cslas
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Posts posted by cslas
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On 8/27/2019 at 7:25 AM, Kerry Beal said:
There are a number of new digital melters these days - competition maybe?
Why not phone and ask?
By digital meter, do you mean one with a digital temperature reading vs. a dial?
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9 minutes ago, pastrygirl said:
Thanks! This is making me want to drive up tonight.
I'm only about 4 hours away from Montreal.
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3 hours ago, Beets3 said:
DR in Canada is having a big sale .
Who's DR?
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Hi all,
Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself, but I was looking at the 6 kg Mol d'Art melters on a couple of sites today and I noticed they seem to be marked down by about $100/$150 USD. TCF is selling them for $545 USD, while Technobake has them for $550 USD. Ordinarily, I'd have figured it was just a sale, but I noticed that on the Technobake site, at least, they seem to be in the clearance section. I'm relatively new at shopping these, so I could totally be misreading this, but I figured I'd ask. Does anybody know if there's something going on with them? Are they being discontinued? Are these amazing deals or just the regular price? They seem to be in stock and not discounted on the actual Mol d'Art site.
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So melting in a crock pot wouldn't work, but would it work for holding chocolate with a thermostatic controller? I have one of these (below) for sous vide cooking. The crock pot plugs into it and it has a thermometer that goes into the crockpot. When the liquid in the crockpot hits a certain temperature it turns the crockpot off and when it drops below the temperature, it turns it on again. I've actually used it to sous vide cocoa butter silk before.
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Thanks @Kerry Beal, good to know!
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Ok, reviving an old topic with a question. For those who use a chocolate melter to melt their chocolate over night or several hours, does it not matter that the chocolate isn't being stirred? I know the other methods discussed here are melt the chocolate faster, but they also seem to require semi-regular stirring to avoid burning the chocolate. Also, could you use a crock pot in place of a chocolate melter to achieve the same thing?
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This is starting to sound like fun, thanks for the tips!
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Oooh natural vanilla... no wonder I liked it
Thanks for solving that mystery.
Good to know about the bars. I'll give them a go!
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Hi all,
So I'm in need of some more chocolate and I was thinking of stepping up to do 5 lb quantity from the 2 lb quantities I've been buying. I was looking at Callebaut 's Milk 823NV and Dark 60-40-38NV, both of which I've purchased in the past. Thus far, I've only ever used callets or small grocery store sized bars. It seems as though the 5 lb quantities are mostly available as bars, while the callets are either sold as 10 lb quantities or repackaged into the 2 lb bags I've been buying. I was wondering if using a bar vs. callets really makes a difference or is significantly harder to use or store? I've only just started playing with bonbons (inspired mostly by you guys), so it's sort of baby steps right now.
Also, while I've had decent luck working with the 823NV and 60-40-38NV and they seem to be more moderately priced starter chocolates, I have no idea what the NV actually means. Can someone tell me?
Thanks
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Jumping in a little late here, but I think it's my freezer that kills my ice cream. I use this Whynter machine as well as egg yolks, milk powder, and commercial stabilizer and my ice cream always comes out great and is great for the first night, but by the second day it becomes a chore to get it out of container. I think it's the freeze/thaw cycle of my freezer that does it. I'd love to find a home-sized "steady state" freezer if such a thing existed....
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On 3/31/2018 at 3:41 PM, julie99nl said:
The ingredient is Anise liquer with a suggestion to use Raki or Ouzo.
Piping in a little late, but finding the thread useful none-the-less. Anyway, having studied in Greece, I'd suggest anyone interested in this recipe go for the Ouzo over the Raki. I'm not really a licorice fan either, but Ouzo at least tastes like licorice, Raki on the other hand... tastes sort of yeasty in my experience. It may be that I didn't have the good stuff, but from what I did have, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone
Also, since it's a licorice flavor the recipe calls for you might be able to substitute pastis or sambuca.
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Thanks @pastrygirl. This is really helpful. I think I'm going to give the .5 nozzle a go and see what happens.
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Since I've jumped into the conversation, I may as well ask a couple of other questions. I'm really more into pastry than chocolate (though I've read nearly this entire thread and I am tempted by much of your work!). I'm also just an overly ambitious home cook more so than any sort of professional. As mentioned above, I've used my Iwata Eclipse HP-CS with a .35 mm nozzle to (very slowly) achieve the velvet effect on a couple of entremets and I once made Dominique Ansel's Marshmallow Apples. That's the extent of my food/cocoa butter airbrushing to date. I'm preparing to attempt Cedric Grolet's Lemons, which I was happily shopping for ingredients for, when I stopped to think about the last time I made an entremet and how darn long it took to color that thing. My smug "I already own an airbrush" quickly faded into "oh crap, I have to make a dozen lemons with that?" So... like many of you, I start digging... and digging... and digging. While I'm not sure I've gained much clarity from a week of digging, I did find this thread, which seems to have the most comprehensive information on airbrushing chocolate/cocoa butter I've found.
I know that many of you are working towards production of some scale, which I'm not doing currently (unless you count 12 lemons as a lot - it is for me), but it sounds like many of you have also worked your way up from starter airbrushes to more commercial equipment, while sampling nearly everything in between. I was starting to think that a small capacity spray gun sounded like a good option, but when I reached out to a vendor to inquire about the Iwata LPH-80 Miniature Spray Gun which has a variety of nozzle size options, I was told that my Iwata Sprint Jet Compressor was not powerful enough for the gun. If I wanted to go with the LPH-80 gun, they suggested upgrading to a more powerful California Air Tools 1/2 HP 2 Gallon Compressor. The also suggested that if I stick with my current, and apparently quite wimpy compressor, that I might try the Iwata HI-LINE HP-TH Airbrush instead, which includes a .5 mm nozzle and some sort of a fan function, though I need to verify that my compressor could achieve that. So a couple of questions:
- For anyone else who made the leap from a .35 mm nozzle to a .5 mm nozzle, did it feel like much of a difference? It doesn't sound like a big difference.
- There's not a lot of conversation on the web about changing airbrush nozzle size, and where it is mentioned, people seem to act like it's sacrilege (except for with kits), but has anyone else ever tried increasing the size of a nozzle assembly, particularly on an Iwata? They're not super upfront about it, but I kind of got the impression from the Iwata website, that it might be possible if you stay within a particular family of airbrushes (Eclipses, for example). And obviously, it sounds like you'd need to change the needle, the nozzle, and the cap to do it.
- I know there's been a lot of conversation about compressors here, and I keep thinking things like "where would I put another compressor" and "I like that my compressor only weighs 8 pounds", but I guess I'm wondering how much of a difference does the compressor really make? Obviously, if a gun won't work with a particular compressor, then you're not going anywhere, but from your experience/what you know about airbrushes and compressors, do you think I would be missing out if I opted for the HI-LINE airbrush to avoid having to buy another compressor too? Would something like the CAT 1/2 HP 2G compressor make that much of a difference in my work vs. what my Iwata Sprint Jet is already doing? (Including a picture of an entremet so you can see what I've coaxed out of it).
- If I ever did decide to dabble in the world of chocolate, how critical is the strength of the compressor in achieving shiny, good looking chocolates? I know that the strength of the compressor would impact the speed of the work, but would a weaker compressor like my Sprint Jet actually prevent me from achieving something that looks good?
- Lastly, has anyone figured out how to match airbrush/spray gun specs to compressor specs? The more I learn about them, the more I wonder how I managed to buy my compressor and my first two Eclipse guns and have them actually work together (I also have a side feed, I use for non-food spraying). I really have no idea what specs I need to match up to make sure I'm getting a system that works, so any advice would be a start.
Any information anyone can provide would be much appreciated. I'm going in circles here trying to decide what to do.
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On 6/2/2017 at 2:00 PM, Daniel D said:
@pastryani I've got the Iwata Eclipse HP-CS and it's a 0.35mm. Takes a long time to back each cavity with color, especially if you are doing more than 10 molds at one time (my finger gets tired!). I just ordered a 0.5mm needle/nozzle/nozzle cap last night after reading these comments. I'll let you know if that speeds things up.
@Daniel D know this post is from a while ago, but I have the same Iwata Eclipse HP-CS with the .35 mm nozzle. I have been able to achieve the chocolate velvet effect using it, but it takes 4-5 rounds of spraying and re-freezing and that's just to cover a single 7" entremet. How did adding the .5 mm nozzle assembly work out for you? Did it make a noticeable difference? Have you ever attempted the velvet effect with it and if so, how'd it go?
Mol d'art melters
in Kitchen Consumer
Posted
Maybe I've imagined it, but is the Delta a new version of the ChocoVision Revolation X3210?