Ask the Alchemist #177

Level: Alchemist

Reading time: 13 min

Hi, John - I just watched your roasting video. I am one of those people (for the last 1.5 years since I moved to Seattle) who doesn't currently have an oven. I hope to move in the next few months, but until then I've been taking my beans to my son's house to roast them in his oven. After watching this video, I'd like your opinion.

The oven is a Wisco - 1300 Watts.

https://www.amazon.com/Wisco-Wisco-620-Commercial-Convection-Counter/dp/B013SF411M

Somehow I made the assumption that using this for my beans wouldn't be a good idea because the air circulation is so strong inside it; much stronger than a traditional convection oven. When using it for typical baking I need to drop the temp about 25* from what recipes recommend. Now I'm not so sure. This thing is small - about 15in wide, so these are the Pyrex dishes I have that will fit. Of course, I don't want to take a chance on wrecking a batch of beans. Given what I've described, do you see any problem using this for cacao?

Let us get this out of the way early.

I am going to lie to you today.

That is a lie.

What I mean by that is that in a binary world, something is either the truth or a lie, and if I am not telling you the whole truth, I therefore must be lying to you.

This is basically I joke I tell to get the attention of a group of 8^th graders when I talk about the science of chocolate making.  Go watch my youtube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi2RY8zqy9g ) where I tell the whole story.  Suffice it to say, I am NOT going to actually lie to you (on purpose) but I am going to leave a lot out since what I am going to talk about is full of maths and thermodynamics that are going to make many people’s eyes glaze over.  My goal is to get you to understand what is basically going on and why I am making the statements and assertions I make.

And it’s very possible many of you CAN handle the truth.

With that, hold tight, and let’s jump in.

Hard.

First the answer.  Yes, you can use that oven.  For 1 to 2 lbs of beans.

Now I will tell you why I say that.  But I need you to be somewhat conversant in some basic terms and how I think.

From Google – “The British thermal unit (BTU or Btu) is a traditional unit of work equal to about 1055 joules. It is the amount of work needed to raise the temperature of one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit.”

I am starting there because I know from empirical experience that my Royal #5 coffee roaster produces about 42000 btu/hour with propane.  How do I know that?  I measured the orifice of the propane outlet and looked up the BTU/hour connected to standard liquid propane.

Multiplying that out, that translates to 44310000 joules/hour.

I can roast 35 lbs in my Royal in about 20 minutes or one third of an hour.  That means I need  14770000 joules of energy for 35 lbs regardless of time it takes me to get it there.  Dividing by 35, that means 422000 joules per pound are required.

Part of this kind of number crunching is verifying I am in the ballpark.  I’m going to do that with checking my pre-heat requirements against how long I know it takes me to pre-heat my roaster.

Iron has a specific heat capacity of 0.45 j/g C.

I know my roaster weights about 300 lbs, but estimate the portion I heat up to 350 F is only about one third of it or 100 lbs.

100 lbs = 45 kg iron =45000 grams

350 F is a change in temperature of about 150 C.

0.45 x 45000 x 150 = 3037500 joules to pre-heat.  If I divide by the heat input (44310000 j/hr) and convert to minutes (multiply by 60)

3037500/44310000 * 60 = 4.11

4.1 minutes to pre-heat.  Yep, that is not a lie.  Some days it’s a touch longer, but it’s in the ballpark, so I am counting that as confirmation that my heat input and roasting requirements are about right.

Next, we can use those numbers to see what a 1300 watt convection oven should be able to do.  But we need to get everything in the same unit.

Again, from Google:

“One watt of power converted to joule per second equals to 1.00 J/s. How many joules per second of power are in 1 watt? The answer is: The change of 1 W ( watt ) unit of power measure equals = to 1.00 J/s ( joule per second ) as the equivalent measure for the same power type.”

That just means that 1300 watts = 1300 j/s

We know we need   422000 j/lb.  A little quick math canceling out joules and the minimum time needed in seconds falls out.

422000/1300 = 324.7 seconds.

Dividing by 60 seconds/min tells up how many minutes we need to roast a pound with perfect efficiency.

5.4 minutes per pound.

On the surface, that sounds great.  Except you really don’t want to roast that fast.  If you try, you are going to over roast the outside and under roast the interior.  So you need a slower roast.  No faster than 12 minutes for a roast is what my experience tells me.  But you don’t want to turn the heat down and not use the oven to its capability so that means you should put in more than 1 lb of beans.  How much?  Just divide 12 by the 5.4 minutes for a reasonable estimate.

12/5.4 = 2.22 lbs = 1 kg

Which amazingly enough is right what I said at the top of the article.

“First the answer.  Yes, you can use that oven.  For 1 to 2 lbs of beans.  “

But you will note I said 1-2 lbs.  Why 1 lb?

Well, that delves into modes of heat transfer.  That means when you add heat to a system, there are three ways for it to get from the source to the item you want to heat up.

Convection, conduction and radiation.

This is a convection oven.  That basically means air heating up by the heat source, circulating to the air to what you are roasting and that heat transfers to the cool items (cocoa beans).   It’s pretty efficient since hot air can surround the beans except where it is touch the pan or other beans.  In a thin layer (what I advocate, and why I advocate it) 70-80% of the surface of the bean can be exposed to the hot air.

Conduction happens with contact.  From the surface the beans are on to the beans.  It’s actually pretty inefficient for anything that isn’t perfect flat.  In the case of a cocoa bean, there is probably only 10-20% of the bean touching the surface of the pan.  That is why it doesn’t do well.

Radiation is basically direct line of sight.  When the sun comes out and shines on your skin and you feel warm, that is radiation.  You are not touching the sun and it isn’t because it caused air to move and warm you.  So if there are elements shining on the beans from above, then they are being heated that way too.  If they are heating from the bottom, then very little radiative heating is happening.  Instead the elements are heating the pan and the pan is conducting the heat (per conduction – above) and heating the beans.  In this case, it’s probably the least efficient way to heat.

Ok, deep calming breath.  I know that was a lot.  We are almost done.  And I can now use those terms to talk in a more efficient manner about why you might only be able to roast 1 pound.

Even though this is a convection oven it doesn’t mean it is efficient convection or convection as good as it can be.  Also, conduction is going to be very low due to the very low percentage of bean surface area actually touching the pan.  And where radiative heat might be effective in some cases, the convection in a way circumvents it by distributing the heat around the chamber.  In this case though, that is not a terrible thing and is actually pretty good or the top of the beans might get scorched.

After all is said and done there is probably only 50-60% efficiency going on here.  The rest of the energy is being lost.  Either through the non-insulated walls and glass door or through direct energy loss when you open up the door to stir the beans every 5 minutes or so.  Remember, you still have to stir. If you don’t, the top of the beans will be over roasted and the underside that is in contact with the pan will be under roasted.

And how do I know so much is being lost?  Again experience and puzzle solving.

Years ago I had a drum roaster that I built.  Over time I modified it for efficiency.   It started off at 2000 watts, with a slow 6 rpm motor and no insulation.

If we do the same calculations, recalling we need 422000 joules per pound  and have 2000 watts we find we, in theory, could roast  a pound of beans in 3.5 min.

422000 / 2000 * 60 = 3.5 min/lb.

The drum contained 5.5 lbs of beans.  So if this roaster was working as well as my Royal, I can apply this math:

3.5 (min/lb) x 5.5 (lb) = 19.25 min

And predict it should have taken me a touch over 19 minutes to roast 5.5 lbs of bean.  But the reality of the situation was that I could only roast about 3.5 lbs of beans in that time.  Doing that efficiency check :

3.5 lb / 5.5 lb = 63.6%

This showed me my system was inefficient.   A little over 35%.

It was not until my 6 rpm motor died and I replaced it with a 45 rpm motor did I discover how important REAL convection is.  As soon as I did it, my roast time dropped to 14 minutes. It was like a 35% boost in power.  Efficiency really.   Consequently I was able to add more beans to my roaster.  When I put in 5.5 lbs, my roast time went back to 19-20 minutes – exactly where a good efficient system should be.

See, it was not enough that the beans were tumbling.  Too many were touching and protecting each other from the heat.  Just like in a table top convection oven with beans on a try.  It was not until I got them lofting did real, full convection kick in.  And it is worth noting that after I insulated my roaster, the roast time dropped to about 17 minutes showing again how much heat gets wasted out the walls and over time.  Just like when you open the door to stir.

So, sure, it is a convection oven, but the beans are only partly benefiting from the moving air.  Sure, if it was not convection, then the roast times would go way out to 30 minutes like a classic oven.    But you really can’t have too much convection in a non-tumbling roasting situation.

That is where I get the 50% efficiency count from.  30% or so from non-ideal convection (no loft) and 20% loss from continuously having to open the oven to stir and there you go.

A bunch of lies.  Well, half truths of omission.  And it was STILL a ton of reading.

Yes, you can use that oven.  For 1 to 2 lbs of beans.

And  now , hopefully, you know why and how to work it out yourself if you need.

Go have some chocolate.  You deserve it.

Ask the Alchemist #174

Level: Apprentice

Reading time: 10 min

I am struggling making my 70% chocolate with only two ingredients.  It seems like what I should do but it is really thick and hard to work with.   It blooms really badly. What am I doing wrong?

Why are you not adding a little cocoa butter?

I mostly keep my head down in social media but I’ve heard through various grapevines that two ingredient chocolate is becoming a *thing*.  And I completely do not understand it.  It is talked about like it is superior or the maker is superior for using only two ingredients.

I guess I am going to soap box here a little, and I don’t mean to offend anyone in particular.  Just take it as my musings on the subject.

It seems maybe this is where you are getting the idea you should be using only two ingredients.  Cocoa beans and sugar I assume.   Trying to suss out why, people toss out phrases extolling the purity of flavor or staying true to the cacao or other such nebulous statements.  At the end of the day, it feels like marketing.  A way to set themselves out from the crowd.  Ok I guess.

If that is what you like, by all means make it.  But I caution the thinking that using only two ingredients is in inherently better.  By what metric?  Sure.  Few people want to eat a chocolate with 27 ingredients where 95% of them are chemical names.  But once you are out of that mindset, I don’t truly get how 2 is better than 3 or 4. Why not 1 ingredient?

But to my way of thinking, it is some kind of pendulum reaction to 27 ingredient chocolate product.  That if that is considered inferior (no real argument there) then the absolute bare minimum must be the best.  This is the same logic that raw chocolate folks make.  Over roasting is bad, so no roasting is best.  That’s bad logic and the world does not work that way.   Too much food (obesity) is bad so no food is best?  Really?  It is the same logic and makes as much sense.  None.

Going back to metrics and why two ingredients are better I would propose these two metrics for consideration.

1)            Adding a little cocoa butter (2-3%) to you chocolate can actually enhance the perceived flavor of the chocolate.   It does this by allowing the chocolate to dissolve faster in your mouth, creating the sense of more flavor.  You are familiar with this phenomenon in regards to sugar.  Which seems sweeter?  Rock candy or granulated sugar?  Both are 100% sugar, but the granulated seems sweeter since it can dissolve faster.

2)            Two ingredient chocolate can be thicker, and more temperamental to temper.  How does this make it better?  It doesn’t.

It is also worth noting that in conversations with supposed two ingredient makers, well over half say they used *a little* cocoa butter in their melangers to make life easier…..which suddenly sounds like 3 ingredient chocolate to me.   This more than anything makes me think they are just playing a marketing game and that it really doesn’t matter.

That all said, let’s see if I can help.

First off, I am going to recommend you reconsider why you want to use only 2 ingredients.  Put aside  what you see other people doing.  Keep in mind that that two ingredient chocolate you tasted and love *may* contain extra cocoa butter.   Evaluate the chocolate you are making for what it is.  Did you actually try making it with a little extra cocoa butter and if so, did you like it better without added cocoa butter?   And why didn’t you make 1 ingredient chocolate if you wanted to *pure* cacao flavor?

Seriously, this is about what you like and enjoy.  And that means the process too.  If you can’t temper it because it is so thick, and it blooms, and you didn’t like the chalky texture, just how did you improve the experience and/or final product by keeping it *pure*?

Ok.  I was going to offer help.  I have heard that people have had difficulty with Tien Giang  being especially thick.  So I roasted 6 lbs and divided it into 3 batches.

1)            The control.  74% cocoa, 26% sugar.

2)            Heated control

3)            20% vodka soak

Spring boarding off my success with the honey chocolate, I mixed in vodka 20% by weight into the roasted nibs.  After soaking in for 2 days, I dried them in an oven for 2 hours at 150F.  To make sure it was not just the heating that made any difference, I also heated an equal amount of roasted nibs the same way.  My hypothesis here was that moisture was causing the extra thickness and that by reducing that moisture, I could reduce the viscosity.

The final results were everything I hoped they would be.

1)            This was thick and very hard to work with.

2)            This was thinner and easier to work with.

3)            This was the thinnest of the three.

The extra drying helped significantly to dry out the nibs, even though they had been previously roasted.  In many cases I think this might be all you need to do if you insist on only 2 ingredients.

The vodka really helped to pull out extra moisture.  I took weight measurements before and after drying  and out of 740 grams of nibs, the heated control lost 5 grams of water, and the vodka treated lost 12 grams.

And the flavors were basically the same.

Alternatively, 3% cocoa butter reduces the viscosity nicely and if you are not allergic, 0.5% lecithin will very nicely bind with the water and make the chocolate easier to work with.  And to my tastes, they all taste just as *pure* and true to the cocoa’s potential.  Your mileage may vary.

If you have not guessed, I lean toward solid data and rigorous evaluation.  Don’t follow a path because everyone else is.  Make what you like and be honest about it and challenge your per-conceived notions.  Maybe they will be right….but maybe you will find there was a heavy placebo effect going on and that 2 ingredient chocolate isn’t anything particular special.

Chocolate you made yourself.  That’s special.

Video Tuesday

Every Tuesday, for the next few months we are going to be putting out a new video on our youtube channel, How to Make Chocolate at Home.  In a similar manner to my walls of words in text, I ramble a bit, taking this or that side path as it suites what I am attempting to convey. All about cocoa beans is new.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLYEGb3f5ps[/embed]

I hope you enjoy it.

Ask the Alchemist #173

Do you have any videos showing how to make chocolate?  I’ve looked all over and can’t find them.

I was just going over with my  a member of my team how to announce our video series.  Thank you for the absolutely perfect introduction.

Yep, you heard it right.  We have videos on the way.

I’m going to go into full self deprecation mode and say that although they hopefully will do the job, they are not as polished and smooth as I might want.  And in pretty classic Alchemist fashion, noting that I often communicate in great walls of text, I talk a lot in these videos.  No.  Really.  A lot.  So here is the official announcement:

For years I’ve been thinking that a video series on making chocolate would be a good complement to this site and to my weekly “Ask the Alchemist” series.  Well, I finally got it done and today we are announcing the beginning of Video Tuesdays.  Every Tuesday we’ll add a new video to our You Tube Channel until all 15 of them are posted.  Think of it as an online correspondence course in how to make chocolate at home. 

If you subscribe to the channel you’ll be alerted whenever a new video is posted.  Today our first one is an overview of the Chocolate Making Process I’ve developed over the past 14 years. 

There is the first video.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi2RY8zqy9g&list=PLy4KS4Q1T9sVHwqhdiand0d-1k6yzioJq

Eventually these will all live on our site as well as on You Tube, but we’re waiting until our site gets a facelift later this year (yep, more foreshadowing there).

 The videos that are queued up are as follows:

1. Chocolate Making Overview
2. How to pick your beans
3. Behmor 1600 Roasting
4. Oven Roasting
5. Drum Roasting
6. Cracking Beans
7. Winnowing
8. Making Chocolate Liquor
9. Making Dark Chocolate
10. Making Milk Chocolate
11. Making White Chocolate
12. Tempering Philosophy
13. Cocoa Butter Seed Tempering
14. Bowl Tempering

Plus one on how to change the belt on the Spectra Melanger.

Enjoy.  And please let me know what else you would like to see.

Three brand new products

First and foremost, I want to present the NutraChef 'cocoa press' oil expeller.  You can now make your own cocoa butter at home at the press of a button.  I tasted the most amazing milk chocolate made with some fresh pressed Madagascar cocoa.  The caramel notes were amazing and fully due to the single origin butter, as it was totally missing from the 'control' made with the natural cocoa butter we offer.

The next new product is a variation on whole milk powder.  This is Heavy Cream powder.  So, instead of milk chocolate, you can make Cream Chocolate.  At 72% butter fat, you can add it directly to an existing dark chocolate recipe without adding any extra cocoa butter like you would with a milk chocolate.

Finally, a new origin.  A lovely base note cocoa bean from Trinidad and Tobago.  The taste that comes through for me is dried mission fig, date sugar and toasted pecans.

Might I suggest a Single Origin Trinidad Cream chocolate?

2 lbs Trinidad and Tobago roasted cocoa, winnowed to 24 oz.

5 oz Trinidad and Tobago home pressed cocoa butter (results from a 500 gram batch)

1 lb Heavy cream powder

1 lb sugar

This should be unlike ANY chocolate you have ever tried.

New Products on the way

No Ask the Alchemist today.  The queue is empty. Mind you, I thought I was setting a new record this week for submissions, but somehow things have become confused.  All the messages were general questions to me.  Do you ship here?  Can you ship this out today?  Do you sell tempering machines?  Where can I buy a Champion?   To clarify, question@chocolatealchemy.com is for 'in depth' questions generally about the chocolate making process.  Not like the above.

So, have I really answered everything you want to know out there?

And to give you something to look forward to, three new products should be available tomorrow.

• Whole cream powder
• A deep, chocolatey bean from Trinidad
• An electric oil press so you can make your own cocoa butter.  I've been having quite a bit of fun testing it out.

Stay tuned and get those questions in.

Ask the Alchemist #145

I tried different roast profiles ranging from 250-325F 4-28 minutes. I am trying not waste many beans by putting only a cup full of beans in at a time. I realize that the roast wouldn't be representative of a full oven, but my goal was to try to find a good dwell temperature and time. Once I found my dwell time and temp I would increase total roast time to account for the increased ramp time of a loaded oven. Do you think this approach is acceptable or should I always experiment with what will be my typical roasting weight?

Roasting. Some of you will love this. Some of you will hate it. Some will eat it up and suddenly everything will make sense. Some will fall into despair that you will never get it and you are doomed to wander the wasteland of uncontrolled roasting. I really hope the former outweigh the later.

I understand your reasoning about roasting just a cup. Unfortunately, the reality is that to effectively use that technique you will probably end up using more beans in the long run as you scale up. The reason is this. You learn best from an experiment by changing one variable at a time. Otherwise the permutations get too great and you can't tell really what effect your changes had. You are changing two (or possible three things) as you progress up in weight. Weight, time and temperature/profile. It's possible to glean information from this but it actually takes more runs and more cocoa unless you get lucky. I know you said your plan was to increase roast time. Experience tells me that won’t work. Fundamentally because by changing the time, you are changing the roast profile which means you are in the apples and oranges situation. They are not comparable. More on profiles in a little bit.

The main problem is that by roasting only a cup of beans, the data you get isn't transferable to a larger load expect to say you will know you will need some combination of more time and heat. But you already know that, right? In essence you used a cup of beans and have no more useful information that you did before. If your 1 cup of beans took 8 minutes at 325 F you have nowhere to go with that information if you try and roast 2 cups. It's not linear. It won't take 16 minutes @ 325 F, nor will it take 8 minutes at 650 F. It will be somewhere in the middle....which you already knew most likely.

On the other hand, if you roast 1 lb for 16 minutes @ 300 F, and determine they are under roasted, you have somewhere to go. You should either increase the roast temperature (my first choice) OR time. If 1 lb is still under roasted at 16 @ 350 F, then for your next roast you increase the temperature to 350 F for 16 minutes. If that is still under roasted, you can start to increase time as you don’t want the oven much hotter, generally speaking. In short, yes, it will take a few runs, but you will get useful data from the methodical approach.

So to directly answer your question, I think you should test roast the weight what you will be roasting in your standard batches. Here is what I hope is a good analogy.

You will never master baking a 2 lb loaf of artisan bread by baking 2 oz bread rolls. Rolls need a cooler temperature or you will burn them. And they need a shorter time. 350-400 for 10-12 minutes will do the trick. A 2 lb loaf could well take 60 minutes at 350 F. To compensate for that large mass, you can put it in at 500 F for 15 minutes. It won't burn since there is so much there that has to heat up and soak in. But you can't keep it there or is will burn. After 15 minutes, you turn it down to 425-450 for another 15-20 minutes and it continues to cook without burning the outside. Sounding a little familiar?

In short, you have to learn your over for a given batch size of beans. You have to actually load the oven enough so it's doing some work. And you have to find the sweet spot, batch size wise, for your oven. All ovens have a setting for 350 F. But they all don't apply the heat at the same rate. Some might take 5 minutes to get an empty oven up to temperature, and another might take 15 minutes because it is lower wattage or has less BTU/hr (electric vs gas). That right there is the crux why I don't and simply can't give people exact temperature 'profiles' to roast in an oven. We have zero knowledge that your oven matches my oven and without that, a temperature is useless.

I'm going to keep repeating this different ways. Let's say you need to go 1 mile in your car. 1 mile is well roasted beans. How am I to tell you (without an odometer) how long to push on the gas pedal to the floor when you only have a speedometer? I should make the note that we can't talk about partly pushing it down. We have to push it to the floor as that is how ovens work. They apply full power until they hit temperature, then turn off until the oven cools some amount below temperature. In short, I think you can see I can't give you that information.

My car might make it to 60 mph in 5 seconds. If that is the case I need somewhere around 55 seconds to go 1 mile. But if your takes 25 seconds, you clearly are going to take well over a minute total to get there. And without that exact data, and pulling out some algebra equations, I can't tell you how long it will take.

But let us assume we have that data for both cars. What can we predict if we hook up a 1 ton full trailer to the cars (i.e. roasting more beans). I think you can see that the answer is nothing at all. Maybe my car is light and can accelerate well under a light load but has no extra capacity so takes 60 seconds to get to speed under load. Yours on the other hand is huge and that is why it took so long to get to speed the first time. Yours, because it has plenty of extra capacity hardly notices the extra load and takes only an additional 5 seconds and you are up to speed in 30 seconds. Clearly yours will make the mile in just about the same time, whereas mine will take 50% longer.

At the end, what I am trying to get across is that AMBIENT oven temperature (i.e. the dial setting) is a terrible gauge to describe roasting profiles....but it is all we have!! By preference I would like to say this to describe a roasting profile.

For 6 lbs of beans, apply 2000 watts of power for 12 minutes. Then apply 1200 watts of power for 3 minutes. Finally, apply 1000 watts of power until the beans either smell done or the beans are at 265 F. Why? Because it is scalable! If you have 2 lbs of beans, then you need to apply 1000 watts for 12 minutes, 600 watts for 3 minutes and 500 watts until you hit 265 F. Half the beans, half the power. Because THAT is a roasting profile. Energy input in a given time. Not temperature settings.

And just so I don't skip the detail, that is for a well insulated system, neglecting heat loss. The reality (based off a given roaster's insulation - see, more variables again) is that I may need only 900 watts for the 2 lbs of beans in the first leg of the profile, or I might need 1100 watts. And how do you know which it is? NOW temperature comes into play. Because we are getting to how I roast day to day. For the above profile, for me, this is what is actually going on.

Apply enough energy so my surface bean temperature goes from room temperature to 210 F in 12 minutes. For MY ROASTER this is 2000 watts.

Turn down the energy input so the bean temperature goes to 245 F in 3 minutes. For my roaster this is 1200 watts.

Turn down the energy again so I reach final target temperature of 265 F (which I have predetermined by SMELL and TASTE of previous roasts) in 3 minutes.

That now is an honest to goodness roasting profile that anyone can take and apply to their own roasting situation and with any amount of beans. Assuming they have a way to control the power (energy input) of the roaster AND know the bean temperatures at different stages along the way. Without all three of those items, my profile is useless to you. Which is why I don’t offer them up as a matter of rote. It is also why I give the very generic ‘profiles’ I do give.

From my Roasting page:

In general, if you try oven roasting, you will start hot (350-400) for a short amount of time and slowly lower it to you target temperature (300-320 F). The more you are roasting, the higher your initial temperature can and has to be.

Remember, you want to roast the cocoa beans, not bake them. This is how this looks: Whole cocoa beans 375-400 5 minutes 350 5 minutes 325 5 minutes 300 until done. Look for the aroma of baking brownies and/or pops. Both are good indicators you are there.

I’ve tried the best I could to give something usable based on what I know and what the limitations are to oven roasting.

So, there. What does that get you? Hopefully a peak into my thought processes about roasting, profiles, what they are and what they are not. Hopefully there is a nugget or two in there on what you need to develop your own profiles, or at least an understanding the limitations of your tools (your oven). And why I’m not being obstinate about sharing my profiles. To rift off of A Few Good Men, “You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth!”. 

I’m not withholding the truth because you can’t handle it. Or maybe I am. I’m withholding it because in most of the cases out there, it’s useless information because you don’t have the background and equipment to use it.

This is my first concerted effort to get you the background so you can handle the truth.

Last minute details

No Ask the Alchemist this week as the queue is empty. And we are packing like crazy for getting your packages out for the holidays.  As a reminder, yesterday was the last day for Ground deliveries to easily make it for Christmas.  But we are accepting orders through Sunday night for Monday shipping. Dominican Republic Rizek is back in stock.

Finally, I had REALLY hoped to be able to tie something into Worldbuilders foundation and their current donation run.  They are raising money for Heifer International.  Really positive, concrete support. They say it best:

"We empower families to turn hunger and poverty into hope and prosperity – but our approach is more than just giving them a handout. Heifer links communities and helps brings sustainable agriculture and commerce to areas with a long history of poverty. Our animals provide partners with both food and reliable income, as agricultural products such as milk, eggs and honey can be traded or sold at market. "

I personally donated. Two goats get new homes and help a people and community.  If you can help this season, please do.  You will have to follow the up coming link to get the reference, but Bilbo it up!

Happy Holidays all.

Ask the Alchemist #140

Before we get to this week's question, a number of people have told me about this article.  I'll just let it speak for itself, except to say I'm gratified to be mentioned.

HELP! You have totally inspired me to make truffles for gifts this year. But I’ve tried four times and they keep failing. I get this hard crust of something all over the top and they are all grainy. What am I doing wrong? HELP!

Note – this too a little emailing back and forth to find out where the issue was since it was not obvious in the question.

I actually had this happen this year also during a particularly large batch. In my case, and coincidentally this case, the causes were exactly the same.

In the past I too have struggled with some of my batches separating. That is what that hard crust is. The cream/chocolate emulsion has ‘broken’ and the cocoa butter has risen to the top and solidified. If you are desperate you can just remove the cocoa butter and move forward, but as noted, the texture may be a bit off. Grainy is a good description. In some cases, if you heat the ganache back up until it is about 100 F, you can stir the cocoa butter back in, sometime with the addition of a little cream at 100 F, and the emulsion will re-form and the texture will smooth out. If it is a really bad break, the best you can hope for is it simply not separating again.

But how do you keep it from happening? I have previously mentioned lecithin in your chocolate. In this case it acts as an emulsifier and can assist in keeping your ganache from breaking. But I can attest to the fact that it can still break. Stirring gently will also help. I have heard too if you add a small amount of alcohol then that will keep it from breaking….but I must be very special as I have done that and still broken the emulsion. So what to do? Those are all fine and good, but have the feel to me of urban (kitchen?) myth and susperstition.

Well, I think and hope I have a 100% full proof method now, and know what the culprit in all these cases has been.

Heat.

There are basically two ways to make a ganache.

1) Heat your cream and pour it over chopped or grated chocolate

2) Heat your cream and melt your chocolate and mix them together.

In either case, if you get your mixture over some moving target temperature your ganche WILL break. The crux of the matter is that that temperature changes depending on a bunch of other factors (lecithin, technique, fat content, batch size).

So I took an afternoon and made WAY too many test batches of truffle filling. Here is the short of it related to the final temperature, making the ganache with one of the two methods above. >105 F 100% success

110 – 120 F 80% success

125-135 F 60% success

140 – 155 F 20% success rate

Pretty obvious huh? If you are not carefully tracking temperature it can seem downright random. But there IS a solid pattern. Given that, here are my two recommended ‘fool proof’ methods.

1) Heat your cream to 100 F. Melt your chocolate to 100 F. Stir together until smooth. Let set up.

That’s my favorite method. So very easy and straight forward.

The next way has you doing less heating but I found is more prone to user error. In theory it should react the same every time, but the reality is that depending on your ambient temperature, the fat content (and bloom state) of your chocolate and your exact recipe proportions, your final temperature can vary. It is directly related to the chemistry and the amount of heat it actually takes to melt different crystal structures of cocoa butter.

With that caveat out of the way, here you go. It is predicated on my ratio of 60% chocolate, 40% cream, by weight.

2) Heat your cream to 145 F

Finely chop or grate your chocolate.

Pour the cream over the chocolate and let it set 10 minutes covered.

Stir until smooth.

About 50% of the time I had unmelted chocolate. Sometimes the termperature was pushing 110 F. When there were chunks left, I heated the mixture further by putting it on top of a pot of boiling water. It worked well enough but it is more fussy in my opinion. But it works if it suits you.

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

Ask the Alchemist #137

Chocolate Alchemist, why did you decide to write a chocolate blog?

Huh? That’s in English, but I just don’t understand it. Huh? What chocolate blog? I’ve never written a chocolate blog. What are you talking about? Oh, and who is the Chocolate Alchemist?

Confused yet?

Ok, I confess. That response was exaggerated. But it is also serious. That middle part was and continues to be true. I’ve never written a chocolate blog.

I run a business called Chocolate Alchemy. And it happens to use Wordpress as its landing page. And granted, most people use Wordpress as a blog. But I’m not most people and it’s not why I used it. I picked it and use it because it does the job I need. It tells you (my customers) what is new and by its nature, it shows the newest information first. Handy that.

Maybe it is just a mindset, but I REALLY do not and have never considered this thing you are reading a blog. Frankly it makes my eye twitch. It isn’t that I have anything against blogs. Here is a definition:

“A blog is a frequently updated online personal journal or diary. It is a place to express yourself to the world. A place to share your thoughts and your passions. Really, it’s anything you want it to be. For our purposes we’ll say that a blog is your own website that you are going to update on an ongoing basis.”

I can hear it now. That sounds like what you are reading. Except for one critical difference. This isn’t personal. This is business. It’s never been personal. It has always, 100%, been business. Maybe, just maybe, I just barely might be convinced that part of Chocolate Alchemy has some a blog like similarities. But that is it. This isn’t a diary. Or a journal. And really I’m not trying to ‘express’ myself. It’s just a place to give you information, and it just happens file it away for me in chronological order.

The next part of me being obtuse. Chocolate Alchemist? Did you know I have never once referred to myself with that title? Other people seem to do it all the time. When pressed I have referred to myself as Alchemist John. Or sometimes just Alchemist. Or even AlChemist as I used to be a chemist. “Chocolate Alchemist” feels so pompous. Regardless, it's not how I think of myself. That said, you were asking a serious question and I’m not that dense.

“John, why did you decide to start Chocolate Alchemy?” Well, you could make use of the wordpress feature and go back to the first items I wrote and it pretty well explains it. It is right here. But the short of it is this.

Back in 2002 I tasted fresh hot chocolate from Mexico. I got excited about it and wanted to try making it. And that led to the idea of making my own chocolate. I already roasted my own coffee so I didn’t think it that crazy or outrageous. It turns out that at the time there were absolutely no cocoa beans sold on-line. NONE. Trust me, I looked hard.

At that point you can say I kind of became obsessed with the challenge. Eventually I was able to talk a broker into selling me 1 bag of Ghana. At that point I started back engineering how to make chocolate at home. In short order, the idea blossomed and then crystalized that what I had here was the opportunity to start something that was not around. A chocolate version of the green coffee bean sellers like Sweet Marias. Basically I wanted to BE the Cocoa Sweet Maira’s.

Over that span of about a year I worked out roasting, cracking, winnowing and making liquor. Oven, modified brewing grain mill, bowl and hair drier and the Champion Juicer. Those were all ‘discovered’ here. As was using India Wet grinders for Melangers about a year later. If you trace any one of those home chocolate making techniques back they lead here and the work I did back 2002-2003. Anyway, as soon as I was convinced I had a viable method to share I created the business Chocolate Alchemy, and powered the website with Wordpress. Circle closed.

Just a small aside. I hear time and again how lucky I was that my hobby turned into a business. I’ll grant I was a little fortunate, but luck had little to do with it. Showing people how to make chocolate at home and creating the tools and information that virtually every small bean to bar maker uses was not luck. It is called a Plan.

I knew what I wanted from day one as soon as I created Chocolate Alchemy. I wanted to kick start a bean to bar movement. Back in 2002 that was my goal. No one else new it, but I did. And look around. I’d say my plan came together. I am exactly where I wanted and planned to be. I am selling the largest variety of cocoa beans anywhere in one place, supply equipment large and small to home and artisan chocolate makers and doing my damnedest to make it all an open book. No secrets. Lots of sharing and support. Tons of paying it forward. There is a huge bean to bar movement and I am humbled and gratified to see my fingerprints all over it….even if some people don’t realize whose prints they are.

Chocolate Alchemy isn’t just some random online resource that put together pieces of chocolate making ‘how to’ that was already out there. Chocolate Alchemy is THE original source. All those other sources lead back here. You can read all about in in my wordpress powered website.

I love it when a plan comes together.

John Nanci

Alchemist John

Founding Alchemist for

Chocolate Alchemy

Mythbusters, makers and chocolate

I admit it and am proud of the fact that I am a huge Mythbusters fan. And it saddens me greatly to hear that they have been canceled and their upcoming season will be their last. Why? Adam and Jamie have been a fixture around here. What and how they do what they do. They have brought such an approachability to both making and science that I value so much. I credit the popularity of Mythbusters to the rise of Makers with a capital M. I’ve always made and built things. Nothing so grand as what I see them do many times. But until their contributions, I never thought of myself as a Maker. I just made things I needed and wanted. And I always get a kick out of seeing “left side” or “up” in sharpie on their stuff. It’s exactly how I build. Not for show, but practically. Their influence therefore pretty much related to me back engineering how to make chocolate at home and on the small scale. And how to make it approachable.

In many ways it is no more than the scientific method. Ask, research, plan, test, observe, conclude. Then of course rinse and repeat if it didn’t go as planned, realizing that failure is always an option and a great opportunity to learn more and that failure in this case isn’t failure in a bad sense. It’s just part of the process. And of course SHARE what you learned and pay it forward.

That all said, I really consider everyone that makes chocolate a Maker. It is not an insignificant amount of work and commitment. No, it’s not all that hard, but it’s not really turn key either. And I’ll share a little secret with you. I probably could make it a little easier. Videos, more photos, more detailed directions. But I have this little philosophy that you will appreciate something more that you have to work just a little bit on compared to something that is handed to you on a platter. And time and again I find that sentiment confirmed by people who write in. A little struggle makes the success all the more sweet. So, please, dive in. Ask questions., read, plan, make, judge and share it forward. And be proud of what you have made as a Maker. Because that is what you are by being here. A Maker.

I’m going to miss them both. Adam is the front man as it were. He loves to be in front of the camera and telling a story. I have to say I relate more to Jamie though. It’s a struggle for me to in front of a camera or in photos. I like doing what I am doing and do it best by myself. (But I love answering questions and helping people out thirsty for knowledge.) So although I will miss them both, I know Adam will stay out there making things in the public and Jamie will continue making things behind the scenes and be happier for it. I can respect that. And as the tag is going around, I’ll #Mythyouguys.

Northwest Chocolate Festival and two new beans

We will be closed and away starting Wednesday 9/30/15 - Sunday 10/4/15 at the Northwest Chocolate Festival.  Please let me know if you will be there.  I'd love to meet up!  If in doubt, look for the kilt and vest - I should not be hard to find.No orders will be processed during that time, nor will emails be read or answered.  I travel technologically light.

In the mean time, we have two new elegant Guatemalans in.  Chimelb and Lachua.  Both are very restrained chocolates.  In a world of super IPA's, massively hot spices, monster quadruple shot power drinks and general 'how big can we make it' there is something to be said for a nice, well balanced restraint chocolate that you can enjoy.  Don't undersell 'approachable' - in this case it's a compliment.

Also, supply is very limited.  Enough so that I won't be offering them Wholesale.  So get them before they are gone for good.

Ask the Alchemist #121

Who do you look up to?

Ok, this one is sort of out of left field. It’s a valid question. And one person jumps to mind. It isn’t an importer or farmer. Nor a chocolate confectioner. It is not a chocolate maker, or equipment maker. In fact they are not even anyone associated with the chocolate industry But the hint is there. It is Adam Savage. The non-self proclaimed poster child of the Maker revolution. I find both he and his Mythbuster partner Jaime Hyneman inspirational. They are both Makers. They make things. But to make them, they have to understand them. They approach problems, break them down, systematically develop potential solutions and then make what they need to test out their hypothesis – basic scientific methodology.

How does this relate? Well, it’s what I do day in day out. And what you, as a chocolate Maker, or aspiring chocolate Maker, are. A Maker.

Last year I hear a speech Adam gave at a major Maker Faire. It was his 10 commandments of making. It made such a positive impression on me, and per 6, I want to pass them along and comment on them and how they relate to what we do here. You can hear the full talk here:

http://www.tested.com/art/makers/461282-my-10-commandments-makers/ Please, go listen to it.

This is my adjusted take on what we do as chocolate Makers.

1. Make something. Anything. Don’t make this complicated. Of course the obvious is putting some roasted nibs and sugar in a Melanger and making chocolate. But this can also be as simple as toasting up some raw nibs in a pan so you have made roasted nibs. Or even getting a large bowl and blow dryer together so you can winnow your own nibs. Do something. Make something.

2. Make stuff that improves your life, either mechanically or aesthetically. This could be building some of your own equipment. But it does not have to be. There is a great satisfaction to un-molding shiny, glossy chocolate that you have made. You can also go laterally. How about making up a label for that chocolate you just made? Don’t discount the importance of aesthetics.

3. Don't wait. This goes back to 1). Maybe you don’t have all the equipment. But you have something and can make something NOW.

4. Use a project to learn a skill. I learn by doing. I have a confession. Ask the Alchemist is my own project for learning. It keeps me researching and thinking. Yours could be making your first batch of chocolate. Or learning roasting by methodically over and under roasting and makng the resulting chocolate.

5. ASK. Ask for help. I need to just quote Adam here. “People who make things love to share their ideas and knowledge. Makers love to talk about their work. Any husband or wife of a maker knows this is true. Learn how to work well with others and it will give back to you tenfold. Ask questions. Ask for advice. Ask for feedback.” This is why I am always here to answer questions. Please ask.

6. Share your methods and knowledge and don't make them a secret. This is the other side of the coin to 6). When asked, share what you know. Nothing, absolutely nothing, pisses me off more than hearing someone talk about trade secrets. Bullshit. What in the world are you afraid of? If what you do is so precarious that it’s based on a secret, then to my mind it’s just a house of cards. I’ll grant that sometimes there are very alternative formulations or new technologies that need to be protected for financial reasons, but claiming a bean mix or roast profile is secret is just insecurity talking. Get over it and share what you know….and it will come back to you. And besides, you OWE it to the people that shared so freely with you.

7. Discouragement and failure are intrinsic to the process. It’s going to happen. Again, Adam says it so well. “Don't hide from these. Talk about them. They're not enemies to be avoided, they're friends, designed to teach your humility. Go easy on yourself. Don't compare yourself to others; go ahead and be envious of others' skills, because frequently you can't not. Use that.” Use it to get better. Use failure to learn. I can’t tell you how many times I have failed while building and making something. But I learned from it and made myself and what I was making better because of it.

8. Measure carefully. Have some tolerance. “Do you know what tolerance is? If something fits tightly into something--that's a close tolerance. If something fits loosely, that's a loose tolerance. Knowing the difference between tight and loose tolerance is perhaps the most important measure of a craftsperson.”. There are two aspects of this in chocolate making I find. Knowing when to be accurate and precise and when you can, and should, be looser are key. 1 or 2 or 3% differences in a formulation are barely going to be noticeable. Combining 1) and 7) just get something going and stop fretting it will be 100% perfect the first time. Computer controlling your roast to 0.1 F and the exact second is just silly to me. The tolerance is too tight. You can’t tell the difference in the end product roasted to 251.7 F for 14:16 min vs 252.6 F. On the other side, a candy thermometer that is accurate to +/- 5 F just isn’t going to cut it for tempering where 1 F can make a difference. And you will only learn the difference by doing and failing on occasions. Embrace that..

9. Make things for other people. I love the look on someone’s face when I give them something I’ve made. Be it chocolate, or a truffle or anything. It can also make you vulnerable and keep you humble. These are not bad things. This is another form of sharing.

10. And if I could go back in time and tell my young self anything--any specific thing at all--it would be this: Take more notes!

Ask the Alchemist #109

You said you should roast criollo delicately but you also say in some of your reviews for criollo beans that they should be roasted fully. Isn’t that a contradiction?

Thanks for the question. That is a great follow up to last week’s question. To answer your question, no, it’s not a contradiction. You knew I would say that of course. So, why isn’t it? That’s what we are going to talk about.

It’s really that we are talking about TWO different things. How the heat is applied (delicately/aggressively) and how much you roast the beans (light/dark). As soon as you grasp we are talking about two things, and that they are not related, the apparent contradiction disappears.

To give an example that you are probably more familiar with, think about the two extremes of the slow simmer/braise of a piece of meat vs tossing it on a hot grill. The braise is cooking it delicately. The grilling is cooking it aggressively. In theory, both can be rare, medium or well done. And that is (mostly) independent of how you cook them. But that is theory.

The reality is that it is kind of hard to cook something slow and rare. You CAN do it, but I personally can’t think of a single time in cooking that I would want to. Every instance I can think it could be applied (rare gentle cook hamburger, rare braised steak, barely sautéed onions) the result usually isn’t termed ‘rare’. It’s under done and lacking in flavor. Every single one of those would do so much better cooked aggressively for a short amount of time. Seared hamburger. Blackened steak. Fajita style sizzling onions! They are are all still lightly cooked, but that heat transformed them to something more instead of leaching something away. Given that, I would hold that it is a ‘rule’ in general for cooking and that would apply to ‘cooking’ cocoa beans.

In the same way different meats need different cooking methods, different cocoa beans benefit from the different roasting styles. We will disregard meats that generally should be fully cooked (pork, chicken, etc) and just take different cuts of beef as an example.

Any prime cut of meat can, and some would argue, should be cooked quickly. The goal is to cook it, but not tenderize or flavor it. It’s basically going to let the flavor shine through with the sharp heat lending a hand in alchemical transformation. This would be like a tenderloin, fillet mignon and rib eye. Basically, it does not react in a negative manner to hot fast cooking and really benefits from it. If you were to slow cook it, it might still be good, but it is going to be too tender (since it was already tender) and there is a good chance a lot of those delicate flavors are going to ‘cook out’.

On the other hand, there are meats like bottom round roasts, ‘stew meat’, brisket and flank steaks that are going to turn into shoe leather if you try to cook them fast, but a slow braise or simmer will tenderize and bring out the flavor.

And then there are those cuts that you can treat many ways. Tri-tip comes to mind. You can give it a slow medium roast, you can slice it thin and grill it or even braise it and it will come out fine (but different) for each method.

Cocoa beans are similar. Except there is a major difference. In meat, the ‘quality’ expensive cuts are cooked fast and hard and the poorer cuts are slow cooked. Do NOT think of cocoa that way in either quality nor type. Get that out of your head. Many people think of Criollo as the prized ‘quality’ bean and Forastero and the ‘other’ bean. The reason in both cases is really due to supply and demand and not because of how they are cooked. Criollo and filet mignon are both ‘rare’ and so are prized. And there is lots of Forastero and lots of stew meat per cow. It‘s that simple.

That said, over the years I have found that each type of beans benefits from a certain style of roasting. A particular profile if you will.

Forastero takes a more aggressive roast just great. And Criollo you want to treat a bit more gentle, with Trinatario bridging the gap and being the chameleon.

Now we can talk about roast lever. Light, medium or heavy. How much you cook them is dictated by personal preference. You can have a light roast, a medium roast or heavy roast. Except that you need to keep in mind the same ‘rule’ we saw above. You should not try and slow/delicately roast a bean AND try and keep it ‘rare’/light. In my experience what you end up with is analogous to crunchy warm wet onions….which I personally find rather insipid.

What if you want ‘rare’ criollo? I guess I would ask you why. If you only like rare meats, then you probably don’t want to pick a brisket that requires a long slow cook. If you do, then your options are rare and tough or fully cooked and tender. Basically I am trying to reiterate that ‘delicate’ and ‘rare’ are two different things. I would instead suggest that you want your criollo delicately roasted, but not lightly roasted.

So, to review these are the combinations I’ve found work well

Criollo, delicate to moderate heat, medium to heavy roast.

Trinatario, delicate to aggressive heat, light to heavy roast. Noting the more delicate you roast, the heavier you should roast.

Forastero, medium to aggressive roast, light to heavy roast with the same inverted caveat as the Trinatario.

Finally, one final thing I will probably touch more on later. Each type of bean’s roast level is at a different temperature, which is kind of evil. What I mean by that is light, medium and heavy are relative to each type of bean in regards to temperature.

Criollo is light somewhere around a bean temperature of 235 F and heavy around 270 F

Trinatario is light around 250 F and heavy around 285F

Forastero is light around 260 and heavy can go as hot as 310 F in some instances.

What that means is it’s difficult to say ‘take it to a medium roast’ without knowing what type of bean you are talking about. And often we don’t know the exact genetics. But it is also hard to say ‘roast to 265 F’ as many people don’t have access to set ups that allow accurate bean temperatures. Which is what makes it so challenging to teach you, my faithful reader, how to roast with words alone.

In person, light, medium and heavy roasts have pretty distinct aromas. And likewise, they have pretty distinct flavors. But they don’t translate great in words. You have to learn and experience them on your own. What that means is that you should take notes and try to apply the concepts that I’m trying to convey and keep it relative to YOUR set up.

As one very brief example, say you roast some Nicaraguan (a solid Trinatario) in the oven until you’re your IR thermometer says it’s 270 F, but the resulting chocolate is over roasted to your taste. Then you know in your system my 285 F is around your 270 F and so you should try the next roast to 255 F or 15 F lower.

Go forth and roast and eat chocolate. And don’t forget to take those notes.

I hope that clears up why delicate vs fully roasted are not contradictions.

Ask the Alchemist #99

In making chocolate cream ganache for truffle centers, I have in the past followed directions to put the freshly made ganache in the refrigerator to firm up for center rolling. I recently have read where that is bad. It is better for crystal formation to let it set up at cool room temp for a few hours, even overnight. That refrigeration inhibits good formation. Which is it? This also is important to me because I have tried using the newish silcone truffle molds (truffymold ) which say to pipe the freshly made ganache into the molds, put it in fridge for 24 hours, then freezer for 12 hours. It does make it easier (and less deformed) to freeze before popping out. Would it be better to let the ganache set out overnight at cool room temp then put in freezer for the 12 hours to be able to pop out? Is the freezer time going to be bad for the ganache? Scared of the cold!

There are good points in each of these various thoughts and I’ll go through each one and explain my thoughts on them and how each is applicable.

I’ve never heard that it was bad to put truffle filling in the refrigerator. I personally do it all the time and have never had an issue. If anything, because I like my filling to melt in your mouth instantly I prefer a very soft center and the only way to work with it is to either refrigerate so it is hard enough to scoop or pour/pipe it in to molds and then refrigerate it. That said, I will also note that I don’t usually fully refrigerate the ganache as it can make it too hard to work with, and just chilling to 50-60 F works really well for me.

As for refrigeration inhibiting good crystal formation, that makes no sense to me. Namely because to my knowledge there is no crystal formation going on anyway because you have added cream and that inhibits all crystal formation. Basically you have seized your chocolate on purpose, but seized it nonetheless and once that happens, no crystal formation is happening.

I don’t see anything wrong with piping into silicone molds and then chilling. I’m one that tends to follow directions…at least initially, so I would do as the manufacturer suggests. It actually seems to me that it is a bit excessive to refrigerate and then freeze, especially for that length of time, but maybe they have their reasons. Or maybe they don’t. I would try it that way, and compare it to refrigerating a couple hours and freezing a couple hours.

I likewise don’t see any trouble with freezing the ganache from the ganache’s standpoint. But I will point out one thing that might give you an issue. You may need to bring your frozen ganache centers up to something other than freezing for some length of time or you may run into problems.

The two issues I see are water condensing on the centers and the radical difference in temperature making enrobing them in chocolate very challenging. You might get water in your coating chocolate and the coating can get very thick respectively. Off the top of my head I would suggest letting the frozen centers rest in the refrigerator 12-24 hours before enrobing. Or if the shorter chilling time works, just doing that. 2 hours in freezer, 1 hour in refrigerator, enrobe. Basically see what works for you. In any case, don’t fear the cold.

Happy new year everyone.  And keep and eye out for the historic (just because of the number) Ask the Alchemist #100!!

And keep those questions....Really....I'm nearly out.  You can e-mail them direct to question at chocolatealchemy dot com.