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Post by timwilde on Jan 12, 2015 3:04:55 GMT -5
Ok, I've been at this for 3 days now. I've tried tempering and re-tempering 4 times, with 3 failures. After that 3rd time being a success, I figured it was just the bean, but it's rearing it's ugly head again. Some things to note: I'm tempering from the santha. I'm letting temps drop to ~98F before I begin tempering. I pour a portion of the chocolate out on a marble slab and table until it reaches consistency. For troubleshooting sake, I took a temp reading and it's at 81F. I add this back to the santha and mix without tension for a good minute to mix it back in. This will get me to about 92-93F so I do another session of tabling. Again, gets to right consistency at 81F, add it back to Santha and mix it thoroughly and get a temp reading. 87.5F. Perfect. I heat it back up to 89.0F and scrape the back of a spoon to coat it with chocolate and test for temper. Shows perfect temper and properly hardened in ~3 minutes. Taking a second spoon at the same time as the first, sticking it in the freezer, I can get a sheet of chocolate off the spoon. (Freezing gives bad results, but I like to get the sheet of chocolate off the spoon and let it warm up to sample) The So, I begin filling my molds. Using a syringe, I fill up the syringe and fill the mold cavities while on a scale, and move quickly through the mold filing process. Throw on vibrator table and level out any lumps as well as freeing out the airbubbles. As the molds sit in the cold closet (temp ~65F) I'm seeing the following results: i.imgur.com/xv5NagB.jpgSo, at this point I have to ask; What is it I'm doing wrong? This isnt my first rodeo. I've been doing this for over 5 years now. This *is* the first time I've encountered this. The texture you can see on one of the bars seems to setup as the chocolate cools, not visible when I set the mold in the closet. After the first 2 times I ran into this, I read around online and found that it could be from a number of different things so I sought out to try and fix them all. I cleaned all of my equipment a 2nd time, right before I attempted tabling. Table was cleaned with a degreaser as well as soap and water, scrapers the same way, the dipper I was using to put the warmed chocolate on the table, and the molds. I polished the molds with sterile cotton balls. BTW: This is a 70% dark chocolate. Slightly heavy roast (accident, finished out at 307F bean temp) Only other additions were cocoa butter, sugar, and scraped vanilla beans. I did add a little lecithin. This is the Maranon beans that I ordered just before christmas. Thanks in advance for any advice. I'll keep working on it, but at this point I wanted to toss the question out to anyone else that may have an answer. <Edit> As I was cleaning up, I found a spoon that shows 2 hours sitting at room temp. So, only thing I can think of is possibly reuse of the syringe? Possibly not getting fully cleaned of all the fats from previous batch? Would that cause this? i.imgur.com/EM8x86y.jpg </Edit>
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gap
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Post by gap on Jan 12, 2015 15:33:26 GMT -5
It might be to do with how you are cooling the bars.
Is there any airflow in the closet when you're cooling? How does the warm air "escape" the closet? What are the moulds sitting on in the closet? Eg., towels/linen which will hold the heat from the moulds and make it harder for the heat to "escape"?
Can you do a side by side test - cool in your normal way and also pop one of your moulds into a fridge to cool it until it has just fully released from the mould. Compare the two results and that should give you an indication if it is to do with the cooling.
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Post by timwilde on Jan 12, 2015 15:53:35 GMT -5
The closet is a dedicated chocolate cooling area. It's colder than anywhere else in the house because it's an outside wall, tile floor. So it's just naturally sitting at around 65F. No airflow. The molds are placed on wire racks. So as the heat escapes it just rises up and would get transferred to the walls; which would then be passively cooled by the outside temps. Again, I've done this, using this particular setup, for over a year. This would be the first time this has happened.
I have done the test by throwing it into a freezer to finish the setting as I saw it was a bad temper on one of the attempts over the weekend. It doesnt seem to make a difference on how it's cooling. And I'm keeping the molds in the same room for several hours, so there's no temperature shock to the chocolate going into a cold mold or anything.
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gap
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Post by gap on Jan 12, 2015 17:47:56 GMT -5
I don't use a syringe, but you could test if its the syringe by filling one mould with the syringe and one without and checking how they setup.
Have you checked your thermometer calibration?
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Post by Sebastian on Jan 12, 2015 19:52:58 GMT -5
First, it's never the beans If you can post your recipe that's always helpful. It appears to me that you've got uneven cooling. Is the humidity h higher than normal? It looks like there's some surface moisture as well. As long as your syringe is clean, it doesn't matter if it's reused. If your syringe is cold (65 - room temp) and you're putting tempered chocolate into it, it could be loosing it's temper in the syringe due to the small volume.
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Post by timwilde on Jan 12, 2015 22:41:03 GMT -5
I've double checked the thermometer and it's properly calibrated. With the "just the bean" thought I had, wasnt that it would be more difficult to temper just different ranges to work with. Syringe is room temp ~74. It's a 6oz plastic feeding syringe. It takes about 30-40 seconds to fill the syringe, then maybe 30-60 seconds to empty. The reason I mentioned reused is that I generally rinse under hot water and wipe down with a sponge, but the plastic cone tip is difficult to clean. So I was, with previous recipes just rinsing with very hot water, and using the plunger to force the water through quickly. I'm starting to think that's not quite enough to get rid of possible cocoa butter residues. Unless I'm fixating on something that shouldnt be an issue?
55% Beans 15% Cocoa Butter 29% Sugar .75% Vanilla Beans (4 beans, scraped insides only) .25% Lecithin (this wasnt weighed, but it was 1.5 tsp)
Batch size 100oz (6.25lb)
Last night it was raining, so higher than normal humidity. But it seems most of you aren't from desert areas, so "higher than normal" means 45-50%. Surface moisture, wouldnt that cause it to seize? I've melted this back down and put it back in the santha and it's behaving as it was for initial grinding/conching.
The way these swirls appear and general dull nature it one of the troubleshooting sites online suggested potential either overtempering, so to use less seed. I fixed that by simply waiting longer to table and not doing so more than twice (I cant fit 2/3 of full batch on the table, it's much closer to about 1/5-1/4). So instead of using tabling to help drop the temps from the ~110-115 from the santha, I wait till it drops to somewhere between 95-98. Then table. Usually twice this gets things in the right temp range.
Another possiblity that was suggested was overcrystalization, seed crystals too large; so I was more careful about keeping the chocolate moving on the table and keeping it smooth, not allowing it to get chunks in it. I also noticed that there's a very heavy residue on the marble after tabling, so I use a degreaser and scrub it down between sessions. As it was suggested poor crystal formation on dipping spoons, ladles, and other equipment could potentially seed the wrong crystal type into the cooled chocolate. But that *should* melt out at the 89F working temp though.
As a precaution, I also empty the syringe of any contents before filling back up and turn the santha back on to mix for a few seconds or so to ensure temp is steady at 89F as well as to make sure that I'm not getting overcrystalized on the sides. This mixing is being done while the mold is on the vibrator, then I fill the empty syringe back up to capacity and repeat for each mold. The full syringe can fill 3 bars with 40g each before needing refilling, there's 6 cavities in the mold. So about 30 seconds to fill up, maybe about 5-10 seconds per cavity to fill, zero scale and move to next cavity, then another 5-10 seconds, until empty.
Only real thing that I can think of is its getting bad crystals or over crystalizing from somewhere. Possibly the "needle" of the syringe? I can see that getting some bad crystals caked up from being submerged in the tempered chocolate and a relatively small volume.
I apologize, I did forget to mention this: The one batch that tempered correctly was using a brand new syringe as the one I normally use was still wet from cleaning on a previous batch. I only have 4 molds which holds ~1/3 of the total batch, so 3 tempering sessions; which is also why I temper in the santha. This is the reason I keep coming back to the syringe.
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Post by timwilde on Jan 12, 2015 22:54:09 GMT -5
BTW: In process of tempering now, just waiting for the chocolate mass in the santha to cool. I'm going to try using a ladle to fill the molds and see if that makes any difference at all. I like the control I have with the syringe, but if I cant get it fully cleaned to be useful, I may have to abandon that idea.
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Post by Ben on Jan 13, 2015 8:16:30 GMT -5
Not much to add, other than to say that when tempering small batches, I mold with a syringe, and haven't encountered the problems you're having. I generally clean the tip out as you describe, too. I'm using the large syringe recommended elsewhere on this site (by cheebs, I think). Per his recommendation, I've cut the tip down significantly to make it easier to fill the syringe and deposit into the molds. I'd say the tip is no more than 1/2" long at this point. (Side note: I'd estimate that it takes me less than 20 seconds to fill the syringe twice and fill my 4 cavity molds.)
If you still have the full tip, maybe it's not allowing enough water through to thoroughly clean it. All that being said, though, I don't think the tiny bit of remnant cocoa butter in the syringe tip would be enough to cause your problems.
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gap
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Post by gap on Jan 13, 2015 16:19:32 GMT -5
It sounds like your chocolate is in the syringe for a long time (if I'm adding it up correctly, 30 secs to fill + 7.5 secs x 6 cavaties = 1 min 15 secs). Depending on how you're holding it, your hand could be warming the syringe and chocolate inside, breaking the temper. (Also noting Ben only has his syringe filled for 20 seconds).
Maybe try quickly filling a mould using another technique and seeign if that makes a difference??
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Post by timwilde on Jan 13, 2015 17:39:03 GMT -5
I found the problem Turns out it was my thermometer. I tested it's calibration by checking for ice water and ensuring it calibrates to 32F. It did. However, it would diverge from that and not be accurate again until 233F. I tested a different thermometer that was accurate from 32-120F to within .1. Tempered again, as normal using the different thermometer and I have a clean batch . gap: I try not to touch or hold the syringe in such a way that my hand would warm the chocolate. I'm usually holding by the lip/plunger only. The only time I really touch the body of the syringe is to hold it down in the chocolate while I'm filling it up. I re-timed myself, and it takes less than 5 seconds to fill and on average about 2-3 seconds per cavity. So, for the 6 cavities 12-18 seconds or thereabouts. I do sometimes overfill or have to wait for the scale to catch up to a top off I just did, so it threw my figuring off quite a bit.
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Post by timwilde on Jan 14, 2015 0:16:49 GMT -5
OK, so the first round with the new thermometer went ok, but I rushed through the filling of the molds. So there wasnt a consistent weight between the bars. So I melted back down and tried again. And sure enough, proper temper is being held.
So now the question I have is how did it pass the spoon test, but still be properly out of temper?
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