On 1/14/2018 at 3:30 AM, Bentley said:I am curious if the quality of the Chinese polycarbonate molds is on par with the Chocolate World and similar molds?
I did a back to back comparison with two half circle molds I got from aliexpress and two half circle molds from Chocolate World. Aliexpress was 1/4 the price of Chocolate World and that's with living very close to CW. Table tempered my callebaut 811 and shelled the molds and left them to completely crystallize. I wanted to see if there was a shine difference, ease of demolding..etc..
I didn't fill them on purpose.
Immediately when I was scraping off excess chocolate, I noticed the aliexpress molds scratched very easily and plastic actually scraped off. After an hour or so, the shells in the CW molds had almost entirely released when I checked them. The aliexpress were not released at all. So, I left all four molds in my chocolate room of 16C for the rest of the night. Next day, the shells in the CW molds slipped out without one single release mark or resistance. The aliexpress molds still didn't show that the chocolate had shrunk away from the mold. Turning them over and tapping them, released maybe one or two shells. I put it in the fridge for 5 minutes, still no movement in the shells. I put it in the freezer for a few minutes, and still nothing. At this point, I applied the heat gun to it to just soften the chocolate and I'd clean it out with my fingers. While the surface of the chocolate was very slowly melting, I put my finger in to clean it out and the plastic had actually softened as well as the chocolate!
I talked to my mentor where I went to pastry school about it and he said he had heard of the melting happening as well.
I've also had issue with one Italian brand mold, but never ever melting, just poor and inconsistent release.
