Some Interesting Links and a Thought for the Day

As is the case in most subjects I know something about, I suddenly come across information that shows me just how little I actually know. In the last couple of weeks, as I work on the conch/refiner, I have been researching conching, and specifically the temperatures at which chocolate is conched. My understanding was 120-130 F at the most, and over that you can burn the chocolate. It would appear that is not the case in all circumstances. The biggest surprise is that conching is often at 70-80 C, much higher than I originally thought. I am now incorporating that into the proto-type conch design. That said, I do have to point out that I did notice that I could tell a difference in the chocolate conched at on 110 F. It was dark chocolate though, not milk chocolate. Also, I have been meaning to put this link up. Wayne, is really big into chocolate, especially milk chocolate. He has a lot of just generally interesting stuff on this site, but what is really great is both that he has gotten into making his own and just how inventive he is. As one person put it, he is a real McGyver - duct tape! Anyway, he did not have the greatest go of chocolate making , but also used equipment he had on had, and not necessarily what I would suggest using. On the other hand, his section on tempering chocolate is absolutely wonderful. Please read it. In my spare time I will put that link in the tempering section here, plus incorporate a lot of his information.

So, I will leave you with this to ponder.

"The more I learn, the more I know; the more I know, the more I learn; the more I learn, the more I learn I didn't know what I thought I knew. I thought I knew a lot, but now know I did not. I do know that I don't know what I don't know so I must keep learning what I do not know even though I do not know what I do not know. In the end, it looks like I will know nothing because the more I learn, the more I know I know less than I thought I knew. I think I would rather know nothing, and be wrong about that than know I know it all and be wrong about that!"

I think that sums up the path of Chocolate Alchemy (and maybe life)

Past, Present, and Future

Welcome back to the beginning of an exciting new year. I am hoping this year will bring a lot of progress to the Art and Science of Homemade Chocolate - Chocolate Alchemy. Last year I learned quite a bit about chocolate making and made all of my year end goals. I am really pleased about that. We developed our Cocoa mill, have 5 cocoa bean varieties in stock and started our refiner R&D.

In particular, the rock tumbler turned chocolate ball mill refiner is working out very nicely. I took some particularly coarse textured, rough and sour flavored chocolate (I tested some purposeful under roasting), combined it with an equal portion of 3/16" stainless steel shot, and set it tumbling in the ball mill. Initially, I tried it without any heat and saw no change in the chocolate. I then made a very simple enclosure for the container portion of the ball mill, put a heating pad under it (you don't want to heat motors) and again let it tumble. A day later the chocolate was significantly smoother, although it did have a touch of sugar grit left, but so much less than anything to date. The biggest change was the flavor profile and how it melted in my mouth. Wow, what a change. The sourness had disappeared and was replaced by a pleasant brightness. I really did not expect this as usually an open air conch is needed for these kind of changes. It was a nice surprise. I will start experimenting with different ratios of chocolate and SS balls, and will probably try some mixed media (SS cones, rods and triangles) to see if I can optimize the particle size reduction

I suspect in the end, this little tumbler (a quaint 4") will prove the concept, but a larger diameter tumbler will be needed to generate enough energy and grinding force to get the chocolate where we want it to be..

R & D materials are off to CrankandStien for some manufacturing work for a conch/refiner. I hope to have a working model in a month or so, and I will test that out and report back.

For this year, I expect to have a working refiner and/or combination conch to offer. The new crops of cocoa beans are starting to come in. The new Barinas is quite nice, with a few more aromatic than last year. I am hearing about the availability of some organic Ocumare and even some rare Porcelana. I have not tasted any, but I hope to carry a new Carenero Superior as the old crop runs low, and maybe a few new varieties as I get to taste them.

And finally, I hope to continue to meet more interesting and exciting people this year (yes, I mean you my customers, friends and fellow Alchemists), continue the quest for homemade chocolate and rediscover the Art and Science of Chocolate Alchemy and bring it to you!

Happy Chocolate making everyone.

Chocolate Refining at Home Breakthrough

Some time ago, Frederick Schilling of Dagoba suggested I add some stainless steel balls to my ice cream maker "conch" in an effort to refine the chocolate a little. Well, that did not work really great. Some, but not a lot. It did get me thinking, and looking and wondering what I was actually trying to do and why it was not working. I realized I needed to get the whole thing rotating on it's side, but to do that, the container would have to be sealed like a jar.It turns out, what I was trying to "invent" was a ball mill or jar mill. Well, there are no inexpensive ball mills out there that fit our needs, but what there is out there are rock tumblers. I pick one up, put a plastic "jar" in it (the one it comes with is NOT food grade plastic), added a handful of 1/4" SS balls and some granulated sugar and started it tumbling. A day later, I have a wonderful powdered sugar ready to add to my cocoa liqueur.

A little more research into ball mills lead me to a number of pyrotechnic sites, as they grind their own chemicals. References seem to indicate ball mills can easily reduce particles to 10-20 micron, which is exactly where refined chocolate needs to be. I even found a few references that chocolate can be refined this way. Go figure.

The next test will be to add the sugar to some cocoa liqueur and see how the resulting chocolate is. I will also be trying to grind the cocoa nibs directly this way (maybe no need of the Champion?) and various combinations of nibs and sugar, pre-ground and not.

I will keep you all up to date with this "new" refining technique.

Chocolate Progress

I finished to first two tests in my prototype conch and it is very promising. Let me say first off that the conch is nothing more than an inexpensive ice cream maker. I put a heating pad cushioned by a pad where ice would go, and set the whole thing at a 45 degree angle. Also, as most ice cream maker motors are only for intermittent use, it is plugged into a 24 hour timer that turns the motor off (but leaves the heating on) once an hour for half of an hour. It has run fine for two batches now, three days at a time. The lesson from the first batch was two fold:

1) Don't use powdered sugar. The cornstarch combines with trace water and with the application of heat, thickens the whole mixture too much.

2) You don't need powdered sugar. This was a major surprise. Apparently 2-3 days at 110 F with trace water around dissolves the sugar and that portion of the grit is gone.

Thanks to the advice of Frederick of Dagoba, I added about 200 one quarter inch stainless steel balls to the second batch. In effect this made a ball mill. A day into the conch/refining I checked the batch and it was just starting to smooth out the extra grit. I then dropped the motor and that experiment ended, but I would call it a partial success.

So give it a try. Get a $15 ice cream maker, a heating pad and some SS balls and you can give refining a try.

Also, I made a neat discovery about hiding the "grit flaw". Just take your chocolate (go ahead and conch it, but don't worry about the refining portion, i.e. no balls) and add nuts, fruit or even some ground coffee to the batch. The texture of those items completely overshadows the chocolate texture flaw and no one but you, me and everyone here will know how you made such great chocolate.

Give it a try and let me know how it goes.

Chocolate Refining

I had a number of thoughts today about various options in regards to getting the final chocolate smooth enough. The industrial method is to run the chocolate through a refiner that wears down the particle sizes, usually to around 20 microns. So far I have tried refining my own granulated sugar with both the Champion (which did not work appreciably) and a Vita-Mix which gave me a somewhat, but no where near fine enough, sugar and chocolate. Likewise, my test with confection sugar (ultra fine) also resulted in less than a super smooth chocolate (besides, it has cornstarch in it, and I really don't want that in my chocolate). An online search about the physical properties of various sugars lead me back to my brewing days. It was a comment that superfine sugar has cornstarch added to keep it from clumping and that my priming corn and cane sugar from homebrewing was notorious for clumping. I wonder if that grade of sugar just might be the ingredient needed for homemade chocolate, when no refiner is readily available.

I will have to try it out on some on my new Criollo and see how it goes. If anyone has some priming sugar on hand, please give it a try and let me know how it goes.

Also, I really have my doubts about it, but I did find out that fructose melts at just over 102 C. I wonder about melting the sugar and adding it to the ground cocoa straight from the Champion. Sucrose melts just too hot to try. I would not want to burn the chocolate but getting the whole mixture too hot, but I have noted that heat from the ?inside? is taken better by the chocolate than external heat. Again, worth trying.