Hilliard 6" Coater is in the house

The Beast!

Well, normally what we do is hand dip our caramels and other products. But using a 10 lb Chocovision machine while cool, just isn't big enough for our growing chocolate business and it is very slow dipping caramels. I wont even mention tempering.

Chocovision and hand dipping. Ouch.

The Hilliard not only has a 35 lb bowl but one can push about 240 lbs through the Hilliard especially if you have liquid untempered chocolate. Even without additional untempered chocolate, I find that I can coat my caramels, not to mention ganaches, all day long without having to retemper.

The Chocovision Rev X, the most I ever pushed through was about 60 lbs. I can load about 10 lbs into the Rev X, I can get about 20 lbs into my melter, at most 25. And, when dipping, I can do so for about 1 hour before I have to retemper. When I am filling molds, I can fill about 7 lbs worth of chocolate into the Rev X before I have to replenish from my melter, a messy job, and add a little seed. Usually I have to reset and retemper 2 to 3 times a day which is a pain.

With the Hilliard, I can recharge it with either solid chocolate or a combination of solid chocolate and my 20 lbs from the melter. So, I can easily push 150-200 lbs, maybe 240 before I have to call it quits and reset and retemper. But even when I do that, it is fast. I found that with a little skill and understanding of the Hilliard, I can get 2-4 hours of enrobing before I either have to add untempered chocolate to the mix or retemper it because it's gotten too thick and I've gotten dangerously hot. 

The manual says that as long as I am increasing the temp, I am fine. I have my doubts. When I'm not enrobing, I turn the pump off. This helps extend the life of the chocolate. Now, all I need is a 50 lb Savage Brothers Melter/Cooker and I will easily be able to push 240 lbs or maybe more through this system. Now you have to do your part and order chocolate so I can see how many lbs a day I can do. ;-)

By the way, enrobing is 3-5 times faster than hand dipping and they come out better. I find that for my caramels, I do need a foot. It makes it so much easier.

Nancy waiting for machine to temper before doing more Santas. Sure this is posed because no one just sits around in my kitchen.

So, after a little trial and error, about 1/2 hours worth and about 15 messed up caramels, we got the hang of it. Since I have only one arm that I can use right now, I fed the caramels into the enrober and Nancy took them off. We had several tricks to making sure that everything got covered, including enrobing by hand and using a ladle.

Are we jammed in or what? Not that bad. Snug rather than tight.

Exciting News: ChocoVision, Web Store Update, New Resale Customer, more on the way

Well, Kim and I went to the Candy Show, I'll put a separate entry for that as soon as I go get the pictures. Fun. Wonderful. I finally saw the Hilliard 6 and 10 inch coaters. I can hardly wait to get one. The one problem, I'm going to have to sell at least 10X more than I currently am. So, my faithful, start ordering. With the current sale, how can you go wrong? Answer: you cannot. And hey, faithful, start commenting. (Rog, I told you you can cut the sugar in the nog by 1/2 in the blog entry and yes, use the 10X not granulated. You culinary guys, what will you think of next?)

ChocoVision: I met Ian and of course Joe. Funny. Ian looked EXACTLY like I pictured him. A shorter, smaller and younger Nathan Stark. I didn't expect younger, btw. I expected Ian to be older. Question is, is he an award winning physicist? No. Chocolatier? No. Nice guy? Yup. He also promised me that I would get a temporary Rev X. So, if that happens, Ian will be elevated to do the do no wrong category. Joe is already at that category. ChocoVision needs better technical leadership. Actually, Ian offered me the VP of Engineering job. I think he was 1/2 joking. It was temping but they couldn't afford me so that's how I know it was 1/2 joking. The big news, I should be getting my Rev X loaner this week.

I almost have the web store done. Almost. I have the pictures 80% done and I have the other content 100% done. Kim is doing the html. We tried to get Holly but she's booked. Holly is a great web designer but, then, so is Kim. We're using osCommerce. All the new, smaller pictures, I've put up on the blog are the same ones I'm using on the website. Check 'em out.

I now have a new resale customer. Hilltown Market & Natural Food CO-OP. You still order chocolates from us, 518-966-5219, but I also wanted to advertise for our new friends. If you need natural foods, these guys are great. I was using Honest Weight in Albany, but I'll be switching. Plus they want to market my granola and I'll be doing an organic version for them.

I've been chatting with other retailers as well. I'm very open to resale. Hint, hint. I don't know if I have any distributors among the faithful out there...

Pictures coming.