New Melanger warranty policy

New Melanger Policy This is for the Santha Melanger, that I modified for use some 7 years ago, and carried no warranty at that time.  A couple years ago, a limited short warranty was added.  This is now a pretty standard 1 year warranty for the contiguous 48 USA states.  The others and international are warrantied for DOA defects and of course shipping damage.   I'm quite pleased to see the change and trust in the product.

There will be a couple new Venezuelan beans arriving in a couple weeks.  A smooth, mildly spicy, delicate Patenamo and a buttery Mantuano - and both Criollo stock.

Hickory Smoked Bacon Chocolate

Did I get your attention? Ok, the new Papua New Guinea isn't quite like that, but it is the first thing I thought of when smelling the freshly roasted nibs after winnowing. Go check out the full review.We are also taking orders for the Spectra 20 and Spectra 40 Grinders. Please read about the Warranty before ordering. They should be in early next month. Your order will reserve you one but we will not charge your credit card until they ship. And please note, the Spectra 40 is 250 lbs and takes a freight deliverable address.

Finally, we now are offering a complete list of Spare Parts for the Alchemist's Stone Melanger. And we have had machined a set of metal hub and cap for the Melanger for those that want one that can handle heat and more pressure.

     

Chocolate Making 101

My dear partner Penelope put this together, noting that so far there is not one single page outlining the entire chocolate making procedure start to finish.  Well, now there is. Chocolate Making at Home 101

It won't give you everything you need in detail (hence the '101') but gives a great overview.  For all the detailed information follow the links under Alchemist's Notebook to the right.

Melangers and Shipping

The new Melangers are in and all back orders have been filled. Also, all the larger units (Spectra 20 and 40) have been sold. There will be more in around May. If you would like to reserve a unit (or more), please contact me via email. The Spectra 20 is $1000 and the Spectra 40 is $1600. Both prices include s/h for the 48 USA states. As for shipping, rates may look a little confusing for a bit. We are in the middle of implementing live UPS and USPS rates, so the choices may look odd until we fully implement. For instance you may have the following as a set of options: UPS Ground $7.85

USPS Flat rate $9.00

4-5 lbs $8.45

UPS 3 day Select $17.56

That  third one is our current system but would still ship UPS (unless you have a PO Box of course).  The others are real live rates.  Choose whatever you want (who am I to say you can't pay more in shipping if you want ).  One caveat and sincere request.  Please make sure your shipping address is correct.  We (the developer and I)  have found a bug that if you have a typo in your address (Cresthill vs Crest hill for instance) the software will return a lower than actual value (not sure why, that is why it is a bug).  If that happens you will see a double charge on your credit card when your order is shipped as the shipping amount is adjusted.

Also, on other caveat, I am leaving the various Rush shipping options available, but PLEASE contact me know if you need something fast.  Right now if you were to choose Next Day Air, I  would ship it Next Day Air BUT can NOT guarantee  it would go out the same or next business day - the 48-72 hour shipping rule of thumb still applies.  I will bend over backwards to TRY and get it out the next day (we never ship same day without notice - orders from the previous day are packed the day after they come in at the earliest) but communication is the key.  We don't get that many rush orders, but I thought you should be informed.

12th Night, tortes and the aztecs

How's that for a title? I celebrated 12th night last night (secular form actually) and for dessert I prepared a fresh Tabasco (bean of course) based flourless torte - just to die for.   I thought I would share both parts.

69% Dark Tabasco chocolate - 6.25 lbs 5 lbs of Tabasco cocoa

5 oz  Natural cocoa butter

30 oz unrefined cane sugar

Roasted the Tabasco cocoa in two 2.5 lb batchs in the Behmor, Profile p1, 14 minutes roast time.  Cracked the cooled beans in my Cocoa Mill, winnowed them and ground them into liqueur in my Champion Juicer.  I melted my cocoa butter in the Melanger, added the Tabasco liqueur.  I did something I have never tried before which was a little elevated temperature refining.  I put the drum and contents in my oven until everything was 140F.  I heated my sugar to 180 F (and no, is doesn't melt).  I then started the Melanger running and added the sugar.  Brought the whole mass to 155 F.

Now, before you try this at home, I have an aluminum center mount for the wheels (the nylon gets brittle) and have replace the seal on my Melanger (don't ask why I had to do that) so I can take mine over the 150 limit.  If you want to try it, just go to 145 or so and all should be good.

In any case, the extra heat helped to drive off some of the acidity of the beans, but more importantly catalyzed some nice acid induces hydrolysis flavor reactions in the chocolate and really smoothed out the flavor and bumped up the complexity of the chocolate.  The temperature only stayed elevated for 4-5 hours.  I think 8-10 would have been better, but I will have to play with that more.  I considered the chocolate finished at 20 hours.

The chocolate itself has some great liveliness and was deemed almost too sweet by some household tasters.  Says something for a nearly 70% dark chocolate.  I used 1 lb to make the following torte.

Chocolate Torte

1 lb 70% chocolate (homemade is best in my opinion)

2 cups sugar

2 cups butter

8 eggs

(If you like coffee, 6 oz of espresso can be added to the eggs for a Mocha torte)

Preheat  oven to 350 F.  For really even baking, make a 1" water bath with a 12" pan and get that also pre-heating. Pull your espresso and let cool if you want a Mocha torte.  Melt the butter and chocolate together.  Also let cool to room temperature. Butter and dust with cocoa powder a 9"  pan.  I find a springform or cheesecake (removable bottom) pan works well.

Whisk the eggs and sugar together.  Whisk in the espresso if desired.

Fold in the cooled chocolate mixture (chocolate to eggs so you don't set the eggs).  The "batter" may well gel up - kind of odd, but ok and what allowed me to put the nice spiderweb pattern on the torte.

Pour into the prepared pan and put in the oven (in the waterbath if you are doing that).

Bake 45 minutes.  Edges will be set but the middle may jiggle a little.  It's ok.  Remove and let cool.

This supposedly serves 16. It is VERY rich.  I like it the next day best. The rest of the  chocolate we molded up.  I tested out a new mold.  It holds 72 0.2 oz chocolates.  I will be selling a limited amount of these.  Look for them in the next week or so.  Someone (thanks Jasmine) got creative as soon as they were out.

Our Ode to the Aztecs.

We just ran out of Ocumare, and are very low on the Papua New Guinea . But the new Panama should be in Wednesday, and available soon there after.

Just in time for Mother's day

Ok, not exactly the perfect Mother's Day mold.  They were meant to be, but the mold company forgot a zero (hey, what's a zero anyway - it's nothing), so we have a limited supply (5 actually) of these.  Not normally what I would offer, cut upon seeing them, they do have a nice bit of detail. On another note, we have sold out of the timer model of the Melanger very quickly.  I hope everyone got one that wanted one.  We still have plenty of the on/off switch models.

The "New" Stone Melangers are in

In no small part to Chocolate Alchemy, Santha is now calling their motor ventilated wet grinders Chocolate Stone Melangers. So, I will probably start referring to them that way. So if you see mention to the Santha Melanger, or Stone Melanger, it is the Santha Wet Grinder made and adjusted for us chocolate makers. To distinguish it solidly from their other line, they will only be coming in maroon but there is now the choice of a 99 hour electric timer. The regular Melangers will still be $265 (including shipping in the 48 upper US states), but the timers will increase the price to $295. And since I have not spoken about them in a while, the non-timer units are also available in 220 v and we can handle out of country shipping. Shipping varies pretty wildly out of the country, so please write and ask if you want to know the prices. In general non-US units are about $50-100 more due to shipping. In response to a couple of customers innovation (thank you Alan and Brad), I experimented with my Melanger this weekend, testing out how well it handles taking grinding nibs. Both Alan and Brad have modified their Santhas to a larger motor and reported being able to bypass the Champion and liquefy the nibs directly in the Santha. Well, I am pleased to report that the stock Melanger can also do the job. I have not pushed it to a high capacity yet, but check out the photos below of 2 lbs of roasted Cuyagua. The main "trick" is that you run the unit with no spring, or no nut at all. The weight of the rollers does it all and it does not bind up.

	At the beginning, the nibs running freely.And if you have not seen it before, that is the hot new maroon color all Melangers are now coming in.
	15 minutes in and it is just starting to get pasty and sticky
	At 30 minutes, the mass suddenly started to "flow". Still course, but flowing.
	45 minutes and it is quite fluid and getting smoother almost as you watch.
	One hour and we are where we would be with the Champion (except the few nibs that need to be scraped down).

All I did was put the rollers in, without even the top nut. I started the Melanger and poured in my WELL CLEANED (more on this later) nibs. After 15 minutes, I could tell something was happening. Thirty minutes in it started flowing and after an hour, everything was nice and smooth. I added the cap around 15 minutes, but I don't think it matters. I did not add any external heat at all - just the weight of the rollers and friction took care of it.

OK, Great you say - I don't need to buy a Champion Juicer. Well, frankly that depends on you. By using the Melanger only, you need to make sure your nibs are VERY clean of husk because you have nothing filtering it out. In the Champion, the liqueur comes out the bottom, and any husk you have left in, comes out the front. By eliminating the filtering step, the onus is completely on you (if you get nibs from me, they WILL have some husk left) to make sure it is all gone or at a level you can accept. The up side is you don't loose anything to the void in the Champion. If you put in 1 lb 6 oz of nibs, you have 1 lb 6 oz of nibs, not somewhere around a 1 lb like in the Champion. So, until I do more testing, and tasting, I will reserve judgment which method I like best, but regardless, there you go - another option in your Alchemical bag of chocolate making tips and tricks.

And something to look for in the next few days. I have mentioned you can either use the Crankandstein cocoa mill or the Champion juicer (another use for the Champion you may or may not want) to crack nibs. I have done a efficiency test, evaluating dust, husk and nib recovery using the two machines. I will get those numbers and pictures up soon....back to the lab...

NewWay to Crack Cocoa Beans

By way of a customer's comment (thank you John H.) I tried cracking some cocoa beans with my Champion Juicer. I had thought of this some time ago, but never pursued it because the Crankandstein Cocoa mill works so well. I just ran the whole cocoa beans through the juicer without the lower plate on. It cracks them with a single pass and shoots them out the bottom. It works with both raw and roasted beans. When I first tried this, I was a little worried about how well it works and whether I had just made the Crankandstein obsolete. Well, after a number of pounds of beans, both raw and roasted, I have the following observations:

• The Champion cracks the beans into smaller pieces than the Cocoa Mill
• There is more dust, and thus more waste with the Champion
• The Champion makes a larger mess while cracking (nibs fly everywhere)
• It takes longer to crack the beans with the Champion (about 1lb/90 sec vs 4-6lb/min)
• The Champion does a better job at separating the husk from the nib in raw unroasted cocoa beans.

And likewise, this leads me to a couple of conclusions.

• The Crankandstein is not obsolete as it is quicker and creates less mess and waste
• If you are only doing a couple of pounds, the Champion may work fine for you.
• If you want to make you own raw nibs (for eating or post roasting), the Champion does a great job

Basically, it is up to you and what your needs are. I found the husk pieces were smaller with the Champion and so winnowing was a little easier, but as I said, there was more dust (husk and nib) that needs to be removed (I shook my nibs in a fine mesh colander for this test) so that takes a little more time. Either way, we have a new tool in out Alchemy arsenal, or more like, a new use for an existing tool.

Please try it out and report back. I am especially interested in those of you who have both a Champion and Crankandstein Cocoa mill.