As you may have seen, most of the Venezuelan varieties have been moving very quickly.  We are out of Rio Caribe F1 and Carenero Superior.  Wholesale stock of Ocumare is gone (along with the F1 and Carenero).  The good news is that more of the Rio Caribe F1 is on it’s way, along with a wonderfully luscious Sur de Lago.  More Ocumare will be in around the middle of October.  If you want or need any larger (thinking full bags) let me know and I will make sure it is there for you.

That’s it for now.

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Well, not a single person posted a guess what those previous photos were.  That’s ok.  I would have been surprised if many worked it out.  It’s something I get to see quite a bit.  It was the carbon dioxide wafting off the dry ice I use to blanket the cocoa bean stock here.  Why?  I’m glad you asked.  The number one reason is to keep cocoa moths from hatching.  It’s one of the unexpected pitfalls of keeping organic stock - hatching moths.  It can really ruin stock.

Some years ago before I knew this could be a problem we had quite a hatch out and I lost quite a bit of cocoa - it technically was still good, but I just would not sell it.  I was not about to use anything toxic to keep them under control and could not reasonably keep all the stock refrigerated (the solution organic warehouses use) so I had to come up with another way to ‘fumigate’ the cocoa beans.  I found some references to using dry ice for grain storage, tried it out, and it worked perfect.  It pushes oxygen out of the way (notice how it flows down) and suffocates anything before it can mature and hatch.  So now, every month or so, I go out, get a block of dry ice, crack it up, and put a little in each container.  24 hours later, it’s finished and the stock is safe.

Do you need to worry about doing this?  No, not really.  At least not if you are just buying a few pounds.  I’ve done it already.  It’s something you may want to consider if you are getting full bags, just to be sure.

Very Alchemical isn’t it.

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OK, this one may or may not be fair, but I swear it is cocoa bean and homemade chocolate related.  And something I’ve been meaning to address for some time.  So, give it a go, and I’ll use it a spring board a little later.

Filed under: Cocoa Beans, What's new & Updates, Macro | 2 Comments »

Well, that was indeed the wheels of the Santha with product on them.  The ‘trick’ if there was one was that it was not chocolate.  It was praline.  Some time ago I read in The Cake Bible that it just was not possible to make Praline at home - that it was not possible to get it smooth enough.  Sound at all familiar?  Well, I just had to try it, and to my mind, it IS fully possible to make home made praline.

Here is the whole batch.

One of the references I found to praline was that it used caramelized sugar.  I was going to use this as a Macro guessing photo, but I felt it was too obscure, so here is just a shot of the caramelized sugar, after it was cooled, and I broke it.

I also tried a batch with just straight granulated sugar and to my tastes, found out I liked it better.  I’ll be putting the whole recipe and procedure together, but if you can make chocolate, this is child’s play.  Roast, no cracking or winnowing, grind and refine and Bob’s your uncle.  Home made praline.

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Brad and  Chad had it right.  It is indeed the teeth on the cutter wheel on the Champion.  On that note, have a look at what a few hundred pounds of chocolate will do.

If your cutter wheel is looking like the one of the left, you might want to pick up a new one.  Yes, I have them over with the Champion Juicer.

Good luck on the next photo.  It just has character.  To me it is obvious, but you have to tell me if it is or not.

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Well, Mike had the exact right answer.  It is the hinge to the Behmor roasting basket

.

Try this one on for size.

Yep, part of something used here for making chocolate.

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