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Post by lilypa on Jun 21, 2013 17:22:06 GMT -5
Hey All,
I'm just curious if any, or several, of you commercial chocolate makers would be willing to share your generalized process for developing production bars from a new (to you) bean.
I'm curious primarily about the process you go through or what steps you may take to determine which roast profile you will ultimately use for a new bean? What sugar content you end up choosing for that bean? What weight of beans do you use to develop your roast ideas (or how many lbs of beans minimum may you use to determine your desired roast profile)?
Am I asking too much? I hope I didn't cross some taboo "don't ask that kind of trade secret" question. If I did, I guess none of you will respond. I really am curious how other folks have gone about the process.
Cheers, Dave
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Post by kevin on Jun 22, 2013 9:17:12 GMT -5
Good questions, liliypa. I am curious about these decisions also.
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gap
Apprentice
Posts: 390
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Post by gap on Jun 22, 2013 17:15:10 GMT -5
I have a feeling it is just experimentation and "trial and error" and getting to know different beans/varieties/origins and what works with them for your machine - but would be interested to see if there are any different answers.
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Post by feedme on Jun 24, 2013 4:51:34 GMT -5
One of the best thing about making your own chocolate from the bean is you can do whatever you like...
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Post by lilypa on Jun 26, 2013 15:33:06 GMT -5
My mental idea of it was simply to buy enough beans to make multiple test batches of time and temperature. Each test batch could be some standard weight like 2 lb or 1 kg or a bit more. Someone mentioned to me once of using a grid (time and temp).
You may end up not liking the taste of a few of the beans and automatically ruling them out, post roast. I guess those beans then just get discarded? I'm curious what folks have done to not waste product when developing their roast profile for a new bean? (Or what they do with those "poorly" roasted test beans to turn them into something useful besides compost?)
Then you may actually turn the remaining decent-tasting roasted beans from your test grid into actual chocolate (using the same % of sugar and refining & conching times for each remaining batch). Seems like taste-testing is in order after that. Do you simply do your own taste-testing or have a few folks over? So then, let's say you like a couple (multiple) of roasts. Do folks out there then play around with a new grid of these preferred (liked) roast profiles and differing sugar contents and do another round of taste testing?
The minimum grid size could be 4, or you could start with 9, or even 16 tests. At a bare minimum, I'm thinking you'd want start with 4 test batches (say 4 kg) of beans, or maybe 9 kg of beans. If you only end up choosing 1 - 2 of these roasts that you really like from a grid of 9 then you're still wasting a lot of beans initially. I guess I'm mainly curious if small commercial folks out there have any tips or tricks they'd be willing to share to minimize the amount of test beans?
I haven't made anything greater than a batch of 5 lbs so far and I'd like to minimize how much money I spend working to develop a single bean. Over the last year, I've roasted some 14 different beans. I'm now ready to try my hand at focusing on one or two of my favorites.
Cheers, Dave
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