Cleaning

When your Melanger arrives it needs to be cleaned of manufacturing dust. You have a couple options.

1) Wipe out the bowl and granite stones with a clean cloth.

Add 1 lb of sugar to the bowl, assemble the unit (as described below) and run for about an hour.

Alternately, you can also run a couple cups of vegetable oil for about an hour.

2) If you feel more comfortable washing it, feel free. Hot soap and water are fine. Note: The Melanger parts are NOT dishwasher safe. Wash by hand.  The warranty is void if washed in a dishwasher.  In particular, the epoxy holding the bowl together and the plastic parts can not take the heat of a dishwasher.

Let the melanger parts COMPLETELY dry before using for chocolate. You can speed the drying by placing your bowl and rollers in a warm (no more than 140 F/60 C) oven for an hour or so.

Refining Chocolate with your Melanger

Make sure the melanger is ABSOLUTELY DRY when you start.

Just a touch of water can ruin the entire batch, seizing and leaving you with a thick fudge like mass that cannot be refined in the Melanger.

1. Warm the stainless steel, granite bottomed bowl and center assembly with the rollers in the oven on the lowest setting for 10-15 minutes. The goal is to warm them to above 100 F. Do not let them get above 140 F. Damage may occur and will void the warranty.

2. Attach the rollers (if the rollers spin free, the rollers are upside down), place the spring on the shaft and tighten down with the cap. Tension is not a particular issue. Screw it all the way down but don't over tighten it as it may break.  Likewise, leaving it loose may slow your refining.

3. Turn on the Melanger and slowly add warm cocoa nibs, sugar (and milk solids) and melted cocoa butter your recipe calls for. Do a handful or so at a time, taking care not to bog down and stall the rollers.

Recipe Notes:

٠      Cocoa nibs (and cocoa liquor, i.e. ground nibs) contains about 50% cocoa butter and the amount of cocoa butter helps the chocolate "flow" while refining.  Too little cocoa butter and the chocolate may clump around the rollers and may even damage the Melanger.

٠       At a minimum, you want approximately 35% cocoa butter in your final recipe.

٠       For instance, this could be

70% cocoa liqueur/nibs and 30% sugar

or

20% cocoa nibs, 25% cocoa butter, 30% sugar and 25% powdered milk.

The sugar you add should be regular white cane sugar. Do not use "powdered" sugar, this contains cornstarch. There is no need to pre-grind sugar. The Melanger will handle sugar crystals of just fine.

Other sugars may or may not work due to their moisture content. Brown sugar for instance needs to be dried before it can be used. Malt powder is notorious for holding enough moisture to cause your batch of chocolate to seize.

We specifically DO NOT RECOMMEND the following sweeteners and ingredients for refining with the Melanger:

Honey

Agave syrup

Any syrup

Liquid milk or cream

Condensed milk

Water

Alcohol or water based extracts (like vanilla extract)

Unroasted nuts or unroasted (raw) cocoa nibs

Fresh or not fully dried fruits

The use of any of these (or any other ingredient that contains water - we just can not name them all) will most likely cause the chocolate to seize and may damage the equipment. Melangers damaged by the use of any liquid based ingredient is NOT covered by warranty. Use at your own risk.  If you have ANY concerns about the appropriateness of an ingredient, please feel free to contact Chocolate Alchemy via [email protected].

5.     Your chocolate should be "flowing" smoothly over and under the rollers like a liquid. If not, something is not right. Check the Troubleshooting section at the end of this document. It may be as simple as warming your chocolate a little or adding your ingredients a little slower so they have time to incorporate.

6.     The Melanger is meant to be run continuously. This does not mean something can't go wrong, especially when you first get it. In general, we recommend keeping a close eye on it for the first few hours you use it make sure it is running properly. Although people do We never recommend leaving it running completely unattended.

7.     Once your chocolate has attained the level of refining that you desire (taste it - it is your best tool), turn off the Melanger and pour your chocolate into chocolate molds for storage or proceed directly to tempering and finish molding.

9.     Clean the Melanger with hot water, soap and a scrub brush. The shafts that the wheels run on unscrew and should be cleaned (and inside the wheels) after each batch.  Make sure you rinse away ALL the soap. Soap is not desirable in chocolate. Again, the Melanger parts are NOT dishwasher safe.  And of course, do not forget, all parts must be completely dry before you use it again.

Troubleshooting and Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

Q: The cocoa nibs and sugar are just packing down and the rollers are just running on top.

A: You can not just dump roasted nibs and sugar together in the Melanger and expect it to make chocolate. See above for how to add ingredients.

Q: Can the Melanger make liquor out of nibs.

A: Yes it can, but we often find it is more work than it is worth. If you want to try, pre-heat your nibs and refiner bowl and grinding wheels to about 140 F/60 C in an oven. Assemble the Melanger and start it running (it will be LOUD). Slowly add a 4 ozs of nibs. Slow add another pound over the next hour as the nibs start to liquefy. If the nibs start packing down, you are probably adding them too fast. You will probably need to turn off the unit, remove some, and start it again.

Q: I added just a tiny amount of honey to my recipe (maybe a teaspoon), but now my chocolate is this thick fudge like mess.

A: Go read the directions again - you can not add ANY water based ingredient or your chocolate will seize.

Q: I mixed up one of your recipes for milk chocolate. It was dry and crumbly. I added it to the Melanger but it just stuck to everything and clumped up until the motor stopped.

A: Go read again how to add ingredients. The Melanger can do many things and is quite up to the task of refining chocolate, but you can not just throw everything in and walk away. In general, if your mixture is crumbly or too thick, you either need to add more cocoa butter (melted), less sugar or maybe just a little heat to melt the cocoa butter that is present (cocoa liquor is 50% cocoa butter).

Q:  I am making white chocolate and there are grey streaks in starting to show up.

A:  It sounds like you did not clean the shafts that the granite wheels ride on.  Unscrew the rods, clean them and inside the granite wheels very well, dry them thoroughly, and re-assemble.  That should solve the problem.

In general, if you refining mixture isn't "flowing" like melted chocolate then something is wrong and needs to be addressed.