Bad Chocolate?

[David J.]

I've got a batch of Callebaut Dark chocolate that I've been having a great deal of trouble with. I started out pouring brand new callets into a Mol D'art melter several weeks ago and I left it on (lid closed) for three days as I couldn't get enough time to finish production in one sitting. It worked OK at first, though I noticed that the chocolate was pretty thick at working temperature by the end (after hitting it with hot air to melt out some crystals and thin it). I had read a post saying that a chef in one restaurant left his on 27x7 and this was in my basement with a relative humidity of 20-30% so I didn't think much of it.

Since then I've had nothing but trouble with it. I managed to get a halfway decent temper in part of it by running small batches from the melter through my Rev2, though there was too much to process it all at that time.

Now I'm having a terrible time getting a good temper even when running it through the Rev2 using the "Poor seed" cycle (though I'm using brand new callets for seed).

I've been adding quite a bit of cocoa butter to thin it out. I added a bunch to the batch in the melter and more to the latest batch I ran though the Rev2 to get a decent dip. Yet when I finished last night the batch in the melter was at 90F (as measured by my infrared themometer after a good stir) and it was extremely thick once more.

Is there anything that likely happened to the chocolate to make it so troublesome? Or have I lost my knack and the Rev2 lost its ability as well?

I figure that I'll have to set all this aside for ganache, but it's quite a bit and I don't want to have to do it again so I'd like to know where I went wrong.

[Ke Kau]

I've experienced similar issues using the mol d'arts. If you don't get the dial right, the chocolate has a tendency to over crystallize and it's a pain to get it back. When in doubt, go higher on the holding temp and when you are ready to work it, just add enough stable seed to bring it back around. In order to fix your issue I have done one of two things. Completely melt out the chocolate (I melt to 115 - 120F for dark) and reseed or you can add a larger amount of "good seed" to the over crystallized chocolate and melt it out with a heat gun. You should be able to reset the crystal structure to its proper stage by introducing an abundance of stable crystals.

I hope that helps David. Good Luck.

Shane

[ChristopherMichael]

Once you get the chocolate tempered, you can throw out the thermostat on your melter, because once it's tempered you must keep an eye on what the chocolate does and its consistency, not the temp. One thing that I have found out, is that the seed method is not for me, I now strictly do it by hand on marble or other surface that absorbs the heat. I use to seed and I always got to many crystal and they just expanded way to fast. So if your using your Rev2 to temper and it's not working, go back to the basics and table top/manually temper your chocolate, it worked for me when I left my chocolate in the melter to long and it got all out of whack. I'm sure if it doesn't work there's a ton of smart people on these boards and they might have other ideas.

[David J.]

I've never used the marble method before but I might give that a shot. I've used seed, and the close cousin of direct melting leaving enough solid as seed. I'm hesitant to keep adding fresh seed chocolate if there is something contaminating it. If I can manage to manualy temper it with the marble method that will prove the chocolate is good and give me more experience as well.

What I found frustrating was that the automatic Rev2 which always worked before was having trouble with this batch. If that doesn't work I'm wondering if there is a reason that is also preventing the seed method from working well. Note that while it is getting quite thick, it is also not a great temper.

JPW did tell us in class that you may need to hit it with a hot air gun to keep the crystalization in check and I know I wasn't doing that while I was using the Rev2. Perhaps all the extra cocoa butter I added to thin it out was causing the fast crystalization. Has anyone else added cocoa butter to thin a batch before? Does it have any unintended side effects like this?

[Desiderio]

I use the mol d'art with not problem,the only thing I have to check for is to get the chocolate too warm if I let it sit overnight ( since the basement is cold ).

What kind of callenaut are you using?Number or code?

[Kerry Beal]

I might take a small amount and add some fresh callets, retemper and see how it goes. That might help determine if it had picked up moisture or otherwise 'gone off'.

I don't know how much chocolate we are talking about here, but I might just put it aside and use it for ganache.

However, I know you are hoping to determine if this is a fixable thing, or to figure out what went wrong.

[Sebastian]

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..

[David J.]

I might take a small amount and add some fresh callets, retemper and see how it goes.  That might help determine if it had picked up moisture or otherwise 'gone off'. 

I don't know how much chocolate we are talking about here, but I might just put it aside and use it for ganache. 

However, I know you are hoping to determine if this is a fixable thing, or to figure out what went wrong.

←

My main purpose right now is to learn from this and see if it's fixable.

Last night I remelted it, seeded with chunks left over from the Rev2 batch that appeared to be well tempered, and took several samples.

My first sample was definately off temper with a spotted surface, so I added more seed and brought the temperature down further. I played with it from there, adding more chuncks and raising the temperature with a heat gun when they didn't want to melt out. It wanted to be somewhere around 92F to be the proper viscosity.

Subsequent samples did not appear to be great temper as they did not have a perfect snap. However leaving them overnight fixed that. Even the first sample with the poor surface had a pretty good snap to it. I'm not sure why the overnight wait worked its wonder as I had the samples in the freezer for a few minutes for a complete chill (after a few minutes at 68F to start the setting) and then took them out for an hour before I tested them last night (to be sure they snapped at room temp).

This morning the surface of the chocolate read 87.5F by the infrared thermometer, but it was an inch thick of stiff cap over something like a 1/4" of fluid chocolate on the bottom. It really wants to set up. I cranked up the thermostat a touch so it may melt out a bit more for tonight when I have more to dip.

So it appears that I have a batch that loves to set up at what should be a working temperature that can never the less be tempered if I work it right and leave the result overnight.

[John DePaula]

I might take a small amount and add some fresh callets, retemper and see how it goes.  That might help determine if it had picked up moisture or otherwise 'gone off'. 

I don't know how much chocolate we are talking about here, but I might just put it aside and use it for ganache. 

However, I know you are hoping to determine if this is a fixable thing, or to figure out what went wrong.

←

My main purpose right now is to learn from this and see if it's fixable.

Last night I remelted it, seeded with chunks left over from the Rev2 batch that appeared to be well tempered, and took several samples.

My first sample was definately off temper with a spotted surface, so I added more seed and brought the temperature down further. I played with it from there, adding more chuncks and raising the temperature with a heat gun when they didn't want to melt out. It wanted to be somewhere around 92F to be the proper viscosity.

Subsequent samples did not appear to be great temper as they did not have a perfect snap. However leaving them overnight fixed that. Even the first sample with the poor surface had a pretty good snap to it. I'm not sure why the overnight wait worked its wonder as I had the samples in the freezer for a few minutes for a complete chill (after a few minutes at 68F to start the setting) and then took them out for an hour before I tested them last night (to be sure they snapped at room temp).

This morning the surface of the chocolate read 87.5F by the infrared thermometer, but it was an inch thick of stiff cap over something like a 1/4" of fluid chocolate on the bottom. It really wants to set up. I cranked up the thermostat a touch so it may melt out a bit more for tonight when I have more to dip.

So it appears that I have a batch that loves to set up at what should be a working temperature that can never the less be tempered if I work it right and leave the result overnight.

←

You never want to put your chocolate in the freezer. The temperature differential from room temp is too great and you'll end up causing unstable crystals to form.