Dry Bain-marie or Table-top melter?

[asadus]

Hiya,

 

Guys I've been looking for table-top melter around 6,9 kg capacity.

Mol d'Art, Keychoc etc etc I can get one around £500 - £600 which is way expensive for me.

 

I'm wondering if I can use this;

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/WINTER-SPECIAL-2-Single-Dry-Well-Chocolate-Tempering-Melting-Bain-Marie-/390687065373?pt=UK_BOI_Restaurant_RL&hash=item5af6c3851d

 

I was watching chocolatier Paul A Young vidoe and noticed wet bain marie is used in his kitchen.

 

@ 0:50

 

Here is the link;

 

If a wet bain marie can be used for chocolates this can be a much cheaper option for me.

 

Thanks.

 

 

 

[Kerry Beal]

Don't see why not if it can hold a steady low temperature.

[gfweb]

An induction plate might ease temp control with a bain

[pastrygirl]

First, one quibble:  he talks about doing absolutely everything by hand, but those are clearly purchased truffle shells!

 

The melter on ebay is clearly designed for chocolate and should work, and I often use a wet bain i.e. a bowl over a pot of simmering water.  I also have a 6kg mol d'art melter.  The disadvantage of the melter is it is pretty slow.  I try to set it up to melt the night before, or sometimes will melt chocolate over a bain then transfer it to the melter if I need a lot of chocolate melted quickly (did this today).  No matter what I'm using, I keep a thermometer taped to the side to monitor temperature.  A hair dryer works when you need to heat a bowl of chocolate up just a few degrees.

 

You should also consider what type of chocolate work you do.  I like the size of the 6kg melter because the half hotel pan size gives me plenty of room to dump molds.  The one you linked to looks more like a quarter or third pan size, i think I would find that a bit narrow to work with when doing a lot of molds.  If you are doing more hand dipping, the size might be fine, though too deep a pan could be awkward as well if it was not fairly full of chocolate.

[keychris]

I like the size of the 6kg melter because the half hotel pan size gives me plenty of room to dump molds.

 

This.

 

I had a smaller 3kg bowl for about 4 months before I got my 6kg melt tanks, and got sick of moulding half-moulds, waiting for that to set, moulding other half very, very quickly.

[Edward J]

Commercial bain-maires--like for soup are the right idea, but unfortunately the thermostats are not very accurate under 60 C, they become quite accurate in the 70-90 C range however.  You can retrofit them with much more accurate thermostats, but the thermostat is around 200 bucks itself

 

A very cheap and quick fix for a "dry" melter is at your drugstore-an electric heating blanket.  Get the cheapest one with NO auto-shut off, and the basic, Low, Med. and High settings.  Set a 1/2 or 2/3 steam table insert on top of this and you should be good to go.   MIght have to experiment and fool around a bit with the settings, but hey--you can take it bed with you if you like!

 

Commercial melters like the Mol d'art are good and very accurate--no fooling around.  What ever you do DO NOT BUY the Martillato brand of dry melter that are advertised in trade mags and the like.  The plastic housing cracks weithin two weeks, and within 6 mths the thermostat wil crap out and burn your chocoale.  This happened to me twice--the second one was a replacement.

[asadus]

Thank you all for taking time and coming up with your suggestions.

@Edward J.....  I've heard Dry bain-maries consume less power and a thermometer can be stick in for accurate temperature reading.

Thanks for you advice taking heating blanket in bed, but I'm married and got a gorgeous wife to keep me warm in bed .

 

@Pastrygirl....  Thanks for the idea to melt chocolate over simmering water and dump it in melter as chocolate melter are tad slow.

I'll keep things in mind you mentioned about different gastronoms size.

 

 

 

Just out of interest watch this DIY revolutions;

 

and this;

[keychris]

What ever you do DO NOT BUY the Martillato brand of dry melter that are advertised in trade mags and the like.  The plastic housing cracks weithin two weeks, and within 6 mths the thermostat wil crap out and burn your chocoale.  This happened to me twice--the second one was a replacement.

That's interesting - the school I occasionally attend exclusively uses Martellato tanks, they're run 24/7 all the time and they don't have those issues.

[Edward J]

Mine were the 2/3 hotel pan size.  Bought them from a reputable pastry supplier in Vancouver in 2007.  Thermostat was always wonky, I was constantly out of  temper, and then 6 mths after purchasing, I came in one morning to find a melting, stinking bubbling mess on my chocolate counter, I was lucky I didn't start a fire.  Brought the mess to the supplier who issued me with a new one--same model, but he didn't offer me much hope.  The local C C (Community college) had the same problem with two of thier 1/2 size melters and they were sitting in his store room.

 

With both of my units, I found stress cracks right around the screws that held the bottom to the top of the unit-with the first two weeks.  The plastic was very thin and very brittle.  Within a month, stress cracks appeared on the inside corners of the unit.  I noticed the same issues with the C.C.'s units when I was at the dealers.  Since the warranty on my replacement unit was basically nil, I took the unit apart after the first cracks started appearing.  I glued in strips of 1/4" hardboard with heavy duty construction glue to inside of the unit in the hopes of slowing down the cracking. There was no internal ribbing or additional support within the unit.  My "alterations" didn't work, cracks appeared in new areas and anyway after about 4 mths the thermostat crapped out on the replacement. By that time the inside bottom of the unit had cracked, melted and warped so bad that the pan didn't sit flat anyway.   The dealer assured me that Martellato knew of the problem, would not address it, would not compensate him for the replacement units, and would not communicate with him. Hence the broken units in his store room.

 

The one frustrating idiotic thing that irritated me to no end was the on/off switch at the back of the unit.  You would always inadvertantly switch it off when you pushed the unit up against a wall, or something brushed up against it,  and there was no thermostat light at the front of the unit to tell you if power was on.  I often dreamed of ways to torture the eejit who thunk up where to put that switch--perhaps tying boat anchors to his feet and drowning him in pail of glucose...

 

Then again, that was back in 2007, maybe the company smartened up by now.....

[asadus]

Guys what do you think about this;

 

http://www.keychoc.com/melting-tanks.php

 

I'm interesed in the one with 8kg capacity.

Price £335 + (20% taxman cut) £67 = £402. =$608.