tempering? Wonder what it could be (pictures attached)

Posted in: Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, & Techniques

Hi,

I made some Dark chocolate yesterday and the bars already have white spots on them. The white spots are exactly where the inclusions (soaked and dehydrated Almonds) are.

Is this Fat Migration, or a tempering issue ?

Chocolate Bars set up in a True T-49 refrigerator with a chocolate/wine thermostat (55-60f).

Really confused as to what is causing this as our conditions are idea.

68f working environment, automatic savage brother tempering machine, vibrating table. etc

Any help would be much appreciated.

thanks

updated by @Louwegi: 04/10/15 18:33:58

Chocolate Batch #

Posted in: Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, & Techniques

Hi Everyone,

Anyone care to share their process regarding batch no's displayed on packaging ?

A lot of retailers require.

Thanks in advance,

Louie

updated by @Louwegi: 04/10/15 12:02:48

What causes these swirls?

Posted in: Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, & Techniques

It really all depends. Once our dark chocolate comes to temperature(88.7f in our case) we wait 10 minutes, and then test by dipping a piece of parchment paper in the chocolate. If there are any issues with setting up (streaks, etc) we wait a little while longer and test again. Usually the chocolate is well tempered right off the bat. We use a fully automatic Savage Brothers machine,fyi

What causes these swirls?

Posted in: Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, & Techniques

Did you pour as soon as it got to 87degrees ? Ive had issues with pouring right away, not allowing enough time for the correct crystal formations to proliferate. There can be pockets of perfectly tempered chocolate and not-so-well tempered in the same batch. Agitation is key

Hope this helps

A new venture

Posted in: Allow Me to Introduce Myself

Email me: louie@nohmadsnackco.com

I might be able to help you.

Louie

Every time I use my molds for chocolate bars, they bloom.

Posted in: Tasting Notes

Hey Milford,

I too use Tomric molds and have issues with pull off marks.

Do you mind sharing your "setting" process?

We use a True refrigerator with a chocolate/wine thermostat (55-60F) to set the chocolate.