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Degustation after a month – Chocolate beer

July 25th 2010 Posted at Alcohol, Experiments, General, Projects, Test
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Saturday, July 24th 2010

Tonight the pressure was getting too high.  I had to open one of these bottles that have been looking at me for almost a month.  The fermenting is over.  the second fermentation on the bottle should be over now.  Time to open one and check how it tastes.

I have a friend, Jim, from the USA and the first sip was left to him.

Oh yeah, and it was worth it.  Combined with Belcolade Papua New Guinea64 chocolate, the beer is dark in color with a smooth head. The flavor of oats, malts and a chocolate are balanced perfectly with the right amount of hops for a bittersweet finish.

You will hear more the upcoming days about the beer evolution.

Cheers

Alain

Hot July Nights in 2010

July 11th 2010 Posted at General
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Sunday, July 11th 2010

This summer is rocking, but not for chocolate production.  We are suffering temperatures above 32 degrees Celcius.  I ain’t complaining, it’s summertime.

While strolling the internet on a hot evening I found this item : Le Whif.  It’s some device to vaporise food instead of eating it.  I never tried it but if you can get a hold of the item, please let me know your experiences.

Meanwhile, I am gonna take a swim.  Enjoy the summertime.

Alain

Botteling of Bio Choq beer

June 27th 2010 Posted at General
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Sunday, June 27th 2010

Today I finally could bottle the Bio Shoq beer that has been brewn.  After 1 week of fermenting and 3 weeks of lagering it was ready to go into a bottle.

First of all, we added Arenga Palm Sugar and “champagne” yeast.  This makes sure that there is carbondioxide on the bottle after the maturing period of 12 weeks.  There are about 84 bottles of 70cl and 3 magnum bottles of 1,5 liter.

The barrels with beer

The beer after adding sugar and champagne yeast

Champagne yeast

Bottles

Final bottle and label :)

Corks and labeling machine

Now it’s waiting for the result.  Stay tuned for more news about brewing beer with chocolate.

Alain

Birth chocolates instead of sugarbeans

June 16th 2010 Posted at Chocolate, General, Projects
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Monday, June 14th 2010

Today I have been working on a little gift for a birth of a little human.  Instead of giving sugar beans and other stuff my friends had a more creative idea and have chosen to give a little chocolate gift.  So many ways to say thank you.

There were 4 different flavours, acasia honey-cinnamon with dark chocolate, hazelnut-pralinee with milkchocolate, fresh mint with white chocolate and nougat cream (from Vital Nougat) with milkchocolate.

Congrats to the parents of Vic !

Alain

Lagering Bio chocolate beer

June 2nd 2010 Posted at Brewing, General
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Monday, Mai 31st 2010

From now on the fermentation process should be over and it’s time to go into a next stage with the newly born bio chocolate beer.  The beer is being transferred in a new barrel.  This barrel goes into a cooler for about 3 weeks.  There were no additional herbs added.

The rest fraction of the yeast has been poured into a bottle.  If you take a closer look at the picture you can see that there is an upper dark part, which contains beer and then there is a ground of dead yeast.  The sugars have been completely changed into alcohol.  The beer has an alcohol percentage of 8,9%.  Which isn’t that bad.

The restfraction of the yeast looks like chocolate.

A first taste of the fermented liquid gave a sour taste with slight touches of cocoa.   I hope to know more soon when lagering is over.

Cheers Alain

Brewing bio chocolate beer @ Jessenhofke demobrewery

May 25th 2010 Posted at Brewing, Chocolate
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Monday, Mai 24th 2010

Today I went brewing a new beer based on chocolate.  The event took place at the Jessenhofke demobrewery

in Hasselt.  I can tell you, it was an amazing interesting day.  I can only recommend this experience.

We started out with grinding the malts used in the beer.

This malt goes into a kettle that is getting heated till a certain temperature to change the starch into sugars and then this hot soup of malt goes into a filterdevice.  The malt is being filtered from the liquid.

After filtering the liquid is being cooked togheter with the gold of every brewer : “hop”.

The cooked liquid goes through a cooling device and is then added into a sterile barrel. The secret spices are added and the yeast togheter with some sugar (the sugar is bio Arenga Palm Sugar).  In this barrel the beer will ferment for a week convert the sugars into alcohol.

Next week, after a week of fermenting, the beer is being poured into another barrel so it can lager for a few weeks.  After this lagering, I think at the end of June, the chocolate beer will go onto bottles where it can mature for another few months or years.

Thanks to Jessenhofke demobrewery for recipe and brewing and brewmaster Gert.

Lateron, the beer will b e available for tasting purposes.

Cheers Alain

Herbs and gelification

April 29th 2010 Posted at Chocolate, Experiments
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Thursday, april 29th 2010

A few days ago I was strolling in one of these flower malls and something caught my attention.  There was a stash of different herbs standing on a trolley and I found out that there was something special in it.

I found a mint plant which has a very specific mint chocolate taste.  Imagine yourself eating a chocolate with mint cream in it.  Amazing !!  I also bought a normal mint plant to compare both tastes in chocolate.  As you can see the leafs and the colors are a bit different.  I wonder what the difference will be in pralines with ganaches based on fresh mint.

Chocolate mint plant

Normal mint plant

I also bought a new product that is used in a lot of kitchens by pastry chefs.  The product name is Kappa.  It’s a carragene made from sea alges.  It has been re-invented by El Bulli in Spain.  It is used to make gels of products with preservation of the taste.  Once the product is ready I will post more about it.  (Thanks for the tip Xavier De Smit!)

Thats all for now, enjoy the last sun and perhaps a terrace and a good beer.

Alain

Healthy pralines with tea

April 12th 2010 Posted at Tea, Test
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Monday, april 12th 2010

Another healthy day today.  I experimented with tea and chocolate.

I made a few pralines with ganache based on tea.  Not so easy to find the right amount of tea to put in.

I use natural tea from the Sao Paulo tea shop in Gent.  They have a lot of different sort of tea’s from all over the world.  The experiment I did today was based on Cherry taste tea and Energy welness tea.  You can find the ingredients of the tea below.

The first one is the Energy welness tea praline.  The tea consists of dried ingredients with apple, citronella grass, carrot, roseflower leafs and grapefruit.

Cooking the cream and milk with the tea

White Callebaut chocolate

Tempering the white chocolate

The result is a smooth and a bit grapefruit taste

The second praline is  made with cherry tea wich consists of dried ingredients of cherries, apple, hibiscus, rose-hip and elderberries.  When I mixed it with white chocolate I found out that the colour of the ganache turned out grey – purple.

Grey ganache, not really pleasant to see but an amazing perfume and taste.

Cherry tea praline (I can make the colour more purple with colouring agent but I prefer not to use chemicals for the experiment)

More about chocolate and tea very soon.  Keep visiting the site.

Grtz Alain

Easter, wester, souther and norther

March 29th 2010 Posted at Nougat
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Monday, march 29th 2010

The last days I have been experimenting with some new things.  First of all there is this wonderfull nougat granulate from Vital Nougat that can be used to pour into chocolate bars.  Makes me think a bit about the Toblerone bars, but they have more taste when you use the softer granulate instead of the hard pieces and they are easier to bite.

Second thing that I tested was the mould I got from IBC with decoration inside.  It is a bit more work to handle than the makrolon hard moulds but the result is funny.  This was the first time that I used these kind of mould. See for yourself.

Ofcourse with Easter it is necessary to have chocolate eggs, filled with different flavours.  I made some with pralineé filling, fondant sugar with cherries and with Vital’s nougat cream.  They are really delicious.  It is definately worth a try.  I only have a picture of some in a box since all the eggs I made have been delivered to people I know.

And last but not least, to use the rest of all the fillings I made, there are heart shaped pralines in white chocolate.  I don’t like to throw away food and re-use the leftovers into new pralines.  Maybe I find a new taste while doing that.

Soon there will be more news about my new project.  I deposited an idea at I-depot for developtment of a new product based on chocolate.

Enjoy chocolate !

Intersuc @ Paris Nord Villepinte

March 9th 2010 Posted at Events
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Monday March 08, 2010

Today I visited Intersuc in Paris.  The event was happening at Paris Nord Villepinte.  A huge exposition area just before the airport of Roissy.  Wonderfull sunny weather but cold … brrrlll

The chocolate part was not that impressive although that I spoke with some interesting manufacturers of chocolate machines.  It seems that most of these chocolate machine manufacturers are from Italy, but can they be trusted ?  We’ll see in the short future.  There was also a chocolate competition.  It’s amazing what these people can do with chocolate !!

I also saw some interesting products to use with chocolate.  New flavours, fruits and other ingredients.  An event always give fresh ideas.

The rest of the event was more about baking and making bread.  But that didn’t stop the fun.  I went home with lots of information about chocolate machines.  That was the goal.

Grtz Alain

February rants

February 22nd 2010 Posted at Events, General
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Howdy,

February has never been so calm.  Experimenting with liquids and chocolate brought me further in my search to combine certain products with new flavours.  I finished a business course.  There are new idea’s for packaging and I wrote a marketing plan.  I hope to be up and running with my business soon.

I will be attending Intersuc, an international exhibition for sugar and chocolat and much more sweet stuff.

I hope to find new idea’s for more new chocolate creations.

I have been looking around for chocolate machinery.  A very interesting manufacturer is Selmi.  They have a wide range of chocolate machinery at a reasonable price.

Keep eating chocolate !

Alain

Best chocolate wishes for 2010

January 8th 2010 Posted at Chocolate
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I wish everybody a chocolicious 2010 !

Meanwhile I visited Megève, France for some skiing fun.  Chocolate is everywhere in the world, also in France.  I took a few pictures, yes a few, since it was too cold too stand outside for a long time with bare hands.  As you can see, the gift box isn’t quite cheap for what it contains but I am sure that they are worth it.  I didn’t have  the guts to buy the box, I prefer our quality Belgian chocolate.

Chocolate Other

Alain

December 20th 2009 – Christmas Market Poesele

December 10th 2009 Posted at Events, General
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—————– This is just an announcement —————–

On december 20th 2009 I will attending the Christmas Market in Poesele.  There will be fresh chocolate milk, milk / fondant and white chocolate beer bullets with 3 different beers (Kriek, Hoegaarden Grand Cru and Chimay) and there will be sweet Vital nougat to chew on while enjoying the atmosphere and Christmas music.  You will be able to eat something and drink a glass to keep you warm.

You can join the price draw to win a Chocolate Santa Claus !!!

Click for a Plan to Poesele City

Poesele City

Be There !!!!

Chocolate festival Amsterdam

November 5th 2009 Posted at Miscellaneous
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Chocolate festival Amsterdam

On Saturday, November 7th there is the start of the Chocolate festival in Amsterdam in the Sitos cacao hangar San Pedro in the harbor.   The chocolate festival runs from November 7th till November 22nd 2009.  There is a big program with all different kind of activities such as tastings, workshops, walkings through the city and ofcourse eating in participating restaurants.

If you are around in Amsterdam at this time, please do not hesitate to go for a taste or a look.  Check also the site from the chocolate festival.  It is worth a visit.

Enjoy !

Alain

Anis – Café praline by Belcolade

November 2nd 2009 Posted at General
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Monday,  november 2nd 2009

Yesterday I have been busy testing a recipe that I got when visiting Belcolade last year.  It is originally from Belcolades chocolatier Stef Aerts.

First of all I have made the anis liquor with Pastis.  I made the ganache based on Belcolade origin chocolate with cream and coffee.  The liquor comes first in the mould and then goes the ganache.

The result when you eat the praline is that you first have that fresh anis taste followed by a rich creamy coffee ganache.

Anis-cafe anis-cafe filling

Cheers

Alain

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