Ass hair…not a fan.
-of course removing it just means super swamp ass sweats during those summer months…
also not sure what hair down there has to do with the rest of the thread, but hey it’s BB.
Literally. Getting a crush or grind right I suspect is key to texture. (Nerd alert) It reminds me of the difference between a Ninja blender and a blendtec. Sure they both have the same power, but the ninja just can’t create a whirlpool as efficiently to cut up particulate matter. Great for crushing ice though.
Where was I going?
Oh yes, conching.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the best textured chocolate is conched by more than one machine. Similar to filtration, where you filter through progressively finer material. A finishing concher, I theorize, should have polished wheels, not rough granite.
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Apparently fecal matter is what people associate with beards, but I’m not sure why a facial beard would have a higher concentration than hands, hair, etc.
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I was just wondering if they made a salt and vinegar chocolate bar.
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wait, they have necklaces made of fecal bacteria? These hipster fashions are getting really weird.
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I am disturbingly intrigued by this idea.
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Maybe it is related to talking shit?
You must not have too high percentage of too fine particles. Then the texture is wrong, like if you get too much coarse ones. The size distribution is the key.
Or that’s what I remember from Stephen T Beckett, Jennifer Harding - The Science of Chocolate I read couple years ago…
Agreement on the polished wheels.
I should look again how it is done in the industrial literature…
I haven’t read any industrial literature on the subject, but I just have a hard time believing that rough granite wheels–which are common in low end machines–will give the right texture. Perhaps granite with half the wheel clad with stainless? But then you have to worry about fasteners, adhesives, crevices, and so on.
Some day I’ll get off my behind.
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What about the whole wheel being stainless? A piece of a thick-walled pipe, with the sides clad with welded sheet, and filled with baryte concrete (or lead…) for the weight?
That is what I’ve been thinking. It could even be hollow, but with say a huge spring on the axle for down force. And with a spring you could adjust the practical weight.
And with hollow wheels, your capacity increases since you remove the mass of the wheel from the conching pot…
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That would indeed work better! 
…what about leaving the wheels stationary and spinning the pot on a lazy susan style table?
Or using a flat pan that’d make scraping the chocolate that escaped the wheels easier, and return them into the workspace?
Or maybe just a pair of rollers spinning against each other, and circulate the molten material through by e.g. a peristaltic pump? Even smaller-diameter tubes then could be used.
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Late to this thread, I know, but I wanted to back you up on the Valrhona statement. I’ve been a professional chef and pastry chef in fine dining/Michelin restaurants for years and Valrhona is everywhere. They make a huge variety of fantastic single-origin and blended couverture. I can’t think of any high end restaurant that doesn’t have some Valrhona in it.
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At $10 a pop, it’s pretty hard to swallow.
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My town was talking about looking for a Santa this winter, so I decided to recycle my “Sexy Gilles Deleuze” costume from Halloween, but they weren’t down with it. I wonder if they had me mixed up with “Sexy Gilles De Rais” by mistake…
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I’m with you on olives… I don’t like those or most mushrooms.
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These “artisanal” posers are a prime example of why hipsters are so reviled. Reminds me of this video:
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…noooooo but both are delicious…
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