The tempermeter could be possibly as simple as a cup of chocolate with a temperature probe inside. (I’d go for a thermocouple with a multimeter with a serial port, or for a DS18B20 sensor on an Arduino of choice, or anything sufficiently accurate you can datalog to the computer.) The temperature-vs-time solidification curve could show you the actual behavior of the material.
Edit: The DS18B20 sensor may be a better bet. It’s factory-calibrated so you get accuracy of 0.5 'C and resolution of 0.0625 'C which should be enough. A multimeter K-type thermocouple is likely to be less accurate. You may also go for a higher-resolution ADC and a PT100 or PT1000 sensor with a good stable current source and a 4-wire connection.
There is this website called BoingBoing that has the best discussion boards full of really smart interesting people who are into all sorts of cool things. I’m always learning stuff and having interesting conversations. Even when I disagree with someone I usually learn things from them. Crazy place, cool peeps.
I have a hell of a lot of research to do. Combined with the orchard I am gonna plant, the bakery I’m starting, and the day job of hacking banks, where will I find the time!!
I wonder how the Belgians are processing their chocolate. Theirs always seems better than Swiss product. Perhaps this guy has been helping the Belgians?
Surely a field trip or two may be in order. Getting Callebaut to explain themselves would be very illuminating. They give an overview here: http://www.callebaut.com/usen/techniques/tempering
So many ways to temper. I’ll bet anything that a nice Belgian Kriek or Frambois lambic would be a fine accompaniment. Far better than red wine.
We’re on Round Three of orchards here in central Texas. Round One (planted 20 years ago) was a lot of plums and peaches (most of which bore, matured, and died–Santa Rosa, I miss you!), and a few long-lived Asian pears (Shinko, Chojiro). Round Two (15 years ago) was more stone fruits, which we are harvesting even now, the Sentinel Peach came in heavy this year and we’re pulling of our midseason Harvester Peach now, the Burbank and Methley plums were in between. This year we just planted some of Round Three: almond, olive, plum (buck rubs and borers just murder our Prunus spp), and a lot of grafting (white peaches, a few novel plums). Raintree Nursery’s got some good product. We did a grafting workshop in March is conjunction with Texas Rare Fruit Growers group here and got all our pear rootstocks from Raintree.
Oh how I’d love to grow tea, coffee and chocolate here, but that’s several orders of magnitude of challenge that I don’t have the juice for, right now. No greenhouse [yet]. Crikey, not even all that lucky with citrus so far.
My baking’s veered off into gluten-free gum-free experiments with sorghum, millet, barley flour blends I make (mixed with other stuff like flaxmeal, nutmeal, pureed fruits). Quick breads mostly. Nothing flaky, no shatter-y crusts and high falutin’ artisan breads, not much temptation to start a bakery. It did take me 3 years to develop the perfect gingerbread recipe sans wheat. Day job here is farming: server farms, partly.
Where will you find the time? I usually find mine in my cold-brewed coffee jar, if at all… and having a partner helps. Strangely, having kids often doesn’t help much, if they are enchanted with their own projects instead of mine. The nerve!
I do use the term flippantly, and I should probably be more careful. I run antifraud teams for companies that sell to financials. It is all rather mundane really. Time series anaytics, underground Intel, pen testing, etc.
Try the 99%, it’s delightful and creamy smooth. It’s a little intense without any sweetener, but you just have to savour it like a great Scotch (Which is also a great accompaniment to the 99%).
Yep. And the overlap of your posting-gap and the take-down of NYSE yesterday are completely coincidental. (Those Hacking Team tools aren’t gonna test themselves!)
(Which is also a great accompaniment to the 99%).
