I’m getting confused on rations between cocoa mass, sugar and cocoa butte.  Is there a go to formula in percentages? 

I’ve read all your posts about profile roasting but I’m still not sure where to start.  Can you give me just a basic profile that will work for all beans?

In many of the ORAC scales I've seen, I've noticed that cocoa powder scores roughly 49,000/100g while baking chocolate is ~ 60,000/100g.

Do you think that there is any danger of the metals in the husk of brewing cocoa? 

I make a 75% dark chocolate using cocoa nibs, cocoa butter and coconut sugar. It's very nice but I would like to make a lower % chocolate for my customers who prefer a less intense chocolate experience

This week I want to review and put in one place how time relates to chocolate making.  What you are going to see again is that there is a range, and there is no cut and dry X length of time it takes to make chocolate from the bean.

How long does it take to make semi-sweet chocolate and what is the recipe?

What do you think of beans from Cameroon?

I have recently had the chance to experiment with a very powerful 10 tray combo/convection oven. I was really excited about all the features but the results I have got so far have been disastrous! So I would be really grateful for your thoughts on resolving this mystery.

I have been roasting the Belize Maya Mountain beans in 2lb batches in my home oven. So far I have tried two different profiles: 

It is about aging or blocking the chocolate right after the melanger/conching.
I have always blocked them untempered for about 2 weeks before melting them for use. But I heard some professional chefs said they age them in tempered form.
Questions:

I have a friend whose Mom needs medical MJ for an illness and she loves my chocolate. 

I just heard about "Ruby Chocolate" from Callebuat. Do you know what kind of bean this is and have any info about it? Would like your 2¢

Sometimes you leave out drying time and sometimes you don’t.  In the case of your patanemo recommendation, is 10/3/4 drying/development/finishing

I have been playing with trying to control my roasts with the Gourmia and was having a lot of trouble getting the temps to hit about 212 at 10 minutes, and then tamping down the temperature for the development phase.

How can I make chocolate with honey? -- 'The Updated Answer'

So why am I going to answer it again?  It boils down to the scientific method.  Science, good science, by its nature changes and evolves as we learn new things.  It does not necessarily  invalidate previous findings completely.  It refines it and fine tunes it.  To that end, I have somewhat a new answer to this question in that it appears (note the disclaimer for future updates of failure) that I have successfully tempered chocolate with honey in it.

I have heard you should stop roasting when cocoa beans start to smell good so you don’t lose all those great flavors.  You don’t really talk about that though. How do you know when to stop a roast?

I have been following your roasting profile recommendations and I am loving the results.  I am having a lot of trouble though keeping the roast from going too fast.  I know we are driving off water in the first part so I turn the power down 5-10% to account for that but it never seems enough.  I’m afraid to turn it down more and mess up the roast by having it take too long.  How much should I have to turn my roaster down?

ew questions have been a little light lately.  I want to share a correspondence I had due to Ask the Alchemist #211.  Because I have something planned Ask the Alchemist #212 (is it obvious to everyone what the subject will be?) I’m going to call this one 211.5.