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Post by charlieangel on Feb 28, 2011 3:04:51 GMT -5
Bean: CA's madagascar '10 175g nibs 49g sugar 19g cocoa butter
Roasted in behmore p3 for around 13 minutes before they started popping? ground in ultra cocoatown deluxe for 14 hours.
very pungent odor. Very noticeable.
Flavor is still a tiny bit gritty (I suspect this is the stuff I was scraping off the center and scraper arm. Not really a lot of volume to keep things moving), starts off fruity but quickly gets an off-chemical, maybe even vinegary taste?
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Post by Brad on Feb 28, 2011 14:33:51 GMT -5
Without actually smelling or tasting the chocolate, it sounds to me like all of the acids and tannins weren't yet driven off. I found that I needed to run my chocolate in my Santha for between 40-50 hours in order to get a nice flavour.
The vinegary note tells me that you either didn't roast your beans long enough, OR you didn't conche your chocolate long enough.
Gritty tells me that you for sure did not refine it long enough.
It's tough to make such small batches with that machine. Next time, try somewhere in the range of 3lbs - about 1/2 of the capacity of the machine.
Cheers. Hope that helps. Brad
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Post by charlieangel on Mar 1, 2011 20:06:02 GMT -5
Thanks for the suggestions, Brad, I'm certainly going to try roasting a little longer and planning on a 2 day refine/conch cycle. I'm wondering if I should melt down and add the chocolate from these 3 35g bars I have and add to it so I don't waste it..
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gap
Apprentice
Posts: 390
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Post by gap on Mar 1, 2011 20:35:10 GMT -5
I have never made chocolate from scratch, but my pastry and confections experience says: bad tasting ingredient = bad tasting final result. Maybe put the first bars down to "experience"
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Post by Brad on Mar 2, 2011 14:21:47 GMT -5
Gap;
Sometimes that's the case. However in the case of chocolate, the taste of the product changes drastically over time - from being quite acidic, gritty and unpleasant at first, to rich, fruity (sometimes), and decadent after a few days.
Two of the biggest mistakes that I made when I first started making chocolate were: 1. Not roasting long enough (DON'T USE HIGH TEMPERATURES!!! YOU BURN YOUR BEANS) 2. Not conching long enough to drive off the tannins and acids.
Both failures resulted in chocolate that was nowhere near what I make now.
A good analogy would be to take coffee beans in their raw state and make a cup of coffee from them, then properly roast and grind them and make another cup. Drastic differences.
Cheers. Brad.
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