Sebastian

Spoke to melissa - threw your name out and she found room for us at 5pm! that's some sway you've got there KT 8-) - that or you've got some good dirt on her and she's scared of you... I owe you a big ol' piece of chocolate or a drink sometime - thanks!

Spoke to the folks at amada ( i spoke to zoe - didn't see your message until this morning), and they're completely booked for monday night - turns out it's a special event for restaurants in center city to generate additional business that week 8-( looks like a great place too!

Great suggestions all! We'll have roughly 6-8 people, so not a large group. How much? oh, i dunno, $100pp or so. Katie, what's this chef's tasting of which you speak? I imagine that's something I'd have to call and arrange specially ahead of time.. The Moroccan ideas sound great too - I've never been to either one - only concern there might be in the wonderful corporate world in which we live, someone might have an issue with belly dancers and i don't want to have to deal with the potential repercussions of that...

I'm looking for a team building exercise I can do in the philly area with my employees - given that we're in the food industry (we make chocolate) I'd think it'd be fun if we could find a really unusual dining experience - something that's more than just a good dinner, but an event that'd make one want to call home after you'd been there and explain it to your spouse. I don't spend much time in the philly area, so i'm afraid I don't know it well - was hoping y'all might be able to help me out here 8-) Suggestions?

fighting footing (ha!) is a matter of finding the chocolate with the right flow properties and the adjusting your blower and your take off. any enrober/tunnel combination will have at least one detailer, which also will help take off that final bit of excess. there's a little more to it than that, but pretty much any commercially available piece of equipment should provide you with minimal footing once you've got it lined out..

I think callebaut has them too. Probably not inexepensive.

Thanks tsquare - it will be in the mid atlantic area. I know there are folks who specialize in this type of thing, i just don't know who they are...

I've recently taken a new position with another chocolate company, and the first thing I'm being asked to do is create a state of the art development/applications lab. I know the equipment and process flow inside and out, so that's not an issue for me, but my wife says I'm...how shall we put it...aesthetically challenged 8-) Have any of you experience with design companies that offer industrial lab/kitchen design services? I'm looking for someone who can address layout, cabinet design, colors, etc so that if I say 'here's a pile of equipment that i have to put in here' they can say 'i know how to make it look like you didn't just throw a pile of equipment in here'...i need it be functional and very aesthetic. If there's any resident experience in here with lab design places, I'd love to hear who they are and what your experiences were with them...

8-)

That's part of it. Another part is that the Asian markets are seeing a HUGE upswing in dairy demand, so much of the worlds milk is going there (supply and demand = drives prices up). Another thing is the in 2 months, the Canadians are going to increase their domestic subsidies, meaning that anything containing dairy made in Canada just got marked up substantially. Might be a good time to buy some cows and start a dairy 8-) 'Course, everyone's thinking that now, and in two years milk will be at record lows...the dairy market is very cyclical..

If you're using tree nuts currently, or even storing them in the same location as you work in, I don't think you're going to be able to clean sufficiently to guarantee the absence of peanut proteins. If you're sharing equipment to make both nut containing and nut free products, I'll guarantee you're not going to be able to clean them to the point of being completely nut free unless you're able to autoclave *everything* (and i mean everything...). I've done quite a bit of research on this prior to last years FDA legislation (FALCPA - Food Allergen Labelling and Consumer Protection Act - it deals specifically with this topic), and even prior to being legally required to address it, we came to the conclusion that one simply can't create a 'clean zone' unless the product in question simply isn't even there to begin with. At the end of the day, I made our factories get rid of peanuts entirely, and put a touch of milk into every single product (whether or not it needed it), because it wasn't feasible for us to stop using milk, and because of our prior attempts to clean it out, we know that no matter what we did there was always going to be *some* trace level of milk in everything - i wanted it on all labels to further minimize the chance that someone would unknowingly consume it who would be allergic to milk and die...this was, at least milk was explicitly stated on the label.. Simply covering things up won't be sufficient (aerosolized nut particles can hang in the air for days before settling out)...

One with white, one with a very dark. I preferred the dark when rolled in a bed of ground chocolate that was mixed with a touch of cinnamon. but in the name of full disclosure, i'm not a huge white chocolate fan...

While probably pretty obvious, I just made a port wine and lamplong black peppercorn ganache last night, and an ancho chile/key lime one as well

Hershey's and Callebaut have inked a long term mutually beneficial deal with one another (just announced last week). I'd expect to see at least a portion of Hershey's offerings to be significantly differentiated from what they historically have been...

Such regulations oft become either impossible to enforce (can you imagine cleaning your equipment to the extent necessary to ensure no x-contamination? how do you ensure your beans are all from the same origin and not inadvertently mixed by a small amount? does single origin only refer to country of origin, or region/plantation? oy vey) or diluted so as to be confusingly meaningless - take the wine industry for example - in the US, wines can be labelled as single varietal if that varietal comprises 75% + of the grape used. So your merlot is in all liklihood not 100% merlot, but almost always a blend of merlot (75%) and cabernet is most often used to blend with it. But the bottle still says merlot.

shoot - they're actually the first place i looked, but the search function searching for 'organic' didn't turn up anything - thanks Des!

I was hoping someone was selling a preblended product. I'm gonna be pretty hard pressed for time over the next few weeks, so was hoping i could just order a few bottles from somewhere that's ready to use...

anyone have a source for organic colors or organic colored cocoa butters that i could use for airbrushing? I'd LOVE to find an organic luster, but seriously doubt i'll find that... Thanks

if memory serves (and it may not!) i think it was the sur del lago region. . . (south of the lake)

Those are the two most common fat levels in cocoa powders - another very common level is 15/17 - however there are many other fat levels available, commonly achieved by blending 0% product, 10/12 product, and 22/24 product until you hit the appropriate fat level...

If your product is overthickening, and a slight rewarm isn't bring it back to an appropriate viscosity, try adding 0.1% fluid lecithin to it, give it a very good mixing, and see where that gets you. If indeed the thickening is due to moisture absoprtion or moisture addition from your products, a very small amount of fluid lecithin will go a long way to solving that problem. NOTE that simply adding lecithin is not a case of 'more is better' - lecithin works great at low levels, but if you use it too much, it'll actually reverse your results and make it worse..

Good luck - let me know if you can't find someone, i'll start digging. I travel quite a bit so my response may be delayed due to that.

This is a bit off topic, i know, but this is a question that i've been wondering quite a bit about myself. How does one kmpw which wines are age-able, and just how long to age them for?

I can't speak for the stores you're shopping at, but I am quite certain that the amount of natural ccp sold in singapore really isn't that different than what is sold in the United States. If you're having difficulties finding it, you could contact the folks who have processing facilities there and ask them who'd be your nearest retail distributor. You've got at least two very large processors there, with many more doing business. If you're unable to find someone to contact, I could probably help out with that.

alkalized powders make up over 90% of what is produced around the whole world. Keep in mind that there are literally *thousands* of different types of alkalized powders you can buy... most manufacturers make a dozen or two 'main types', and then make many, many blends that vary in the type and amount of the resultant dutched and their (likely) single natural main types. The variation is striking. As a general rule, natural powders will be yellower than their alkalized counterparts. They'll also have much more variability in flavor due to the fact it's an unmodified, natural powder - nothing has been done to control it's flavor other than roasting the beans they're made from. They're going to be more acidic than dutched powders. Anything labelled 'dutched' 'breakfast' 'alkalized' 'red' 'black' etc will be a dutched powder. Again, generally speaking, when you dutch a powder, it's flavor will start to become more fudgy and 'rounded' out - up to a point - after you pass that point, the fudginess begins to disappear and the flavor begins to take on a chemical-ish, very unnatural flavor. Regarding the color, as dutching begins, the powder looses it's yellowness very quickly, becomes darker and may begin to become red (depending on the agent used to alkalize it and some environmental conditions). Again, after you pass a certain point, the color begins to turn from red or deep brown, the grey or even black. By that time, you're left with a product that's characteristics have nothing to do with chocolate. It's burnt, but used widely to give color to products. The availability of natural powders should be the same in s. america as it is in n. america, europe, or singapore or africa - as all of those locations have facilities that produce natural and alkalized powders...as a general rule, it's going to be harder to find a natural powder in a retail store than an alkalized one, as most people's palate prefers a light to moderately dutched powder.