Converting a chocolate fountain to a tempering setup?

[jrshaul]

I greatly enjoy making chocolate truffles, but have had relatively poor luck holding chocolate at the correct temperatures for tempering. My standard method of very slowly melting it in a microwave produces chocolate that, while crisp with good mouthfeel, has severe bloom.

After seeing some commercial tempering setups on YouTube, I noticed that many of them use a fountain-style setup for circulation and mold filling. I don't have any chocolate molds, but purchasing a secondhand consumer chocolate fountain and integrating a PID controller and thermocouple into the heater is a very viable possibility. Has anyone done anything like this?

[Philip Le]

I was looking on the internet and looking for ways this might not work (since I wanted to try this out before I bought a Revolation 2 and lord knows I am a party pooper) but upon further inspection I don't see why it wouldn't work. It looks like the auger can operate regardless of whether or not the heating element is on and the melters should be able to bring chocolate up to temperatures of 250F or higher. The only thing I can see not working out is that chocolate fountains are prohibitively expensive and I don't think the cheapo models are going to quite cut it.

Oh, and cleanup, and dipping, looks even more difficult than with those spinning bowl tempering machines. (Just curious, are you slowly bringing the temperature up and then adding seed or are you just bringing it up so slowly that the chocolate never enters the crystal breakdown stage?)

Edit: Another thing! Chocolate fountains require really liquid chocolate so you're either going to need to use really high quality couverture, add cocoa butter or deal with the chocolate sort of tumbling down the sides.

Edited February 13, 2012 by Philip Le (log)

[Kerry Beal]

You need to add oil of some sort to a fountain to get the flow - suspect even good couverature would flow like a tar pit in one.

[Lisa Shock]

The catering company I work for occasionally refuses to provide chocolate fountains because you have to add so much oil to make a fountain run that the chocolate winds up being not very good -like 40%+ oil, not very tasty.

[jrshaul]

You need to add oil of some sort to a fountain to get the flow - suspect even good couverature would flow like a tar pit in one.

I've heard as much. The ones I saw at the store say "Just add chocolate chips!," but the owners have verified you need to add a bunch of grease.

I'm not entirely discouraged, though. The auger should require lower tolerances than the rotating bowl and scraper if I can find one complete.

Another option might be to put a seal around the top of my crock pot sous vide machine and set the water bath at 91F. I'd have to put on a good seal and weigh down the bowl.

[Lisa Shock]

Thing is, I have seen tempering machines for around $400...