Post by charlieangel on Apr 3, 2011 20:16:56 GMT -5
First of all, thanks everyone for the encouragement and advice in the other threads.
Headway has been made. I created a ~60% batch of the Madagascar, added a half of an Organic Madagascar vanilla bean I had laying around (thanks for that advice, Brad!).
Roasting was a little longer at the p3 setting (2 pounds), shelling was super easy, though. 90% of the beans just popped right out of the shells without exploding. Found a dozen or so moldy beans that I tossed.
Placed into refiner on Thursday night and ran constantly until around 9PM Saturday night. At this point I swapped out the rollers with the "hooks" that came with the refiner to see what would happen. What happened was a lot of squealing from the machine (no idea what was catching) and it couldn't keep the temperature up so it almost went solid on me. I woke up to the machine screaming around 2AM and ended up stopping the machine and just scraped it all out into a mixing bowl and went back to bed. (the set-up is about 4 feet from my bed.. studio apartments = WINNING)
This morning, the mixture was still 'soft' (hooray for non-tempering), did a quick temper on it and dumped into molds, even wrapped/packaged them to see how it would look.
The flavor is extremely intense. It's like getting punched in the mouth a bit. It's that same over-chemically kinda flavor I got before, but much reduced, so it's not bad now, but it's definitely different. Pungent would be a good way to describe it. It's edible and I'll be mailing out to some of my girls back home. I think I'm just not a huge fan of the Madagascar and if I keep picking it up, I'll have to figure out something to blend with it to take it down a notch. Then again, I'm a wimp and really only like my chocolate under 70% (My favorite Valrhona is the 64%), more than that and it's just too bitter for me to get, retain, and enjoy the notes.
So anyway, it's not a complete failure. Am I satisfied with the batch? Not entirely. After 3 batches, I realize that the pungent weirdness in the chocolate is just a bean characteristic that I need to mitigate, I don't think it's bad, just very different. I definitely see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Also, test rode 2 900-1000cc motorcycles the other day. talk about a kick to the crotch. Instant speed....
Headway has been made. I created a ~60% batch of the Madagascar, added a half of an Organic Madagascar vanilla bean I had laying around (thanks for that advice, Brad!).
Roasting was a little longer at the p3 setting (2 pounds), shelling was super easy, though. 90% of the beans just popped right out of the shells without exploding. Found a dozen or so moldy beans that I tossed.
Placed into refiner on Thursday night and ran constantly until around 9PM Saturday night. At this point I swapped out the rollers with the "hooks" that came with the refiner to see what would happen. What happened was a lot of squealing from the machine (no idea what was catching) and it couldn't keep the temperature up so it almost went solid on me. I woke up to the machine screaming around 2AM and ended up stopping the machine and just scraped it all out into a mixing bowl and went back to bed. (the set-up is about 4 feet from my bed.. studio apartments = WINNING)
This morning, the mixture was still 'soft' (hooray for non-tempering), did a quick temper on it and dumped into molds, even wrapped/packaged them to see how it would look.
The flavor is extremely intense. It's like getting punched in the mouth a bit. It's that same over-chemically kinda flavor I got before, but much reduced, so it's not bad now, but it's definitely different. Pungent would be a good way to describe it. It's edible and I'll be mailing out to some of my girls back home. I think I'm just not a huge fan of the Madagascar and if I keep picking it up, I'll have to figure out something to blend with it to take it down a notch. Then again, I'm a wimp and really only like my chocolate under 70% (My favorite Valrhona is the 64%), more than that and it's just too bitter for me to get, retain, and enjoy the notes.
So anyway, it's not a complete failure. Am I satisfied with the batch? Not entirely. After 3 batches, I realize that the pungent weirdness in the chocolate is just a bean characteristic that I need to mitigate, I don't think it's bad, just very different. I definitely see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Also, test rode 2 900-1000cc motorcycles the other day. talk about a kick to the crotch. Instant speed....