Chocolate Tempering: Tips and Troubleshooting

[AKS613]

Thanks so much for the responses I really appreciate it!

[Kim Shook]

Honestly, this is how I always do it.  Yes, it has to start out tempered.  And it is not perfect - you don't get that lovely mirror finish and the perfect snap.  But it does work pretty well.  I usually heat it to about 85F and then sit the bowl on a heating pad set to 100F and keep checking that it doesn't go over 90F.  

[Jim D.]

15 minutes ago, Kim Shook said:

Honestly, this is how I always do it.  Yes, it has to start out tempered.  And it is not perfect - you don't get that lovely mirror finish and the perfect snap.  But it does work pretty well.  I usually heat it to about 85F and then sit the bowl on a heating pad set to 100F and keep checking that it doesn't go over 90F.  

 

I don't know of any reason that chocolate tempered this way would not have exactly the same qualities as when being tempered some other way. If it doesn't have a snap (after sitting a while to allow crystallization to continue), then I would wonder whether it is in temper. When I am making shells for a mold or two, I use this method, and the chocolate is just like what I get when use a tempering machine for a large quantity.

[teonzo]

We are talking about two slightly different methods.

What you (Jim and Kerry) are suggesting is the partial melt and mix, which requires manual work and is feasible for small quantities.

The other method consists in just leaving the chocolate undisturbed in a place at constant temperature. After the due time you will find it melted and tempered, ready for use. This is what was used decades ago before tempering machines were affordable for artisans. Pastry chefs put big amounts of chocolate in a proofer set at the correct temperature (30-32°C for dark, 28-30°C for milk and white), went to sleep, the morning after they found big quantities of chocolate ready to use. This was the main method used during Easter season time ago, still used nowadays by a bunch of people who can't afford a tempering machine. If some amateur has a proofing chamber for bread, then he/she can use this method to get melted tempered chocolate with no effort.

 

 

 

Teo

 

[cslas]

Reviving and old post. Can you reseed chocolate that's suffered from sugar bloom?

[Kerry Beal]

7 hours ago, cslas said:

Reviving and old post. Can you reseed chocolate that's suffered from sugar bloom?

Good question - once that sugar is out of the complex you might end up with grit. Better to use in a ganache or hot chocolate.

[cslas]

@Kerry Beal That's what I thought. Thanks for confirming

[Chocolatemelter]

Hi everyone.

 

Ive read everyone saying if you keep tempered chocolate at its working temps it will still eventually start to crystallize if left too long.. but what if you just stir it once an hour?

 

im looking to get a 24kg mol d’art melter but will have it sitting there for long periods of time(all day). But i can always just stir it once an hour. Would this work?

[Smithy]

Hello, @Chocolatemelter - your question belongs in the Pastry & Baking forum, where the members can see it. Your membership has been approved, and you are now free to post there and in the rest of the forums. You may also wish to introduce yourself in the Welcome Our New Members! forum. See you around!

[bbrizend]

I have a Chocovision Revolation V tempering machine and about 5 lbs of left over Callebaut Dark, Recipe 811 chocolate that is not in temper.  I used the chocolate to make some chocolate covered cherries the other day and they all, almost immediately, bloomed.  So I did some reading and decided to try a tempering test.  Using the crystallization chart on the side of the Callebaut bag as a guide I set my machine to have a melt temperature of 118 degrees, a delta temp of 80.6 degree, and a temper temperature of 89 degrees.  The room was about 72 degrees and the humidity was about 60%.  I ran the machine through its tempering cycle, melt to 118, cool to 80.6, and warm to 89 all the while being stirred, and then took samples of the chocolate.  I did not use any ‘seed’ chocolate during this process.  I realize using seed may have been more successful but based on my understanding of the melting and formation of cocoa butter crystals I shouldn’t have to.  I sampled the chocolate as soon as the machine said it was in temper, at 5 minutes post temper and at 10 minutes.  I spread the samples on parchment on a granite counter top.  The samples took longer to set than I think they should have, I’m talking like 10 – 15 minutes, and, in a short while, they bloomed.  By the way: as check I used another accurate thermometer to check the temperature of the chocolate at the 3 stages and the machine and the thermometer were within a few tenths of a degrees of each other.  So, what’s the problem?  Why did this chocolate not temper?

[Kerry Beal]

How certain are you of the accuracy of your accurate thermometer? 

Edited December 8, 2020 by Kerry Beal (log)

[bbrizend]

Very certain.  It's a calibrated Thermapen.

[Kerry Beal]

Out of curiosity - how long does the rev keep the chocolate at 27º C?

[bbrizend]

Essentially no time.  As soon as the chocolate hits 80.6 it begins the warming cycle.

[Kerry Beal]

Then maybe turn it down to 77 so there is enough time for the form IV and V crystals to form before it heats back up again. 

[gfron1]

1 hour ago, Kerry Beal said:

Then maybe turn it down to 77 so there is enough time for the form IV and V crystals to form before it heats back up again. 

This is one of the things I've been doing. Once I realized where the thermometer probe was I realized that not all of the chocolate was at temp. So I drop an additional degree and manually test at my spout and also center of the pool. With those three probe points I have confidence that I've hit temp.

[bbrizend]

Thanks for the feedback.  Seems the chocolate was not spending enough time down about the 80 degree mark.  I re-tempered the batch, without seed, and let it stay down there for 20 minutes then increased the temp to about 89.  The chocolate tempered as expected.

[Dan K]

I'm sure the answers to my questions are already in the forum, but my search so far has been fruitless. My apologies for the likely repetition.

 

First, a disclaimer - I am a total novice (as will be made evident by the content of this post).

 

So here's my issue. In the past, I've enrobed truffles and candied orange peels in an enrobing compound that my friends really liked, but I did not (for obvious reasons). Last year, I upped my game by purchasing this Kitchenaid temperature-controlled bowl: https://www.amazon.com/KitchenAid-KSM1CBT-Precise-Mixing-Tilt-Head/dp/B00U0VTDRU/ and buying some (what seemed high quality at the time) Ghiradelli chocolate wafers: https://www.webstaurantstore.com/ghirardelli-25-lb-queen-dark-chocolate-wafers/40863127.html. (I apologize for the low quality ingredients... I imagine I'm probably causing some cringing right now. Anyway, plowing on...)

 

My tempering method is to set the temperature to 120F, let the chocolate start to melt, start the paddle when a good amount of it was melted, and then wait for it all to melt. After it was nice and smooth, I set the temperature to 90F and seed with fresh chocolate (about 1/2 of what was in there already) and leave it stirring until the temperature was down at 90F and all the chocolate was melted. This seemed to work great last year, as it gave a nice finish for everything I made: https://photos.app.goo.gl/tL6eciLwgWxcrtrJ6. In fact, everyone loved it so much that I was planning on trying to sell some at our fall indoor farmers' market this year.

 

So in preparation and to test out some new ideas, I bought some more of that exact same chocolate, and I'm having two significant issues. First, the chocolate just does not seem to be behaving the same, as it isn't giving a nice glossy sheen. I don't have any pictures, but the stuff I've tried to make just isn't looking as nice. I'm really frustrated, because it seemed to work so well last year and I was planning on using this same method for all of my chocolates to sell. Could it be inconsistency in production? Is there some other obvious thing I'm missing? Here's what I've tried:

• Heating to only 115F (mentioned on the Ghiradelli site)
• Heating to 120F, seeding to cool to 85F, then warming back to 90F

Everything yields the same results.

 

And my second issue is that I had hoped to use some molds, but this was completely hopeless. This chocolate was just waaay too thick. So I'm assuming the answer to this one is easy - there is just no way to use cheap chocolate like this for molding. Is that assumption correct?

 

Thanks again for any tips, and again my apologies for asking what is likely a frequent question.

 

~Dan

[Jim D.]

This is a puzzle.  The Ghiradelli wafers appear to be real chocolate (as opposed to "coating chocolate").  From the spec sheet, they seem more like milk than dark chocolate (they contain 41-50% cacao, plus sugar, milk fat, and vanilla), but that does not matter a great deal in terms of tempering.  I don't see any reason to heat the chocolate all the way to 120F, but again, that does not do any harm, just means the process of cooling down takes longer.  You are using the seed method to temper, so there is no reason to lower the temp down to 85F, then warm it back up.  The only issue that might apply is how much of the seed is completely melted as you get below 95F.  If you have studied the science behind tempering, you know that you are seeking to eliminate all crystals in the chocolate by heating it up, then trying to obtain a predominance of Type V crystals by introducing already-tempered seed chocolate.  But if all the seed is melting as the temp gets down to around 93F, then you probably don't have Type V crystals remaining.  In other words, you must have some unmelted seed as the chocolate gets below 93F.  When it is around 90F, you can fish out any unmelted seed (because there won't be much melting below 90F).  Assuming it in fact dark chocolate, you can take it down to 89F, then test to see whether it is in temper.  Webstaurant Store also carries Guittard, another reasonably priced chocolate; there is more variety to choose from in that brand.

 

As for the differences between using the same product and doing the same thing as in the past but getting different results, welcome to the fickle world of chocolate.  Room temperature and humidity can affect chocolate.  Photos would definitely help diagnose the issue further.

[pastrygirl]

Not many of us use the precise heat mixing bowl, but I believe @JoNorvelleWalker has used it for chocolate work, maybe she can weigh in.

 

You can thin the chocolate with cocoa butter as needed to make it more fluid.

 

Did you test your temper or are you only going by temperature only?  Temperature is important because your stable crystals won't form if things are too warm, but the crystallization is the main thing. 

[Dan K]

34 minutes ago, Jim D. said:

But if all the seed is melting as the temp gets down to around 93F, then you probably don't have Type V crystals remaining.  In other words, you must have some unmelted seed as the chocolate gets below 93F.  When it is around 90F, you can fish out any unmelted seed (because there won't be much melting below 90F).

This is interesting. I will definitely take another stab at it. I feel like I did have some unmelted seed in there at the end, but I'm not 100% certain. 

 

31 minutes ago, pastrygirl said:

You can thin the chocolate with cocoa butter as needed to make it more fluid.

 

Did you test your temper or are you only going by temperature only?  Temperature is important because your stable crystals won't form if things are too warm, but the crystallization is the main thing. 

Ah, good to know. I don't have any yet, but I was wondering about this possibility. I'll pick some up and try that before resorting to a different chocolate (since I have 25 pounds of this stuff...)

 

I did test by spreading a sample on parchment paper. I can try again and take a picture, but it didn't seem as glossy as I remember it being last year. It did firm up within a couple of minutes (maybe too soon, which is part of my problem), so I felt like it was... "sort of tempered"?

 

Thank you @Jim D. and @pastrygirl for graciously continuing to answer my questions!

[Jim D.]

13 minutes ago, Dan K said:

I did test by spreading a sample on parchment paper. I can try again and take a picture, but it didn't seem as glossy as I remember it being last year. It did firm up within a couple of minutes (maybe too soon, which is part of my problem), so I felt like it was... "sort of tempered"?

 

 

Another situation you must be concerned about is "over-tempering," the condition where too many Type V crystals have formed.  You can tell from the viscosity of the chocolate and (probably) from its setting up too quickly on parchment.  Over-tempering doesn't usually happen until you have been using the chocolate for a long time, but I've had it happen early.  There are two remedies:  (1) raise the temperature (being careful not to raise it above approximately 93F) and/or (2) add untempered chocolate (chocolate you have deliberately raised well above 93F and to which you have not added any seed--meaning that it will dilute Type V crystals in the chocolate in the bowl). 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

Most of my Precise Heat Mixing Bowl observations are in this thread:

https://forums.egullet.org/topic/156096-chocolate-making-things-i-learned-in-my-early-months/?do=findComment&comment=2192337

 

Note I had no trouble tempering a 1800g batch for the egg.  Two things I ought to mention:  I never used the chocolate tempering function of the PHMB, and for chocolate work I never used the PHMB on the mixer -- stirring was by hand.

 

 

[Dan K]

Ok, I have a bit of an update. First, some photos of the frustrating part: 

 

This was my temper test. It cooled quickly (within a couple minutes), but did not have a nice sheen and remained kind of soft - no snap.
 

Here are some molds I tried:

 

Ugh. Gross! It was so thick that they’re essentially solid chocolate. I could not get any to pour out of the molds. Just garbage. You can see that no amount of banging or tapping on the sides would get the air bubbles out, either.

 

So then this morning, I tried actually warming above 90F as @Jim D. suggested - eventually up to 93F, and it finally seemed to work. I don’t have a great photo, but here are the 4 test products I made (boxed to give to friends to try):

 

The left was my first attempt at colored cocoa butter and lustre dust (thanks @pastrygirl!), the second was my “sort of tempered” from yesterday, third was a warmer temp (maybe 92F) from this morning, and last was 93F, which was super easy to mold and pretty much exactly what I remember. I don’t know if you can tell (I’m doing this from my phone), but the sheen is really nice on that last one, and they really snap when you bite into them. (They’re filled with my first attempt at a wet caramel - soooo good!)

 

Now, I know what you’re thinking - calibrate! But I did! I have an electronic thermometer that I tested in boiling water (it read 212F) and that agreed with the the PHMB reading.

 

So my guess is maybe humidity? The kitchen temp is comparable to what it was in Nov/Dec, but it has been raining quite a bit lately, so I bet the humidity was higher. I haven’t tested it, but I do know it wasn’t high enough to trigger the basement dehumidifier.

 

It seems to me that this chocolate is in temper starting at 93F, not 90F, at least given the current weather conditions. I’m very skeptical, since I haven’t seen that high of a value before. Does this seem like a reasonable explanation, though?

 

[pastrygirl]

Yeah that top pic looks super thick, chocolate should flow

 

Since it was so thick and behaved better at higher temps, that sounds like over-crystallized.  Too much stirring at too low a temp, I'd guess.   I assume you have your KA on lowest speed but maybe don't stir constantly?

 

Did you mix the luster dust with something? You can also use it dry, just swirl it into the mold cavities with a clean dry paintbrush of appropriate size.