|
Post by Freddo on Sept 8, 2014 2:10:19 GMT -5
Thanks for your replies so far. I'm still trying to narrow down the reason for the thickness of my chocolate.
Last night I left 1000 grams of sugar in the oven at around 70C for the night, to see if it lost any weight to moisture. This morning it weighed exactly 1000 grams again.
The next hypothesis is that I am grinding too hard and causing too many fine particles, requiring more cocoa butter.
The only way I can think to combat this is to release the tension on the grinders. I'll see how this goes in the next batch,
I will also only add the extra cocoa butter once the particle size is down to the required size, usually I put it in first to help the grinder "get going".
|
|
|
Post by Freddo on Sept 10, 2014 5:21:59 GMT -5
at this stage its looking like I've had some success, though the chocolate is still in the grinder for some more time, with the tension released and conching.
I ground this batch a lot lighter. when i measured the particle size it was 23 microns this morning, i could still detect some graininess on the tongue. i released the tension completely then, and then added the cocoa butter, which i had increased proportionally by 2%. A few hours later the chocolate was flowing nice and thin like i need it to. Only problem is i still have some conching to do to remove some bitterness, hopefully i haven't added the butter too early.
|
|