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Post by ebadham1 on Jul 5, 2019 7:44:45 GMT -5
Hey, we just bought 3 new CocoaTown ECGC 65e grinders. And they aren't able to grind our chocolate smooth. We have the pressure gauges installed (as finicky as they are) and they're reading 80-90psi. We have spoken to CocoaTown multiple times and will likely call them again. But I wanted to know if anyone else has had this issue.
The batches were grinding for over 95hrs and still weren't smooth. We tightened the tension and adjusted the spring (suggested by CocoaTown) and the new batches have been in for 65hrs, and are still not smooth.
We have been using these machines for years with success until our old ones wore down and stopped grinding smooth. These are brand new, so we're having trouble figuring out what could be causing it.
Any thoughts or experience would be great. Cheers
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Post by bmikiten on Jul 6, 2019 19:06:48 GMT -5
Hi..
I have two of the older machines but my understanding of the new models is that they both have the option of putting shims under the drum to bring the bottom stone closer to the rolling stones. Have you checked to see how much space is between the bottom of the stones and the top of the lower stone? Also, what is the volume you are grinding? Obvious other things are checking to be sure the rolling stones are both moving and not loose or balanced.
Brian
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Post by Brad on Jul 21, 2019 18:20:47 GMT -5
My suggestion is that if you want to make good smooth chocolate on a commercial scale, get rid of them and buy some purpose built equipment for grinding cacao.
I've said this before and I will continue to bring it up that stone wheeled grinding of cocoa hasn't been used in over 50 years, and even when it was in use, the stone wheel melangeurs were used strictly to make liquor, NOT a finished product. WHY??? Because they were never able to grind the cocoa beans down to a particle size that was acceptable for quality chocolate.
Case in point: There numerous blogs and articles coming out more and more often with respect to the poor quality of "craft chocolate" - one of the primary complaints being grittiness. Another complaint being acidity (poor conching as a result of inadequate grinding).
People may argue with me, but the reality is that NOT A SINGLE LARGE MANUFACTURER OR AWARD WINNING LARGE SCALE ARTISAN uses the melangeurs for finished product.
So.... you can keep fighting with the machines, or dump them on one of the suckers who want to argue with me, and purchase a machine that's designed to grind cocoa beans.
Brad
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Post by Ben on Jul 22, 2019 7:07:38 GMT -5
While I use the same style of grinder that Brad is promoting, it is entirely possible to get smooth chocolate out of a stone grinder. I've had plenty of great, smooth stone-grinder produced craft chocolate. I've also had plenty of not-great craft chocolate with various problems, including grittiness. For the latter, the likelihood is that the chocolate maker was not operating the machine correctly, not running it long enough, etc. Also, there is plenty of award-winning chocolate being produced in stone grinders and melangers.
There are plenty of reasons to switch to a different grinding technology, but the inability to produce smooth chocolate is not one of them.
Specifically to this post, the original user said that they've been using this type of grinder successfully for years and are only having problems with some new ones. This points to issues with the specific new grinders, not to stone grinders in general.
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