Chocolate Tempering: Tips and Troubleshooting

Kerry Beal · October 5, 2016

5 hours ago, dannysdesserts said:

Kerry - these solids are approximately 1/4 inch thick. I assume 15 minutes. Thick would be for something like a bar?

Yes

dannysdesserts · October 9, 2016

OK, final follow up for anyone who is interested. I have had little success with the wild crystallization method. I have had great success with the seed method as follows:

melt 150g chocolate until about 120F

stir in 50g finely chopped tempered chocolate to ensure it all melts

cool to 84F (while stirring) then rewarm to 89F

mould and cool in fridge for 15 min

unmould and cool with fan blowing across rack

keychris · October 9, 2016

I don't understand why you're cooling it to 84 and then rewarming it. If you're trying to create the beta crystals from nothing (wild crystallisation), then that's how you do it - melt, cool, warm, use. If you're seeding (which is what you're describing), add your seed and cool whilst stirring to the working temperature of the couverture. If all the seed has melted before you reach the working temperature, you probably need to add a little bit more. If it's all melted out and you're still 5C above working temperature, you won't get the seeding method to work because there's no beta crystals left to seed, they've all melted.

dannysdesserts · October 10, 2016

Thanks keychris. I will do as you suggest, cool to only 89F so as to not destroy the beta crystals.

**Jim D.** · October 10, 2016

If all the seed has not melted when you get to the working temp (you mention 89F), you should take it out. This can be difficult if you have small pieces (such as I think yours are). A slotted spoon would help get it all. It is easier if you have a large chunk of the seed to start with--perhaps after you get some of your chocolate properly tempered, you could use a piece of that. Just a thought.

Kerry Beal · October 10, 2016

I suspect the reason that the wild crystallization is not working for you (if you are doing it correctly) and the bastardized seed method is - is that the thermometer you are using is not accurate. You said you tested it with boiling water and it was 1 degree off of 210.8. I usually use 212 as the boiling point when testing as I am reasonably close to sea level. Calibrating at 212 doesn't tell you what your thermometer is doing at 70 F. If your thermometer is already off by a couple of degrees at 212 - it could be off a couple of degrees or more at the much lower temperatures where chocolate is being tempered.

So with wild crystallization, when you think you are getting down to 27º C - you might only be getting down to 29º C and won't get the formation of all the crystals you need. But if you 'seed' down to what you think is 27 and it's actually 29 - then you are pretty darn close to where you should have been.

I would suggest you get a thermometer from Thermoworks that is known to read accurately at the temperatures where you are working - then pick one of the two methods and as Tri-2-cook suggested above - 'follow the directions exactly as suggested without trying to freestyle any of it'.

pastrygirl · October 10, 2016

1 hour ago, dannysdesserts said:

Thanks keychris. I will do as you suggest, cool to only 89F so as to not destroy the beta crystals.

Not sure what you mean by that. The beta crystals will not be destroyed by being cooled below 89, the point is that if they are present because you have seeded successfully there is no need to cool the chocolate below working temp. If you have the 1-2% of beta crystals and your test is good, you're good to go.

Do you have any books you're working from? I would highly recommend Peter Greweling's Chocolates and Confections, though I have the older edition, not the new one. He explains how things work and offers troubleshooting guides. I think some people here like Andrew Garrison Schott's book but I don't have it. I find the Wybauw books must have lost something in translation, they are not as clear and easy to understand as Greweling, and they are expensive to boot.

Kerry Beal · October 10, 2016

1 minute ago, pastrygirl said:

Not sure what you mean by that. The beta crystals will not be destroyed by being cooled below 89, the point is that if they are present because you have seeded successfully there is no need to cool the chocolate below working temp. If you have the 1-2% of beta crystals and your test is good, you're good to go.

Do you have any books you're working from? I would highly recommend Peter Greweling's Chocolates and Confections, though I have the older edition, not the new one. He explains how things work and offers troubleshooting guides. I think some people here like Andrew Garrison Schott's book but I don't have it. I find the Wybauw books must have lost something in translation, they are not as clear and easy to understand as Greweling, and they are expensive to boot.

Indeed - Greweling is an excellent resource!

martin0642 · October 11, 2016

I'm going to throw a curve ball in here...actually a couple...

If you're using callets/pistoles/other tempered chocolate drops - you could try using the incomplete melting method to temper (see video). You *do8 have to be scrupulous about short bursts though.

You don't say (or I completely missed) what you are doing this for - but i'm assuming this isn't a commercial venture and is more experimentation at this stage? If so - then maybe try using mycryo to seed - it's a pricey option for large scale work but for small batches it works very well (it's just a tempered cocoa butter powder...exactly the same process but you heat the chocolate to 45c, cool to around 34c and then add 1% by weight mycryo - stir stir sir - works for me every time)

Finally - I cannot recommend a good thermometer enough. Personally I use a Thermapen - well worth the investment. IR thermos are fine once you have the hang of it all and you can check the temperature against a proper probe thermometer...but they are less useful in less than ideal conditions.

dannysdesserts · October 11, 2016

Thanks again for the helpful responses. Watched the above video! The Greweling book has been ordered! A thermometer or two have been ordered . More successful batches have been made and eaten so I'm sure the dentist is not happy. I can report greater success and I owe it to this community.

I am not (yet) in the chocolate business. I am hoping to take my knowledge and apply it this Holiday season. I am humbled by everyone's willingness to help me and I appreciate all of the knowledge that is shared on this wonderful site.

martin0642 · October 17, 2016

On 11/10/2016 at 7:16 PM, dannysdesserts said:

Thanks again for the helpful responses. Watched the above video! The Greweling book has been ordered! A thermometer or two have been ordered . More successful batches have been made and eaten so I'm sure the dentist is not happy. I can report greater success and I owe it to this community.

I am not (yet) in the chocolate business. I am hoping to take my knowledge and apply it this Holiday season. I am humbled by everyone's willingness to help me and I appreciate all of the knowledge that is shared on this wonderful site.

I am continually humbled and amazed by the amount and quality of help I get here. There are some truly wonderful people who give a great deal to this site.......hopefully I'll be able to do the same when I have more experience

Bentley · December 3, 2016

I have gone back to tabling chocolate for tempering. It has been foolproof so far and faster than any other method I've tried. If you're doing huge batches for large-scale production, it might not be the most practical, but for the home chocolatier, I don't think it can be beat. One tip to pass on, though is that once you've melted the chocolate, you need to let it sit at the high temperature for a couple of minutes to completely melt, or else you will get small grains of chocolate that don't fully melt. You can smooth it out with an immersion blender, but this gets another tool dirty, actually raises the temperature of the chocolate and takes extra time.

Choky · July 3, 2017

Can a chocolate have 2 possible tempering settings?

For example, using a continuous tempering machine, it can be tempered at 49ºC / 32ºC, but eventually also at 54ºC / 34ºC ?

Thanks in advance!

pastrygirl · July 3, 2017

If the chocolate has been in temper for a while and has started to thicken despite being held at 32C, then yes you can raise the temp enough to melt out some of the crystals and have it still be in temper. As long as you don't melt all the crystallization out - do test it before using. Does that help?

Kerry Beal · July 3, 2017

Further to what pastrygirl says - you can heat over tempered dark chocolate as high as 34.5º C and over tempered milk chocolate as high as 32.5º C.

Choky · July 4, 2017

Thanks, but what I was trying to ask was if it's possible a chocolate to have 2 completely different temper temperature pairs, like 49ºC / 32ºC and 54ºC / 34ºC, or only one.

Kerry Beal · July 4, 2017

The 49º or 54º doesn't matter - but the initial tempering will be the 32º.

keychris · July 4, 2017

you need to understand what actually is happening to the chocolate at those temperatures - the higher temperature doesn't matter because you're just melting out all the crystals to a liquid state. Then when you drop the temperature, you encourage the correct crystal to propagate (the ... IV? crystal I think). Once you have that crystal propagating in your liquid chocolate at the correct temperature, it's going to continue to be formed until you have a solid mass of chocolate, still at 32C, still in temper, but completely unuseable for enrobing or making molds. So you need to gently heat your chocolate every now and then to keep melting out the excess crystals without melting them all out, which is why you start the day at 32C but may end the day higher than that.

Is a continuous tempering machine something like a Selmi? In those, you shouldn't need to increase the temperature throughout the day because the chocolate in the big tank is high temperature and untempered, then gets cooled and tempered as it runs from the tank to the spout.

**Jim D.** · July 5, 2017

I usually suspend most chocolate production in the summer months, but it appears, from some new business prospects, that I may need to change that practice. In some recent summer attempts, chocolates have sometimes been difficult to get out of molds (I have eventually gotten all of them out, but it has not been a pretty process, and the surface of some of them is dull). Therefore I am examining my tempering and cooling procedures to determine if they can be improved, and any advice would be appreciated.

I work in a home kitchen, so there are some limitations. With air conditioning I can get the temp down below 70F/21C and the relative humidity down to the 40-45% range. In the first stage of making chocolates (forming the shells) I allow the molds to begin crystallizing at room temp, then put them in the fridge (just my regular fridge, set at 38F/3.3C, for 10-15 minutes or so; I allow for a longer period of time for the second stage, closing the chocolates. I place the trays on racks in the fridge so as to allow for air flow below them. In cooler and less humid months, this procedure has worked without too many problems, so I am looking to humidity as the culprit.

In the many eGullet threads on tempering I have seen a recommendation for adding a small fan to the refrigerator to help dispel latent heat, but have not tried that. I have read a lot on humidity in fridges and learned that whereas the RH is quite low as long as the door has been kept closed for a while, it rises quickly when one opens the door (as when putting a mold in), and it stays high for quite some time; testing with a hygrometer has mostly confirmed this fact. One would deduce from this observation that fridges are not the best way to cool molds, yet it is what virtually everyone on eG does. Peter Greweling, whom I think many of us take as an authority, does not (surprisingly) call for cooling the molds below room temp when making the shells and mentions cooling only after the capping stage--where he recommends 15 minutes in a fridge at about 41F/5C, specifying that the fridge "must not have high humidity."

All this (especially the humidity quote from Greweling) has led me to investigate cooling cabinets especially intended for chocolate-making, which is probably what Greweling has at his disposal. So far research has led to two options: Hilliard's (a U.S. company) and Everlasting (Italian, but the products are available in the U.S., though at 220V). When I asked Clay Gordon of the Chocolate Life site how these fridges differ from regular ones, he stated that they are specifically built to deal quickly with the humidity "hit" caused by opening the door. The Hilliard's cooler goes down only to 58F/14C (which does not sound low enough, but I have not checked with the company) and Everlasting to 35.6F/2C. The cost of both units is quite high, but I am just investigating at this point.

I am also trying to determine whether having the area around a regular fridge (in my case, the kitchen) at a low RH (40% or so) makes a difference in the fridge's "recovery time." It makes sense to me that it would help, but I am not a scientist. Clay recommended trying Moso charcoal bags to reduce the fridge's humidity.

And, as long as I'm trying to be comprehensive in this posting, I will add that, on a rainy day in the cooler months, high RH does not seem to affect the chocolates--though logic would dictate that it would.

Any thoughts would be most appreciated.

Choky · July 5, 2017

Yes, I'm using a continuous tempering machine like Selmi.

This photo from today shows 2 attempts, the tempering temperature of the right one is 2 or 3ºC less than the left one.

Chocolate in the right one was rather thick, the one on the left have some kind of microbubbles that vibration don't eliminates.

How thick should a tempered chocolate be? And microbubbles are a symptom of what?

pastrygirl · July 6, 2017

1 hour ago, Choky said:

How thick should a tempered chocolate be?

Depends on how much cocoa butter is in it. Are you using couverture (30%+ cocoa butter)? Not all chocolates are suitable for molding, for exactly that reason. Some have less cocoa butter and may be great for baking or as an ingredient, but too thick for molding. For example, Barry-Calleabut uses the 5 drop scale on their chocolate- 1 drop will be very thick, 5 will be very runny. You might use a 1 drop chocolate in a brownie recipe but should switch to a 3 or 4 for dipping or molding.

As for bubbles - I don't know, I think bubbles are just bubbles.

Kerry Beal · July 6, 2017

9 hours ago, Jim D. said:

I usually suspend most chocolate production in the summer months, but it appears, from some new business prospects, that I may need to change that practice. In some recent summer attempts, chocolates have sometimes been difficult to get out of molds (I have eventually gotten all of them out, but it has not been a pretty process, and the surface of some of them is dull). Therefore I am examining my tempering and cooling procedures to determine if they can be improved, and any advice would be appreciated.

I work in a home kitchen, so there are some limitations. With air conditioning I can get the temp down below 70F/21C and the relative humidity down to the 40-45% range. In the first stage of making chocolates (forming the shells) I allow the molds to begin crystallizing at room temp, then put them in the fridge (just my regular fridge, set at 38F/3.3C, for 10-15 minutes or so; I allow for a longer period of time for the second stage, closing the chocolates. I place the trays on racks in the fridge so as to allow for air flow below them. In cooler and less humid months, this procedure has worked without too many problems, so I am looking to humidity as the culprit.

In the many eGullet threads on tempering I have seen a recommendation for adding a small fan to the refrigerator to help dispel latent heat, but have not tried that. I have read a lot on humidity in fridges and learned that whereas the RH is quite low as long as the door has been kept closed for a while, it rises quickly when one opens the door (as when putting a mold in), and it stays high for quite some time; testing with a hygrometer has mostly confirmed this fact. One would deduce from this observation that fridges are not the best way to cool molds, yet it is what virtually everyone on eG does. Peter Greweling, whom I think many of us take as an authority, does not (surprisingly) call for cooling the molds below room temp when making the shells and mentions cooling only after the capping stage--where he recommends 15 minutes in a fridge at about 41F/5C, specifying that the fridge "must not have high humidity."

All this (especially the humidity quote from Greweling) has led me to investigate cooling cabinets especially intended for chocolate-making, which is probably what Greweling has at his disposal. So far research has led to two options: Hilliard's (a U.S. company) and Everlasting (Italian, but the products are available in the U.S., though at 220V). When I asked Clay Gordon of the Chocolate Life site how these fridges differ from regular ones, he stated that they are specifically built to deal quickly with the humidity "hit" caused by opening the door. The Hilliard's cooler goes down only to 58F/14C (which does not sound low enough, but I have not checked with the company) and Everlasting to 35.6F/2C. The cost of both units is quite high, but I am just investigating at this point.

I am also trying to determine whether having the area around a regular fridge (in my case, the kitchen) at a low RH (40% or so) makes a difference in the fridge's "recovery time." It makes sense to me that it would help, but I am not a scientist. Clay recommended trying Moso charcoal bags to reduce the fridge's humidity.

And, as long as I'm trying to be comprehensive in this posting, I will add that, on a rainy day in the cooler months, high RH does not seem to affect the chocolates--though logic would dictate that it would.

Any thoughts would be most appreciated.

The Hilliard cabinets are essentially a box with doors, racks and an air conditioner in it. It's got lots of air circulation.

I'm betting that the school where Peter teaches probably has Irinox holding cabinets. The French Pastry School has them as do a lot of european confectioners. They are completely adjustable for temperature and humidity.

I've got friends who have set up an air container in a window and just place their product on a speed rack in front of the unit. Other folks have made a box that looks like a dumb waiter - the door opens the same way - and again it's got air conditioned air blowing down into it.

pastrygirl · July 6, 2017

@Jim D. First, ugh. Can you charge these prospective customers enough to make it worth the frustration? :unsure:

What are your overnight temps? I don't have AC so I just get up super early to beat the heat. Is humidity lower at a certain time of day? Despite our (in)famous Seattle rain, we have relatively dry summers, so I only worry about humidity when making macarons.

I would definitely try a fan or several. A large box fan at 70F might be better at blowing away that latent heat of crystallization and not adding humidity than a home fridge with no fan. Otherwise, how about putting a pizza stone in the fridge ahead of time to pre-chill - wouldn't that conduct heat away faster than just the air in the fridge?

Kerry Beal · July 6, 2017

27 minutes ago, pastrygirl said:

@Jim D. First, ugh. Can you charge these prospective customers enough to make it worth the frustration?

What are your overnight temps? I don't have AC so I just get up super early to beat the heat. Is humidity lower at a certain time of day? Despite our (in)famous Seattle rain, we have relatively dry summers, so I only worry about humidity when making macarons.

I would definitely try a fan or several. A large box fan at 70F might be better at blowing away that latent heat of crystallization and not adding humidity than a home fridge with no fan. Otherwise, how about putting a pizza stone in the fridge ahead of time to pre-chill - wouldn't that conduct heat away faster than just the air in the fridge?

This is making me think - Jim - do you have wire racks in your fridge or solid glass shelves?

**Jim D.** · July 6, 2017

38 minutes ago, Kerry Beal said:

This is making me think - Jim - do you have wire racks in your fridge or solid glass shelves?

I have solid glass shelves, but I add racks to get the chocolate molds off the surface.

Sign In

Chocolate Tempering: Tips and Troubleshooting

Recommended Posts

Similar Content

Recently Browsing 0 members