Making Chocolate Again

Over the last few days, I've been making chocolate from nibs for the second time with my CocoaTown T5 melanger. Based on last time, there are some definite adjustments to be made, and I tried my best to make them. These would show up all throughout the process, and I think it went at least a little bit better than last time.

To start, I melted some cocoa butter and coated the bowl and wheels with it to provide lubrication and to make sure it could actually run. Warming up the nibs before throwing them in was really helpful, since refinement requires a decent amount of heat, on the order of 120 F, or 48.9 C for those of you who use a metric that makes sense. While I was warming up the nibs, I was struck by how wet they looked, even though they were completely solid. I say "wet" in the sense that they seemed to be covered in liquid, and the best analogy I can think of is how a sidewalk looks darker after it's rained. They also (to my surprise) started to release their volatile aroma compounds, which, to save time, I'll henceforth refer to as VACs. This resulted in our kitchen being virtually inhospitable (except for my dog, who isn't fazed by anything at all). Not that he was, but I suspect it wouldn't have much effect either way.

After maybe two minutes of heating the nibs, I started pouring them into the running melanger, and I quickly encountered my first problem, which is that the nibs were flying out of the melanger almost as fast as I was pouring them in. I therefore had to get clever and put the lid on at an angle so that the nibs would simply bounce off the lid, rather than bouncing out. After that was resolved, I kept the lid on until the nibs were at least crushed and then took the lid off. I figured I had introduced enough heat that refining would be all right temperature-wise for the time being. I then found my second problem, which was that the nibs were getting stuck under the part of the wheel column that connected to the bowl. So, I took it out and scraped the nibs out (which took a while), put the wheel column back in, and put the nibs back in too, only to find that the part of the melanger that locks the bowl in place was also jammed with nibs, which meant that I couldn't even turn the thing on. After another thirty minutes or so of scraping, polishing, and grinding my teeth in frustration, I had removed every trace of nibs from the machine, and now I could begin in earnest.

About an hour in, I threw the lid on again to start trapping heat. The lid is a tool that when off inhibits refining and promotes conching, and when on, does the opposite; namely, inhibits conching and promotes refining. This is because VACs need a consistent airflow to evaporate in, and refining needs air to stay in one place to build up heat. In this case, I felt that the first hour provided airflow enough for the time being, and that refining should now run its due course. So, I waited until I felt confident enough to take the lid off again (perhaps six hours in), stopped the melanger for the night, and went to bed at 11 pm, which I only get to do if I'm either making chocolate or if it's New Year's.

The next morning, I heated up the entire bowl in our oven at 150 F (65.6 C) so that the wheels could run, did a quick little calculator dance to determine the amount of sugar I would need, and then measured it out on my ever-present kitchen scale, which has been invaluable to me for this whole process. So invaluable, in fact, that I have no idea where I got it from. (Future Serena here: my grandfather got me the scale.) But setting that aside, I put the sugar in, and after four more hours of refining, I was ready to conch. I was rather excited for this, because while digging around yesterday, I found a tool that looked exactly like it was made specifically for conching, which means I can now conch without worrying about over-refining. I had something to do in the middle of the day, so I came back in the evening and started conching. It looked great, and that night, I went to bed at an acceptable time.

Except that I woke up in the middle of the night and found that the concher didn't cover the entire bowl, and looking back, I probably should have noticed the slight discrepancy in the dimensions of the concher and the bowl. But all I had to do was switch the concher out for the refiner, and this time, I let a little chocolate go under it so that it wouldn't continue to refine.

On day 3, I decided that I would try tempering again, this time armed with knowledge, Dandelion bars, and an infrared thermometer. The "seed method", as it were, had caught my eye when I was paging through Dandelion's book on making chocolate. One would take already tempered chocolate and mix it into the melted untempered chocolate, and the untempered chocolate would take up the same crystalline formation because crystals have molecules in a regular pattern and the more stable pattern here is the tempered chocolate, so in order to remain a crystal the untempered chocolate takes up the tempered chocolate's crystalline form.

This process was very painful and tedious, and I ended up stirring the chocolate for maybe an hour before I deemed it melted enough. I had to keep it at just over 86 degrees Fahrenheit (15.7 Celsius) and stir while the tempered chocolate melted. I had to shift it between a very mild heat source and a cooled countertop multiple times, and I had to be stirring the whole time. So, after an hour of tedium, the result was a bowlful of tempered chocolate and a very sore arm.

I then had to get that chocolate into molds before it solidified, which wouldn't be long since it was essentially halfway between solid and liquid. Thankfully, I had some help here in the form of my brother, and we got four bars out before the chocolate solidified and the batch was finished. Those four bars were the fruit of approximately 35 hours of work, and I was happy to see it through, even if it meant I had to not use my right arm for anything for the next few hours.

Eventually, the time came, and I popped the bars out of the molds. This in itself was a test, because if the tempering failed, then I wouldn't encounter any resistance from the chocolate. Thankfully, I did, and indeed, those four bars were almost perfectly tempered.

This is me angrily checking the temperature of the melted chocolate. It was long and painful, but I got it done, and the result was maybe worth it.

This is me beginning the molding process, and I had some help with this one in the form of my brother, who not only moved stuff around in our cramped fridge (due to a lot of dishes being stored there in preparation for a large meal with friends), but also suggested that I put the molds on a wire rack that was suspended over the bowl, making the cleanup process far easier. He also helped fill the molds with the chocolate. One can see that it's tempered by the way it makes that ribbon, which I find hypnotic and very pretty, as it demonstrates the chocolate's shine.