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Post by chocdoc on Oct 15, 2015 11:15:07 GMT -5
Yeah, i'd use cheese cloth, perhaps a couple of layers of it. Sausage makers eh? Tomorrow i put up a bresaola to begin drying. mmmm.. We have so got to get together at some point and talk about the various things we are fermenting (and more)!
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Post by Ben on Oct 15, 2015 11:30:24 GMT -5
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Post by chocdoc on Oct 15, 2015 11:41:01 GMT -5
Ben - do you have raw beans that I could purchase from you for my continued Piteba experiments?
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Post by Ben on Oct 15, 2015 12:04:00 GMT -5
Sure. Drop me an email at info@potomacchocolate.com.
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gap
Apprentice
Posts: 390
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Post by gap on Oct 16, 2015 3:25:53 GMT -5
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Post by chocdoc on Oct 17, 2015 6:45:04 GMT -5
Gap - wonder what would happen if you tried it with raw nibs? According to the Piteba fellow - roasting changes the chemistry of the beans in such a way that they are less likely to release the cocoa butter.
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Post by Sebastian on Oct 17, 2015 7:04:22 GMT -5
I'd disagree with their assessment. Roasting will help to rupture the cell walls, and since cocoa butter is an intra-cellular 'ingredient', i'd wager you a bottle of your favorite beer that roasted beans will yield more efficiently than raw beans.
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Post by chocdoc on Oct 17, 2015 7:16:28 GMT -5
I'd disagree with their assessment. Roasting will help to rupture the cell walls, and since cocoa butter is an intra-cellular 'ingredient', i'd wager you a bottle of your favorite beer that roasted beans will yield more efficiently than raw beans. I pretty sure I'll lose the bet! My sneaking suspicion is that the Piteba is just not set up in such a way to efficiently extract cocoa butter - at some points you get it dripping out the tail end (and also the crank end) where you can't efficiently catch it - but nothing coming out the spot where it is supposed to. Even looking at the 'stovetop method of cocoa butter extraction™" I suspect that the roasting step will have been important in allowing the cocoa butter to split from the nibs.
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Post by martin0642 on Nov 10, 2015 9:55:56 GMT -5
I'm VERY interested in the EZTemper machine - i'm at a very early stage of chocolate production but at some point in the next few months (hopefully!) I'm going to need to ramp up production and this machine definitely looks worth an investment (even with UK shipping). I'm currently using seeding (usually with MyCryo) to temper, which works fine but as others have noted it's an expensive way to do it and seems to be less user friendly than EZTemper.
However - there is still a couple of things i'm wondering about..EZTemper can help me temper chocolate (and ganache apparently!) quickly and easily...but machine like the Delta will keep it in temper whilst I work with it. That seems to be the only real advantage of spending a little more on a tempering machine from what I can see but I'm curious to know what others think. But I have two questions:
How do you go about keeping larger amounts (by which here i'm referring to maybe 5-10lbs maximum rather than truly huge amounts) in temper long enough to work with?
What effect is there on the chocolate if you don't use it all and then have to re-melt/temper using EZTemper silk? You're adding more cocoa butter so that changes the recipe slightly (admittedly very slightly but still...) Does it make any real difference to mouthfeel or workability or indeed..anything else..if you keep doing this to a batch of chocolate?
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Post by Ben on Nov 10, 2015 11:01:42 GMT -5
You can keep the chocolate in temper without a tempering machine by essentially doing the same things a tempering machine would do: control the temperature and stir. A chocolate melter like you've mentioned elsewhere will help with maintaining temp and then you'd just need to stir it occasionally. Lots of chocolatiers and chocolate makers do exactly this and keep chocolate in temper throughout the day.
I haven't used an EZTemper, but my guess is that the small amount of cocoa butter added retempering a batch will not be noticeable.
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Post by martin0642 on Nov 10, 2015 12:21:32 GMT -5
You can keep the chocolate in temper without a tempering machine by essentially doing the same things a tempering machine would do: control the temperature and stir. A chocolate melter like you've mentioned elsewhere will help with maintaining temp and then you'd just need to stir it occasionally. Lots of chocolatiers and chocolate makers do exactly this and keep chocolate in temper throughout the day. I haven't used an EZTemper, but my guess is that the small amount of cocoa butter added retempering a batch will not be noticeable. Splendid answer....to be honest not long after I pressed reply I figured the answer to teh first question would be basically...do what i'm doing. Which it is. I think I was more looking for examples of melting machines or other devices that maintain a stable temperature; ie like some of the tempering machines - that being the thing that seems, to me at least, to be the only real advantage of buying something like a Revolation over an EZTemper - it tempers the chocolate but also holds it in temper while you work with it. As for the cocoa butter; I guess getting the amount right in the first place is teh best option - I think I just had a though about chocolate with cocoa butter already in, that is therefore already fairly high (say 45%) in cocoa butter. Whilst adding 1% isnt a lot - when you get past 45% (ish) it seems it can start to make a difference. I just wondered what strategies other people use to deal with that. I know the Alchemist mentioned adjusting for the EZ silk in teh initial recipe, which makes a lot of sense....just curious about other approaches.
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Post by chocdoc on Nov 10, 2015 16:23:26 GMT -5
About the only time I've noticed an issue with too much cocoa butter is a little cup of dark chocolate that I temper over and over to paint eyes on bunnies and Santas. By about the 30th time I can notice a difference.
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Post by martin0642 on Nov 10, 2015 19:18:08 GMT -5
About the only time I've noticed an issue with too much cocoa butter is a little cup of dark chocolate that I temper over and over to paint eyes on bunnies and Santas. By about the 30th time I can notice a difference. Excellent - thank you. And thank you for the stuff on your website too - most useful Guess I need to save some pennies for an EZTemper machine then.......
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