Forum Activity for @Andy_K

Hi Matt,

Brunei sounds like an interesting place to make chocolate as I believe the consumption will rise in this country, similar to the Arabic countries.

To come back to your question: I work currently in Indonesia with a chocolate team and I can see that controlled air temperature and humidity are quite important to get stable recurring results. It's of course not the only source for failure, but one possible.
So it might not solve your problem but for sure make it a more stable process.

To harden out the chocolate after molding sure us the fridge, to cool down before final heating up to 32 degrees for tempering, you can use the fridge as well but be careful, can go very fast and the mass is to low in temperature and you will  have to start all over again.

Hope that helps (if I did understand your question correct).

Best, Andy

I would as well be interested in experiences with the rottar grinder as I have no voices heard of this one so far.

Thanks for any inputs.

Best, Andy

Hi Beth,
the Santa C40 is made to fill up to 40lbs, not 40kg...

Hi holguinbock,
I have a friend who wanted to open a very small bean to bar manufacture in Colombia last year. But, in the last moment decided otherwise. Would be nice to know what your plans are and where in Colombia you wanna do it. If you wanna share here, great. I you wanna share more private, I can give you my email.
If you don't want to share at all, respected as well

Best,
Andy

I see what you mean. Rainforest just don't belong into the containers at sea
Thanks for the clarification.

Sebastian - is it important for the dried but raw cacao beans to have airflow? If yes, why? Because of the moisture content of about 7%?
Thanks for your input.

Happy Weekend from Indo...

Thanks for the input Carl. From their website, they look as they work with quite advanced equipment. Actually the idea with vacuuming to persevere the beans from damage that would otherwise probably occur when they are loose in a bag, does make somehow sense to me...

We might try out the GrainPro bags. What's your email Jordan?

Thanks

@ Sebastian: How long would the bags stay under the tent? Only for 1 hour or more for a few days? In jute bags, I guess...

@Jordan: We do have all cacao at the moment in plastic bags. But not hermetic ones. The big downside on buying GrainPro bags (and bags in general) is that plastic bags get really fast damaged when carried around sometimes already when they take bags down from a shelf. As they are heavy bags, they drag them from the shelf and this comes with a high risk of damaging a nice hermetic plastic bag very easy and fast.

Thanks for the inputs. Appreciate a lot.
@Sebastian; I am working for a chocolate company in Indonesia for the moment.
@Jordan; thanks I will have a closer look at your products.

Andy

Thanks to you both for your inputs. That helps me a lot. I know well about how a storage room should look like but never had to handle an actual infestation.
So, I am grateful for the fast inputs.
Their roof was leaking water into the storage room. I guess you can imagine that this is not optimal

Hi Sebastian,
in the storage room, actually, all beans are in single plastic bags and then have a jute bag over it. So to fumigate I will have to open each bag, I guess.
What you suggest more, out of your experience: CO2 or what kind of substance?
I am not sure if all substances are easily available here... Thanks.

Thanks for the inputs Sebastian & Clay.
So if you once have the moths, in a storage in the tropics, one will have quite a challenge to solve it. Oh boy....

Hi everybody,
I was just informing myself about warehouse "issues" for cacao. Mostly about the cacao moths.
So I came to this topic here in the forum. It's great information. But I have a general question now. Why is still almost every farmer and shipper using jute bags, if plastic bags that are good sealed are would prevent a lot of troubles. I am sure the sealing might be a bit more work but I doubt that the plastic bag is more expensive that a jute bag. I mean a regular big plastic bag, not a grainpro bag.

So why is that, if it is not an economical thing?
It would keep any infestation within a bag, which would help a lot to keep it in control.

What's your opinion to this?

Thanks,
Andy