Forum Activity for @Peter3

Hi,

I think that you are fighting with physics and this is a fight you will always loose regardless of what youtube videos show...

Good news is your first step almost makes sense so lets start there again.

1. Divide your purchased 1 kg block of moulded and tempered chocolate (not something that has been sitting in heat for a long time) into two parts: 800g and 200g.

2. Crush or grate the 200g part and keep at 25C.

3. Melt the 800g in the microwave: small burst of nuking plus a lot of mixing, repat until you get it to 45C (it would be a good idea to check if your thermometer is accurate).

4. Pour the melted chocolate into stainless steel bowl and keep mixing, scraping the sides to keep uniform temperature, keep going until you get to 35C.

5. Start adding your crushed or grated 200g part in small doses, lets say 50g at the time, keep mixing and stirring like a madman, when added pieces are melted add next small dose. Keep going until you get to 31C (if you have some of the small part left don't add it anymore).

6. Give it a few extra good stirs and smile. Now you have tempered chocolate ready to use.

Extra hints.

Make sure your moulds are clean, dry and at 27-28C before you pour in your tempered chocolate.

All unused chocolate can be melted again and reused (it will be untempered).

Have you looked at used machines at sites like wolf machinery, raymond travel (they have a second hand 20kg conche/refiner at this moment, this is not the best machine to make good chocolate)?

There may be somebody selling second hand machines closer to you.

It's a little hard to translate what you mean by cheap enough as scale and costs differ around the world.

You may find out that milk chocolates present more of a challenge than dark ones.

I would be interested in why you don't want to use lecithin? It's a vital ingredient in chocolate making.

With soft water on rinse cycle you should have very little problems with water spots (depending on the actual mineral content of the water) so there may be no need for rinse aid.

Talk to Ecolab about the detergent suitable for use in your situation, they are usually very good at finding the proper solution. 

To be honest we don't have one either.

We are washing moulds manualy at this moment. Mould washer is in the plans for new plant.

I have used Newsmith machines before and they do a very good job. I have no idea about US based suppliers.

If you are using an industrial dishwasher I would suggest looking at your options for rinse cycle, if you can use softened water or some sort of rinse aid you may save yourself a lot of work polishing out water spots. There are detergents suitable for mould washing as well.

Mould washers are machines that wash, rinse and dry moulds.

One of the suppliers:

http://www.newsmiths.com/product-category/chocolate-mold-washers/

I will agree with that.

It was just a general statement that acidity from the liquor could or should be removed during conching.

That acidic part of tase/flavour should be removed during conching leaving just the fruity notes.

I will second that suggestion.

I've just recived an email with this:

http://www.unionmachinery.com/Product.asp?Number=78136

Fat bloom.

Either chocolate not correctly tempered or moulds at wrong temperature.

Are you stirring it really well when you are heating it up?

This is critically important as it keeps temperature of the whole batch uniform.

Equally important when cooling down.

Now I understand your process.

Please remember that if a given set of temperatures (low and high) was working well before there is no guarantee that it will work today.

Chocolate varies from batch to batch (some less, some more) and changes sometimes need to be made. 

I would suggest replacing glass bowl with a thin walles stainless steel one. One of the problems possinle with your method is that if you heat the glass bowl up (while mixing the chocolate) until the chocolate reaches set temperature than take it out of the hot water the glass bowl is still hot and keeps transfering heat to the chocolate. Using steel bowl should reduce this problem (and if it falls it doesn't break).

Try this, try lower heating temperature until you find the best settings and be ready to do it again in the future. 

Not sure what do you mean by "cool down by stirring". Do you do it on a steel/marble plate or just stir it in the container that is cooled by room air?

Once you have reached low temperature how do you warm it up?

If you leave the moulds in the room for 20-30 minutes they will be the same temperature as the air in that room, this you can check with a normal room thermometer.

 Hi Michelle,

Two possible problems:

1. Your chocolate is undertempered.

You may try to warm it up to 30C or 31C and see what happens, very vigorous mixing throughout the tempering will help as well.

How do you cool it down?

2. Your moulds are too hot when you pour your chocolate in. This melts too many crystals and detempers chocolate. 

Try making sure that the moulds are about 27-28C before pouring the chocolate in.

Dark chocolate is little more forgiving so problems may not show up as much as with milk. 

Mould temperature should be just below the temperature of tempered chocolate.

In very simplified terms.

Correctly tempered chocolate has only one type of cocoa butter crystals with melting point above 31C. Only some of the cocoa butter is crystalized (seed crystals) and the rest is still liquid. These seed crystals are small and spread throughout the whole mass. When we pour the chocolate into moulds and start cooling we hope that our seed crystals will grow and whole mass will crystalize in the same crystaline form.

If the moulds are much colder than our tempered chocolate some of the remaining liquid cocoa butter will be cooled too fast by the mould surface and in this area we will create crystals with a lower melting point which will result in bloom.

If the moulds are much warmer then tempered chocolate our seed crystals will melt at the mould surface and this part of chocolate will later (during cooling) crystalize in "uncontrolled" manner. It will be difficult to take it out of moulds and it will bloom later.

I hope this helps a little.

I can try to explain in much more detail if needed.

Could you describe your tempering process?

How do you check if chocolate is tempered correctly?

What is the temperature of your moulds before depositing chocolate?

- See more at: https://www.thechocolatelife.com/clay/forums/new_posts/14825/where-is-the-tempering-errors#sthash.0l3zAvu8.dpuf

I may be guilty of that.

My apologies.

Hi Antonio,

I don't want to sound harsh but:

1. You are looking for help with a tempering problem.

2. I have asked a few questions that may help to find the solution.

3. You have not bothered to answer these questions but posted a link to a chocolate melter. This machine will only melt the chocolate and will not temper it.

I'm not sure if you have posted a wrong link (hopefully).

Could you please look at my questions again and try to answer them.

Peter

Could you describe your tempering process?

How do you check if chocolate is tempered correctly?

What is the temperature of your moulds before depositing chocolate?

Excellent post with some very good information and advice.

I will just comment on the below from my point of view.

1. Possibly some calculations went wrong but 4 pieces x 20 rows per meter x 2 meters per minute gives 160 pieces per minute.

This gives significantly more than 1000 pieces per hour.

2. We enrobe our products twice, hand decorate on second coat. As correctly stated the feeding speed, the take off speed and the difficulty of decoration dictate the speed. With 1 person feeding, 2 decorating and 1 on take off we reach 4 pieces by 18 rows per minute. On a good day.

We are talking 12 degrees Centigrade?

This would be a problem.

On industrial moulding lines moulds (cavity side) are beingheated up to 26-29C prior to pouring in tempered chocolate.

Reason:

Tempered chocolate will contain a certain quantity of desired cocoa butter crystals. This quantity will be sufficient to act as seeds for the crystailsation of the rest of the chocolate when cooled at the correct speed. Rest of the cocoa butter is still liquid

If you pour tempered chocolate into mould that is too cold liquid cocoa butter forms unstable crystal forms on the mould surface resulting in white areas, streaks and othe bloom.

On a more technical level following happens: when chocolate (containing liquid cocoa butter) contacts cold mould surface heat (energy) flows from chocolate into the mould. This results in the formation of cocoa butter crystals that have a melting point close to the mould surface temperature. Crystals that are formed at teperatures below 28-29C are not stable. Because this process happens very fast there is no time for the correct seed crystals created during tempering to grow and correctly crystalise the whole chocolate bar.

I would suggest warming your moulds up to 26-28C and trying again.

How did you temper and how did you test the temper prior to pouring?

What was the the temperature of moulds before you poured your chocolate in?

If you are in Adelaide you are welcome to come and see how do we make our chocolate and the rest of processing.

A bit too far for a drive to Adelaide in South Australia to see how we are doing it.

I would suggest that you:

a. Do a lot more reading about chocolate tempering.

b. Find a method that would be suitable to your situation.

c. Practice with chocolate to learn how to achieve the correct temper (this you can do with normal chocolate from the supermarket). Remember that you canmelt and temper again and again so there is no waste. There are a few methods of tempering that work on the small scale beside seed tempering.

d.Once you have agood feel for this you can practice with your chocolate till you find the best way of doing it.

There are polish and varnish products that are used for panned goods (made with untempered chocolate) but this is a very complex application process.

If your chocolate will be well tempered it will be nice and shiny without any need for spraying.

Where abouts are you?

I'm afraid that you may need to do a bit more reading on the subject of chocolate tempering.

Putting things in a really simplified way:

1. In hot (over 40-45C) chocolateall the cocoa butter present will bemelted, no crystals present.

2. Such chocolate needs to be cooled to around 25-28C so some of the cocoa butter present will crystalize. This crystalization will produce a variety of crystal forms (cocoa butter is polymorphic which means that it can crystalize in many different types of crystal forms).

3. Chocolate cooled in previous step with different forms of crystals is warmed up to 29-31C which melts the unstable crystals leaving only stable ones. This is tempered chocolate and can be used to form products that will not bloom and look good.

This is a very general process description and temperatures are just for indication.

In your case if you take the tempered chocolate and melt it at 40C you effectively melt all the cocoa butter crystals making chocolate untempered.

If you make product with such chocolate it will bloom.

If you have your bought chocolate already tempered you may try seed tempering where you add some solid tempered chocolate to liquid chocolate. Something along these lines:

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/how-temper-chocolate

You have not mentioned tempering your chocolate.

How do you temper?

I will not comment on aging chocolate as a method of flavour development.

Yes you can take chocolate from the conche without tempering and mould it into big block using plastic trays(smaller 3-5kg blocks work better, easier to use later). After it sets take it out of the trays and keep for later use.

This chocolate will bloom very fast but this is not a problem.

You will need to melt it down again when you want to use it and in this proces you will melt all the unstable cocoa butter crystals that create bloom.

I would suggest going to a chocolate store, talking with people who ran it about what you are trying to do and asking permission to interview their customers. If you offer to share your findings they may agree.

In addition to above questions could you post a photo of what you are trying to achieve.

Whole piece and cut in half.

I agree with Sebastian that it's very difficult to troubleshoot from distance (and across different unit systems).

I would suggest making a much smaller batch using just plain chocolate (so it can be remelted and reused) with current temperature settings. Than another with cooling stage 2 degrees lower and heating same, than another with cooling stage same but heating 1-2 degrees lower, another with cooling same and heating 1-2 degrees higher.

Check the temper and make bars. Inspect them after a few days and see which ones look best.

This is your best way to find correct tempering settings without temper meter.

Batch tempering is very tricky process to nail down as chocolate temper will change with time. Crystal formation or melting will keep going on resulting in perfectly tempered chocolate losingtemper if it's not used fast.

We have a block with inclusions process where we do batch temper and our batch size isaround 15kg. Chocolate gets tempered, mixed with inclusions and moulded over 15 minutes. You can see the difference between block/bars made at the beginning of the batch and ones made at the end. We just discussed dropping batch size to 10kg or less.

I must admitt that only now I realized what issue you are talking about. Photos in the first post had a lot of white spots (very small) and they looked like a result of water droplets or condensation.

Didn't know what to say as you seem to have the temperatures dew point

relationship under control.

Only with the last post and pictures I realized you are talking about: large bloomed areas on the inclusions. If I'm correct?.

After reading about your process in the above posts I have a few questions:

1. You batch temper your chocolate, what is the batch size?

2. After chocolate has been tempered, how long does it stay in tempered stage befor you use it?

3. In the morning you check the temper, how do you do it?

4. Have you checked if the instruments on your tempering machine are calibrated? That means that if the chocolate temperature is let's say 80F is the sensor reading (or display showing) the same temperature?

5. Have you tried different temperature settings for your tempering?

I would guess that there is an issue with your tempering and adding inclusions with different temperature makes the problem show up.

Batch tempering chocolate is very often a hit and miss afair as tempered chocolate does not really "hold temper" for a long time.

Coating it with chocolate twice is the best solution.

In addition to what Sebastian correctly written above.

1. It looks like ingredients you use should not cause blooming problems due their nature. They may stillcause tempering problems if you mix them into chocolate when they are too cold or too hot.

2. The problem may be in the actual temperatures of chocolate during the tempering.

quote from your post:

"Re-cool to 83 I have tabled the chocolate on a marble slab and mixed it back in for this stage, and also cooled it in a cold room.

Warm to 89 for dark and 86 for milk chocolates."

Unfortunately these "rule of thumb" temperatures will not ensure correct temper in all situations.

Any changes in the recipe may require change of these temperatures.

I would suggestexperimenting with small batches of the chocolate (without mixing in the ingredients) that you have and cooling to different temperatures, making records and finding the best settingsfor the chocolate you have. I know that this is time time consuming (bloom doesn't show straight away) but if the chocolate comes out of moulds very well and looks good you are half way there.

3. Another possible issue is the temperature of moulds. If too cold or too hot they will couse chocolate to bloom even if correctly tempered.

Any recipe change may require change in the temperatures during tempering.

Could you describe your tempering process?

If the temperature is 68F and humidity at 60%RH dew point will be 53F,

same temperature and 70%RH dew point at 57.5F and at 75%RH dew point at 59F.

If product surface temperature will be below dew point you will get condesation on the product and resulting problems with bloom and bacteria.

That means that if you blow a very cold air (like from portable air conditioner) into the pan which will slowly cool down the product surface to 50-52F and take that product out into hot and humid room you will get in trouble.

What polish and varnish agents are you going to use?

Do you have a specification frm supplier for the application conditions?

I would guess that it would be extremely hard to use polish and varnish at these conditions effectively. This is based on products that I know of and my enginering knowledge.

I would suggest roasting your almondsto almost scorched level before giving them a chocolate cover. Makes fantastic product.

Online converter says that 68F is 20C.

Do you know what is the humidity level?

From these two I calculate for you what is the minumum teperature of air that you can blow onto the product to avoid condensation.

You will probablyneed that room colder anyway for polish and varnish application and drying. We find that anything above 64F and 50%RH results in product sticking together when drying resulting in kiss marks.

This depends on product you use.

If you just starting dont spend any large amounts of money on the set up. Get a small pan like in my link or one offered by Justin above (even cheaper).

To make good or very good panned product consistently you will need controlled environment (pretty much applies to all chocolate production). Because making it on a small scale is very time and labour consuming process failed batches are very costly.

Simplest way to achieve controlled environment is by using air conditioned room. I'm not sure what temperatures are like in Washington throughout the year or what manufacturing set up you have so it's a bit difficult to offer specific advice.

In general if you have a room with big domestic reverse cycle air conditioner that will allow you to hold temerature between 16C and 18C you will be OK for starting (make sure your liquid chocolate tanks are outside this room), you will need to keep humidity around 50-60%RH (add a heater in the room to drop or splash some water to increase).

From home improvement store buy an exhaust fan, something like this:

http://www.justventilation.com.au/categories/Inline-Duct-Fans/

and suitable flexible duct.

Fix it so you can blow air into the pan (make sure your electrical work is done to local regs).

In this way you have cool air going into the pan at right temperature.

Pan your centres (slowly or even slower), smooth them.

Put them in a tub and keep in this room overnight.

Next daypolish, varnish and rest on trays in the same room.

This should work just fine while you learn how to get what you want.

Portable air conditioner is not a good idea.

It will blow into the pan air that is too cold so if you take it out you may get condensation on product surface which kills it.

You will need to control the conditions in the room anyway.

Beware that panning is a noisy work as well.

It's a little difficult to offer advice without knowing exactly what you are planning to do.

I mean on what scale?

Is this two or three or more than ten batches a day?

If you are going to just make a couple of batches I would just consider running the whole process in a well air conditioned room with a fan blowing air into the pan.

If you can keep the room around 18C you should be OK for small scale production, having some source of heat in the room working at the same time as air con will help to keep relative humidity below 60%RH.

You can use the same room for resting product between process steps. You pan a few batchesone day, let it rest till the next day to crystalize all chocolate, than polish and varnish these batches.

If you are thinking about making it on a larger scale (many smaller batches a day) or you are looking for a very fine finish you may need to invest into air handling system that would keep your room conditions correct and supply dry cold air (40-50%RH and 15C-16C) into your pan. Your supplier of polish and varnish should be able to give you exact requirements.

I think these pans on offer at Union Machinery are much too large for what you need.

A quick google search found this:

http://www.bid-on-equipment.com/Item/194510~16%22+Stainless+Steel+Rotating+Pan+.htm

Possibly much more suitable sizewise and about half the price.

The limit is not just a guide.

Australian New Zealand Food Standard in Part 1.4.1 sets Maximum Level for heavy metal contaminants in food product and the maximum level for Cadmium in chocolate is 0.5mg/kg (not 0.5ppm as I have written above).

This is a legaly enforeable limit and applies to all chocolates sold in Australia and New Zealand.

As Sebastian correctly written above cocoa beans from some American countries have very high cadmium content which means that they can be used as a very limited percentage of your recipe.