Saltychoc

@Jim D. Same! The Luis Amado videos had me thinking you could get that level of coverage easily. Not sure it's the cocoa butter he uses or the technique.. maybe it's the magic of "television". Chef rubber has a lot of issues with consistency viscosity wise. I notice that jewel colors are all thinner and the blue and green artisan colors are much thicker. For me, the Med blue is one of the easier colors to work with. The light greens - spring green and key west green are the hardest. It could be the batches I've received though. @pastrygirl For the last batch I didn't worry so much about getting full coverage and I saved myself a lot of time and angst. Not sure why I wanted them all to be perfect. I have a local place that can probably order roxy & rich for me so I'll have to check with them. Definitely report back about the natural colors! The chef rubber natural line looks great on white chocolate but it's so very thin so it's a toss up on dark.

@pastrygirl Yes - Chef Rubber, I find all of the light green colors to be quite thick and harder to spray, especially spring green. They don't have a great light blue and so I make that with a mix of a few colors and that ends up being thick as well. I am planning to get a new compressor as I do think that is a part of the problem. I really like the Grex, it's great for speckle and all other detail/spraying. That is great advice about the needle position, thank you. I had no idea you could do that to blow chunks out so I will definitely try that next time. Yeah, the heat gun is there.. maybe I got complacent with the use. I used it a lot more today and had much better luck. I still don't know how to get full coverage without multiple passes. Is there a trick? Otherwise I'm just turning molds. I don't mind doing it and have incorporated it into a few designs but mostly use CW2295 and have a hard time hitting the top edges if I do one pass.

@Jim D. That is very true about room temp. And explains why the first batch of Halloween spraying was the best.. outdoors temps were warm and we're in a stone building. I don't have a problem closing the door to the cool room and putting them in there immediately so I'll try that next time. My temper when shelling today wasn't the best either so room temp is definitely starting to play into things. I do think overall I'm just expecting too much time out the Grex. Maybe I need options for backing and for details work. I'm working on a new cotton candy effect that the grex works well for, just wish there was a heated blanket for it.

@Chocolot I’m using 0.7. needle

I am having some serious issues spraying and cannot figure out what is going on! I have a 1gal compressor (upgrading soon) and use a grex tritium TG3, top fill spray gun. Not sure if any other components are really important here.. 20ft hose, easy on/off and spray volume attachment. I was having some issues around Christmas so I took the entire spray gun apart (down to the little silicone washer) and thoroughly cleaned all parts. Yet my problems persist. Here's what is going on - IF I rest the spray gun on the heating tray before I start spraying I can get through 1-2 molds before the output is seriously diminished. This isn't because of the undersized compressor (or because I'm spraying green/blue) as it seems like the gun is jammed up. I reheat the gun with heat gun and can get a little more out but eventually there is almost zero output. So.. I don't know. I put the cocoa butter in at 90-93 and keep it at 88 or above.. that shouldn't be the issue. I changed the needle at Christmas. The room is 64-66*f. Next thing I'll try is running another batch of melted cocoa butter thought. I'm going to reach out to grex tomorrow however.. any advice, troubleshooting, input would be greatly appreciated!

Has anyone purchased from this company? They are pretty local to me - Amherst, MA and have some interesting designs I haven't seen elsewhere. It seems like they mainly supply the thc/cbd/etc industry so I will also try finding a forum related to that. https://boldmaker.com/collections/polycarbonate-molds

@JeanneCake What quantity are you looking for? World wide chocolate is in Brentwood, NH - they do have it and you may be able to pick it up, depends which side of Boston you are on if that drive makes sense. They also ship, not the best prices though. L'epicerie in Warwick, RI might be able to order if for you but probably only the largest size. They do have long lead times and communication can be.. sparse.

@Jim D. Thank you, I'll definitely be doing that.

@pastrygirl thanks! I am looking into it. I've had a hard time finding Felchin from a regular supplier around here, everything needs to be shipped. But even with the shipping it would be a better price.

I don't remember the last time I posted! 1. Mixed box - cranberry lemon (gold), caramel (black), passion fruit (purple), dark chocolate (blue), gingerbread & red fruits (white/berries), strawberry milk chocolate (red/green top). 2. Halloween - pomegranate marshmallow & dark chocolate ganache (white), apple cider & caramel miso ganache (eye), blackberry milk & hazelnut dark (black), pumpkin spiced caramel (orange) 3. Holiday/Winter - cranberry pate & lemon mascarpone (gold), caramel & cinnamon cream (green), dark chocolate orange (red), gingerbread & red fruits (white/berry) 4. Valentine's - cherry, berry pate & milk/dark buttercream (dots), passion fruit (small heart), caramel & sesame/pistachio ganache (large heart), salted olive oil dark chocolate (mauve/corners, I did change the heart to a lighter purple but can't find that picture) 5. Apple Miso inside - cider jelly pate, caramelized shiro miso caramel ganache

My main chocolate supplier was recently acquired by a larger company and now my rep has come back to me with some updated prices. The Boiron 1kg tub prices are eye watering now. 50.44/kg for Ivoire. 152/bag. That is 40 more a bag than a couple of months ago. Other suppliers are much worse. L'epiceire has it listed at 98.80/bag but, unfortunately, out of stock. I emailed him to see when/if it might be back. Is anyone paying less than this for Ivoire or a similar white chocolate right now? And - is there another white chocolate of similar quality I should try? I don't like how milky some other brands are. By the way - they still have 9 cases of Oplays in stock. It's basically the same price as the Ivoire. 444 for the case.

@Jim D. Not to get political but considering some photos from yesterday - I'm not sure how committed any of them are to actual "healthy" food. Very worried about the already rising price of chocolate though. The blue cholula from chef rubber's natural line is very very pretty. Unfortunately, it's so light and looks much better backed with titanium white. I would also be interested to know what natural lines people have used and liked. I do a farmers market and get a number of people asking for no artificial colors. I do think New York and CA banned or has an upcoming ban for a few colorants so we may see an increase in natural colors. I have read/heard good things about Bold Cocoa butter out of the Netherlands. They are titanium free but I think use regular "fake" color formulations beyond that. Unfortunately, they still do not ship to the states, though I have asked a few time and the answer is always "we're working on it".

Prices are way up and this is great reminder to order. Pike global foods has Cacao Barry for $99/6.6lbs which comes out to $15/lb. With shipping to my area it comes to 112.50 so 17.12/lb. It was $72 at the beginning of the year. Too bad. You must have a commercial account with them to get these prices, the form is on their website and they respond quickly on weekdays. https://www.pikeglobalfoods.com/cacao-products/

So here's an quandary. I input a blackberry ganache recipe into the calculator and it gives me a significantly different water percentage than my own calculations/spreadsheet. Additionally - as there is not an option for reduced fruit purees I used the boiron blackberry puree option even though I reduce it by half. Spreadsheet: 20.28% water, 31.66% fat, 32.92% sugar. Web page: 17.73% water, 30.52% fat, 35.19% sugar. The fat is not surprising as I use 83% fat butter and 40% fat cream and there is not an option for fat %. My spreadsheet does account for the sugar content of the blackberry puree which is higher in the reduced puree. I'm mainly perplexed by the lower water % in the calculator when my spreadsheet is accounting for 20% of the water being removed from the puree. Recipe is basically (and yes - it splits easily): 240g various sugars 200g butter 1340g various chocolates 540g blackberry reduced from 1kg When I put those numbers in (using callebaut 811 as the chocolate and glucose 45 as the sugar) then I get an aw of 0 and close to the predicted water % at 21.13%. Another note - the white miso option has an aw of .71 with 12.1% salt while the miso I use is .88 with 5.3% salt. The calculator does work for many of my more basic recipes but an option to change certain product aspects to match with local products and reduced purees would be helpful.

https://www.100x100chef.com/en/product-chef/725-3307/liquid-silicone-for-professional-mold-making This may be the product.