EZtemper - The Help You Need to Achieve Perfectly Tempered Chocolate FAST!

[Kerry Beal]

I have a tempermeter - and indeed it really does measure a change in temperature rather than electromagnetic emission. 

Edited July 12, 2020 by Kerry Beal (log)

[Kerry Beal]

Don't know how many of you are following Brian Donaghy of Tomric Systems Chocolatier Chats on Instagram on Fridays - but it was my great honor to be invited for next Friday.

 

 

 

 

[Jim D.]

1 hour ago, Kerry Beal said:

Don't know how many of you are following Brian Donaghy of Tomric Systems Chocolatier Chats on Instagram on Fridays - but it was my great honor to be invited for next Friday.

 

 

I will certainly watch, but I do hope Brian lets YOU talk.

[Kerry Beal]

5 minutes ago, Jim D. said:

 

I will certainly watch, but I do hope Brian lets YOU talk.

I've known Brian a long long time - we've had a whole lot of good talks. I'm sure I'll get my share! I'm having a little trouble picking only one favorite chocolate bar though.

Edited October 7, 2020 by Kerry Beal (log)

[RobertM]

But, the entire Chocolate world is waiting with baited breath....what will be The Chocolate Doctors bar of choice?

[Kerry Beal]

10 minutes ago, RobertM said:

But, the entire Chocolate world is waiting with baited breath....what will be The Chocolate Doctors bar of choice?

Indeed - that is the million dollar question!

[Anna N]

6 hours ago, RobertM said:

But, the entire Chocolate world is waiting with baited breath....what will be The Chocolate Doctors bar of choice?

Given her workload at the moment almost any bar would do. I’m thinking her local Joe Doggs might meet the need😂.

[teonzo]

9 hours ago, RobertM said:

But, the entire Chocolate world is waiting with baited breath....what will be The Chocolate Doctors bar of choice?

 

Something like this, I would say.

 

 

 

Teo

 

[Chocolot]

 

Just a riff on Melissa's idea of putting a pastry bag with silk, in the EZ Temper for when you just need a squeeze. I have found this bottle works well and doesn't drip. I transferred the silk to the bottle, didn't fill bottle with hard cocoa butter.

[Kerry Beal]

3 hours ago, Chocolot said:

 

Just a riff on Melissa's idea of putting a pastry bag with silk, in the EZ Temper for when you just need a squeeze. I have found this bottle works well and doesn't drip. I transferred the silk to the bottle, didn't fill bottle with hard cocoa butter.

Good plan - would be a challenge to mix it inside the bottle! I love this idea - holds itself up unlike the piping bag that you need something to hold it in inside the EZtemper. 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

On 10/22/2020 at 2:59 PM, Chocolot said:

 

Just a riff on Melissa's idea of putting a pastry bag with silk, in the EZ Temper for when you just need a squeeze. I have found this bottle works well and doesn't drip. I transferred the silk to the bottle, didn't fill bottle with hard cocoa butter.

 

Nothing to do with EZtemper unfortunately, but your picture gave me a good idea.  Thanks.

 

[RobertM]

On 10/22/2020 at 6:18 PM, Kerry Beal said:

Good plan - would be a challenge to mix it inside the bottle! I love this idea - holds itself up unlike the piping bag that you need something to hold it in inside the EZtemper. 

I love this idea, but, how easy is it to give the silk a good stir before using? 

[Kerry Beal]

Just now, RobertM said:

I love this idea, but, how easy is it to give the silk a good stir before using? 

Squeeze the bottle I'd say. I do have access to some very thin walled squeezie bottles that would likely be perfect for this - or one of those silicone squeezie bottles you find at a pharmacy.

 

 

[RobertM]

I have put bottles of Chef Rubber colored coca butter in my EZtemper.   Intelligence would have allowed me to extrapolate this idea.  However "Retired Intelligence" has prevented my creativity from remaining active.

[GRiker]

On 10/7/2020 at 2:49 PM, Kerry Beal said:

Don't know how many of you are following Brian Donaghy of Tomric Systems Chocolatier Chats on Instagram on Fridays - but it was my great honor to be invited for next Friday.

Does anyone have a link to where I can watch this?

 

Edited October 28, 2020 by GRiker (log)

[Kerry Beal]

20 minutes ago, GRiker said:

Does anyone have a link to where I can watch this?

 

I haven't seen the youtube version yet - but if you go to Tomric Systems feed on Instagram you can watch.

Edited October 28, 2020 by Kerry Beal (log)

[Douglas K]

So, I don’t have an EZ Temper, but this seemed to be the best place to ask this since it’s the same process. I’m making silk in a sous vide bath. An EZ Temper is out of the question right now for me since I’m not a professional, and will not ever be one. If I were, it would definitely be a high priority item since I like the method of tempering, and the EZ temper way is such an easy way to do it with instant results. My failures with tempering has been not being patient with my stirring in of the grated solid “silk”. I’ll never have a chocolate business, so my emphasis is buying equipment to do my tree to bar business at home in Puerto Rico. So I hope you understand I am focusing on roasting and fermentation for now. Perhaps it will be in my distant future.

 

My question is regarding temperatures. My latest batch of “silk”. Was with some natural cocoa butter, and at 93 after 24 hours it wasn’t totally melted, but was definitely not mayonnaise. It was definitely translucent, but also very liquid. I let it solidify in the jar, and it made a nice solid “cake” for better word, which seemed to me to be a good type 5 structure. I’ve put it back into the water bath now at a lower temperature, but I was wondering if something that was as translucent as it was might have solidified to the mayonnaise thickness at a lower temperature without letting it crystallize and then melting it again. I totally understand why the EZ temper is so great, but just asking how someone with one would handle this.

[GRiker]

1 hour ago, Kerry Beal said:

I haven't seen the youtube version yet - but if you go to Tomric Systems feed on Instagram you can watch.

Thanks.  I tried looking in YouTube but couldn't find it.  I found it on Instagram.

[GRiker]

21 minutes ago, Douglas K said:

I’m making silk in a sous vide bath.

This is how I make mine too.  I'm also a very amateur chocolatier but love tempering with silk straight out of the sous vide or from the solid grated with a microplane.  I had trouble with my first batch of silk in the sous vide.  Kerry gave me the tip to fully melt the cocoa butter then give it a few days to solidify before making the silk.  It worked to fix my problem the first time and when I made some more this month, I did the same thing even though I was working with different cocoa butter.  Seemed like a good idea to get a clean start especially since I'm new at this.

 

When I just made silk in my sous vide this past month, I started a little lower than I thought I would need, 91.5F, then stirred it at 12 hours.  It didn't seem quite right, so increased my temp by 0.5F.  My cocoa butter was a mayonnaise consistency around 92F.  I know different cocoa butter can behave differently.

 

Sounds like your question is, if the cocoa butter gets too hot during the silk making process, can you just turn down the heat to the appropriate temperature and hold it there for 12 - 24 hours? Good question.  It seems to me like it would work if you held it for long enough for the crystals to form properly, but I'm interested to hear what someone with more experience thinks.  

1 hour ago, Douglas K said:

My failures with tempering has been not being patient with my stirring in of the grated solid “silk”.

I have found the best success by using a microplane and grating the amount I need into a seperate bowl and then adding it all at the same time.  I add the grated solid silk at 94F.  The chocolate loses heat fast as its crystallizing.  

[Douglas K]

Thanks @GRiker. I should have been more clear. I do exactly what you do with micro planing, and dumping it all in at once. My first batches everything was moving so fast for me that I just didn’t wait long enough for it to melt completely and do its job. I re-tempered that batch with the more traditional lower and raise temperature method, which taught me some patience.

 

I did completely melt the cocoa butter this time and let it solidify. When I let this batch which was over melted, and yet still milky, solidify, it made a nice uniform solid in the jar. Lowering the temperature .4 degrees F the second time around made a perfect batch. 

[curls]

Sorry but I feel the need to comment on these recent posts. Microplaning a block of tempered cocoa butter and using it to temper chocolate is a valid technique for seeding chocolate. This is similar to the use of Mycryo for tempering — not the same as using Mycryo but similar. It is not, as one would suspect from the topic it is posted in, a use of EZtemper silk. When you work with EZtemper silk you are working with cocoa butter with stage V crystals that are “liquid” and emulsified (probably not the correct chemistry description but I am not a chemist). This silk can be added to chocolate, ganache, meltaways, etc. to shift it to a tempered state quickly and easily. Having tempered via EZTemper silk, tabling, seed, Mycryo, and various tempering machines, I want to add a note to this topic to make it clear that the use of EZtemper silk is not the same as using solid shaved tempered cocoa butter to temper chocolate. Perhaps if we are to continue this discussion the alternate tempering methods should be explored in another topic or topics.

link to general tempering topic

 

link to Mycryo topic 

 

Edited October 29, 2020 by curls
added topic links (log)

[GRiker]

1 hour ago, curls said:

that the use of EZtemper silk is not the same as using solid shaved tempered cocoa butter to temper chocolate

Totally right @curls, off topic here on that part.  Not sure how to move part of a post over...or if needed at this point since I think the discussion is over. 

[Kerry Beal]

I really hesitate to get into the long story of how the term 'silk' that I coined for the texture of the cocoa butter produced in the EZtemper was taken over by another person and is now used to describe something that is not 'silk'. Guess I should have trademarked that term rather than EZtemper!

 

 

[GRiker]

1 hour ago, Kerry Beal said:

Guess I should have trademarked that term

Is it too late? 

[Kerry Beal]

23 minutes ago, GRiker said:

Is it too late? 

I'm sure it is since the entire world now refers to silk as the wrong thing.