Let’s talk about heat and chocolate, aside from s’mores (marshmallows blackened: yea/nay?) which is another conversation.
Cacao + heat as bff’s starts before the beans land in our hands. A cacao tree requires heat to thrive, which is why 20 degrees N or S of the Equator is the growing zone. Also, heat in the ferment heap is key to the environment the micro-organisms need in order to do their thing, and also, indicates they are doing their thing (for the science-y bits of that I’ll refer you to folks like Sarah Bharath and Raven Hanna). The beans need heat to dry after the ferment; just enough, not too much.
Roasting is the next hot spot, then the grinder/refining stage in the melanger (friction = heat), if stored for later use a melter will come into the picture, tempering is an exactitude of heat +/- and then! ideally when we take a bite our tongues haven’t just experienced a sip of something cold because the cocoa butter in the bar adores the natural temperature of our tongue for the lovely melting platform it provides (this is why s’mores truly are the best thing ever: pre-heated chocolate!)
Yet, heat is also the nemesis of a beautifully crafted and wrapped bar (and bought) bar, sitting in the car parked at the market on a sunny and hot day.
Chocolate may be the best proof that to every yin there is a yang, and that in the balance they are one/same.
But what exactly is heat?
Well, it’s not temperature. Heat is energy, and temperature is a measurement of how hot or not something is. To the science nerds in the room (I say that 100% lovingly and with respect for all the chemists in my life) who will say this is a simplification of a wondrous body of knowledge I reply:
Yes, yes it is. Here’s why.
In chocolate making we tend to fixate on temperature:
What temperature should we store those beans we just waited for six months to arrive?
What temperature(s) should we pay attention to when we roast, and what end temperature is “the best”?
What temperature is our workspace best suited for roasting vs melanging/refining vs tempering vs doing the dishes vs wrapping and storing bars? vs, storing slabs of chocolate we are “aging”?
What temperature should we aim for during conching,
What are the temps we sweat over for tempering (and making seed),
What temperature is best for cooling the moulded bars,
And what should be the (fingers crossed and a frozen cold pack or two later) the temp for our chocolate when it arrives to our loyal customers.
And here’s why this temperature-specific fixation can get in the way of the single best tool we have no matter where we craft chocolate:
Temperature is just a measure. It doesn’t tell us the whole picture.
When we’re driving a car the speedometer tells us what speed we’re traveling. It doesn’t tell us how much gas is flowing when we press on the accelerator. It doesn’t tell us the safest speed for the curve ahead, or how much to reduce the speed when the neighbor’s child runs out into the street in front of us. It doesn’t tell us, in order to maintain the same exact speed we’re traveling on the flat road when we reach the steep hill three miles ahead, that we’ll need to adjust our pressure on the accelerator or how much pressure that will need to be. The speedometer is an easy to understand system for showing us the measurement of how fast or not the car is moving.
I watched the movie Rush recently. Formula One racing, British accents, Chris Hemsworth: what’s not to love? In the movie the driver Niki Lauda commented that he could feel everything about his car under his butt. Meaning, he paid attention to what he felt. He did that and became the winning driver he became, because he put what he observed by paying attention into context (what was the road surface? what were the weather conditions? etc) with the other information he had that the measurements gave him.
As chocolate makers we need to know that heat is energy, and temperature is a measure of energy. Adding heat will increase a temperature while removing heat will lower temperature. Changes in temperature are the result of the presence of heat, or the lack of it. The thermometers we pay close attention to in our chocolatory give us, like the car speedometer, an easy to understand measurement: the room is hot if it’s 85 degrees F. The chocolate is cool (and solid, lol) if it’s under 21 degrees C.
Next we put the measurements into context with what we pay attention to (that best-ever tool I mentioned? this is it).
Heat isn’t just energy, it’s the transfer of energy. Wait! if your eyes just glazed a little bit and you suddenly had an urge for an iced mocha, just hear me out, because if you’re a chocolate maker you are working with this possibly scary/sciency truth every.single.day
Might as well say howdy and get to know it.
Here are some “answers” to the questions I posed above, all of which are super important to our work and have been sent to me more times than I can shake a bag of M&Ms at, with the context and my observations added.
What temperature should we store that pallet of beans we waited for six months to arrive, because I have a bad moth problem and heard a freezer is a good place?
Since heat encourages volatility (aromatic volatiles = aroma = flavor) it’s helpful to keep cacao cool. But if you chill your beans it’s helpful to think What happens to them when I remove them from a cold space and place them in a warmer space? Answer: condensation, if the difference in temps is drastic, which might mean damp beans and mold.
What temperature(s) should we pay attention to when we roast because I read there is a specific end temperature?
We need to pay attention before we roast to how hot or cold the roaster is, and how hot/cold the space the roaster is in, b/c the environment effects the rate of how much heat goes into (is transferred from the roaster) the beans. For folks roasting with a Behmor there is no useful pre-heat system (the roaster defaults to a cool temp for safety reasons) but we can pre-heat the beans.
We need to think about why certain temps matter: what happens when water boils; can water get hotter than boiling point? What exactly, is steam? What does this mean for volatile compounds?
What temperature is a workspace best suited for roasting vs melanging/refining vs tempering vs doing the dishes vs wrapping and storing bars? vs, storing slabs of chocolate we are “aging” because my chocolate kitchen is very tiny?
We need to consider why different temps make a difference in those tasks, and to understand that, we need to ask What are we aiming to do in each of those tasks?
Melanging goals: transfer the heat created by the friction of the stones against the grinder base into the cocoa mass. Melt and release the inherent cocoa butter and create a liquid. Reduce particle size. Do whatever if it we need to do to make the volatile compounds taste better/go away/improve.
How are the goals for tempering different? The needs of washing and drying dishes different from wrapping and storing bars? What do we need to have “happen” to chocolate as it ages?
There’s what temperature should we aim for during conching because I only have a melanger? (heat applied + time with motion but no friction) can be asked, how do I create this heat? how do I reduce friction?
The temps we sweat over for tempering because I had the right temperature but my bars bloomed? depend entirely on ambient room temp because the heat in the chocolate needs to go somewhere, right? and if our room is too warm how will heat energy move from the chocolate if it encounters a higher temp?
The temperature for cooling the moulded bars because my tempering failed? depends on humidity, and we understand this when we see the steam rising from the dish sink that’s a few feet from our tempering zone and know that steam = heat energy being transferred into the air and by that happening, heat transfer is slowed down (all those water molecules) so our “perfectly tempered” bars will have a harder time cooling (cooling = releasing heat).
Finally, How do I keep the chocolate from melting before it gets to my loyal customers even though it’s over 85 degrees F and I’m shipping across country and have no idea if it will be ground vs air or if the box will ever sit in the sun? Make them wait until the season changes, because as the saying goes, hunger makes the best spice :) or better still, include an in-case-of-meltdown recipe for a no-campfire-needed treat.