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Post by sugaralchemy on Dec 14, 2006 0:43:36 GMT -5
I'm curious how the members of this forum feel about cacao mass/solids percentages. This "percentage" is generally used to refer to the darkness of a given chocolate. However, technically, cacao mass refers to all cacao products present in the bar, which range from bland (butter) to more intense than liquor (cocoa powder.) Obviously, a 70% dark with 30% liquor and 40% butter would taste radically different from a 70% with 60% liquor and 10% butter. If milkfat is used, the cacao mass number may also be lowered while retaining a workable viscosity. Emulsifier(s) can enable lower fat content as well. Many people assume that at least the remaining percentage that is not cacao butter is going to be sugar. However, this isn't necessarily the case, particularly with non-dark chocolate. Milkfat (as mentioned above) is not cacao mass, yet it is also not sugar. Various milk solids, lecithin, vanilla, and any number of other ingredients are non-cacao mass yet also non-sugar. If all that weren't enough, the nature and density of other ingredients can alter the properties of chocolate more than one would expect. Some ingredients (i.e. milk caseinates) tend to naturally reduce viscosity of chocolate. Denser solids account for a smaller contribution to viscosity/volume than would be suggested by their relative percentage contribution (percentage is calculated by weight, not volume, but viscosity is dependent on volume.) Moreover, cacao percentage has a non-linear relationship relative to darkness and lacks a zero point. For example, a Lindt milk chocolate bar sitting right here contains 37% cacao solids yet is only around 10-11% liquor - liquor is less than 1/3 of the total cacao solids. That gives a very weak tasting chocolate. On the other hand, I have an 85% Valrhona bar sitting here which is around 78% liquor and 7% butter. That means it tastes 7-8 times darker (due to 7-8 times the liquor content) as compared to the Lindt light milk, yet the cacao mass number is only a little over twice as high. Even stranger, white chocolate can have cacao mass percentages in the 20s and 30s, despite not even having any liquor and even being rejected as not being "real" chocolate. (Even the FDA even didn't recognize it as chocolate until 2002: www.cfsan.fda.gov/~lrd/fr021004.html ) As a consequence of all this, cacao mass doesn't seem like a very useful metric for advanced chocolate connoisseurs and likely to cause confusion for less sophisticated consumers. The only thing is reliably means is "this much of the chocolate is cacao" but it doesn't really say anything more specific. Cacao liquor percentage seems closer to what people are concerned with when they are talking about cacao solids percentages - but it's clearly not directly correlated with darkness. Sugar level might also be an informative metric. It just seems to me that the cacao mass number is not really directly tied to any specific trait of the chocolate, making it a rather imprecise, poor and potentially even slightly misleading metric. How do you all feel about this?
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Post by Sebastian on Dec 14, 2006 20:57:57 GMT -5
It's a marketing gimmick meant to entice the masses into a feeling of understanding, of a cool terminology that's conceptually easy to understand. Attempting to educate millions of people that 70% isn't always 70%, and that there's at least a dozen different variations that are still '70%', would be a nightmare at best. I've got a 54% product that has more chocolate liquor in it than my 72% product, but try to convince the average joe on the street that the 54 is 'darker' than the 70, and you'll likely have better luck convincing him that up is really down Is cocoa solids a meaningful term? Not from a technical perspective. But it sure does help the marketers sell a lot of stuff!
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Post by sugaralchemy on Dec 15, 2006 0:40:33 GMT -5
I tend to agree... but if it is just about marketers, why didn't they just use liquor content? Liquor content would still be a "percentage" but would be actually accurate. Consumers would have the perception AND reality of understanding the darkness.
I guess a good question to ask now would be... what is the history of 'cocoa solids' percentage? Why was it chosen over liquor percentage?
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Post by Sebastian on Dec 15, 2006 6:29:56 GMT -5
Because everyone knows that more is better There was actually two approaches to cocoa solids labelling - one is the european method, which we see today. The 'mericans tried it as well, taking the route you suggest (just liquor), but it never really caught on. If you've got two products that are exactly the same, one says 70% cocoa solids, t'other says 36% cocoa solids, the 36% product becomes a hard sell...
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Post by chocodisiac on Jan 12, 2007 22:56:23 GMT -5
Perhaps I'm confused, but I thought that cocoa percentages, by definition, refer only to the actual chocolate liquor, i.e. the cacao solids MINUS the sugar, and butter (and any milk products, natch). That is, white chocolate, by definition would contain 0% cacao mass/solids since it only contains the butter (hopefully) plus sugar, milk products, etc. At least that is how I view it, although Europe is definitely ahead of the U.S. in this respect (viewing only the non-fat portion of the nib as being included in the percentage, with "white chocolate" being something of an oxymoron).
I don't believe, then, that producers can "cheat" by substituting butter for part of the actual cacao solids. Are you sure that's done in the U.S.? The new Hershey's 70% (I think they call it), for example, tasted to me like it was indeed quite dark (and you'd think that if anyone would indulge in hyperbole it would be a large company like that).
This makes me wonder, though, when I make my own chocolate , what percentage of the nib is in fact butter, and how much to correspondingly reduce my estimation of my percentage (typically 70-80%)! Hmmm...
By the way, I haven't noticed any cacao percentages listed by Mexican chocolate manufacturers (they're all pretty low, in my experience, and I live in Mexico).
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Post by Sebastian on Jan 13, 2007 7:04:40 GMT -5
Quite positive that's how it's done.
Your nibs are approximately 54% butter.
Turin was doing % labelling for a while - not sure if they're still doing it...
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Post by sugaralchemy on Jan 14, 2007 20:21:29 GMT -5
I will second sebastian's comments... unless explicitly stated as 'liquor content' you must assume total cacao mass = mass of all cacao products, including cacao butter, cacao liquor, cocoa powder, etc.
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Post by chocodisiac on Feb 7, 2007 1:45:32 GMT -5
(sorry, I have had difficulty accessing the forums for a while)
It sounds as though I was under the mistaken impression that cocoa percentages by definition refer to the cocoa liquor, so I agree that this looser definition is potentially meaningless/misleading!
OTH, I'm a bit puzzled about the fact that, apparently, my chocolate, before it has had any sugar added, is only 46% liquor! I think my chocolate (Criollo), even WITH the 20-25% sugar added (plus the small amount of butter I add), would taste darker than your 85% liquor Valrhona bar! I KNOW that's the case relative to the 85% Lindt, at least. (I don't necessarily think it would taste BETTER, but just STRONGER!) I'm sure you guys would feel the same about your concoctions, no? And yet the Valrhona liquor content is nearly twice mine (sans sugar)!
What am I not getting here? And have any of you experimented with somehow extracting the butter from your brew to bump up the liquor percentage?
And no, Turin no longer shows a percentage, and it tastes weirdly artificial to me (fake vanilla, perhaps?).
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Post by sugaralchemy on Feb 7, 2007 2:15:22 GMT -5
There's huge range for variation on the 'taste' of cacao, and hence your 'perception' of darkness. If you are doing 20-25% sugar, that means you have a '75-80%' cacao mass dark. It's not too far fetched to think that cacao variation and differing processing alone could be responsible for the taste difference.
And yes... it is very possible to have a very high cacao mass but a very low liquor content. The gap is not incredibly huge between most commercial chocolates of the same cacao mass, but it is variable and fairly unknown, especially to the average consumer.
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Post by chocodisiac on Feb 8, 2007 13:34:08 GMT -5
Hmm, well, criollo IS the only bean I've worked with (and numerous sources thereof), and I know it's considered to be the best variety of cacao, but not sure if it's supposed to be all that stronger tasting. But as for my "perception", it is shared by others who've tasted it.
What about chocolate you've made (either of you)? Do you have the same perception, or, given that 46% is (presumably, theoretically) the highest we "home brewers" can make, does it just taste sort of medium strong compared to the commercial high-liquor content bars, as one would expect?
And how DO the commercial manufacturers bump up the liquor content past 46%. Presumably they'd have to be adding c. powder, no? But then you would think they'd have to add more butter for texture, which would bump the liquor perentage back down.
Gee, guess I'm confused. Guess I'm taken back by the fact that the cacao bean itself actually contains such a high fat percentage, and that the resulting pure cocoa mass is still only 46% liquor!
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Post by sugaralchemy on Feb 8, 2007 16:17:08 GMT -5
I think there may be a misunderstanding here:
'Cocoa mass' is the any mass from the cacao bean, whole or not. Butter, powder, liquor, etc. This is what you see on the label of most chocolate. In most dark chocolate, this is (almost*) equal to 100 minus the sugar percentage. *Vanilla and lecithin accounts for generally <1%.
The value that most accurately reflects the 'darkness' of the chocolate is the liquor percentage. Liquor = ground up cacao beans. Nothing added, nothing removed. And yes, beans/liquor are about 50-55% fat. The reason we use liquor as a metric is that it is the generally the primary and most preferable source of chocolate taste in chocolate.
So if you had a recipe that used 50% liquor, 20% butter, and 30% sugar, you'd have a 70% cacao mass and 50% liquor.
FYI: Cocoa powder is not normally used in most chocolate.
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Post by chocodisiac on Feb 8, 2007 22:53:04 GMT -5
Yes, I am a bit confused. I understand (now) that liquor is indeed the entire bean, butter and all, but any added butter is excluded.
How are you defining cocoa solids, then? I thought that solids would refer to the non-butter portion of the nib, i.e. the part that can be separated out to become powder (and that I previously thought was what "liquor" referred to). You seem to be using the terms mass and solids interchangeably.
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Post by sugaralchemy on Feb 8, 2007 23:10:46 GMT -5
Cocoa solids are very confusing... you can thank our labeling friends for this!
I see a bar of milk chocolate. It says '37 percent cacao solids' (or 'cacao mass' - same meaning) which really means that 37 percent = liquor + butter. Probably something like 20 percent liquor and 17 percent butter. Why do they call it solids? Well... I guess butter is solid until you melt it... but then again, so is every other ingredient in chocolate... even water is solid when cold enough...
This is where I get into my original argument... the terminology and everything is very misleading and confusing. The numbers are inflated and have nothing to do with darkness, but are really used as a crude gauge for darkness. The result is just very bad for everybody.
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Post by chocodisiac on Feb 17, 2007 1:23:36 GMT -5
.
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Post by chocodisiac on Feb 17, 2007 1:25:27 GMT -5
(I'm sorry about my delays on this thread. For some inexplicable reason I cannot access this forum--or any proboard site--via my connection. I have actually now installed a proxy server on my webhosting server to get around this)
From what I've seen looking around (the web), you are mis-using the term "mass", which seems to actually be synonymous with "liquor"!
"Solids" refer to the non-butter portion of the chocolate.
Note that all three of these terms exclude any ADDED cocoa butter (or other fats, etc.), and so they should indeed be meaningful on labels, no?
I'll bet that your "37% cocoa solids" (surprisingly high) milk chocolate bar, then, is a very "dark" milk chocolate, yes?
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