Beta Project Teaser - Sous Vide Stand

I’ll just post this one pic for now. I can post more later once the project is finished. It’s a mount for the Sous Vide into my chocolate tempering bowl.

Note that the corner of the mounting plate I didn’t account for how close the bowl was. I marked it with a sharpie and used the GF to trace and then cut.

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Tee hee! I love seeing you print something from the Glowforge that supports another art form. :slight_smile:

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Nifty!

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:heart:

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Excellent idea! Just got an Anova circulator and might need to do something similar.

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I love sous vide…turn London Broil into prime rib! mmmmmm

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Mine is the Anova as well.

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I’m really confused. I cook sous-vide as well–please post more when it’s
complete!!

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Will do. I just need to make some finishing touches and I’ll get more photos posted. Hopefully this weekend.

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My favorite, favorite, favorite bit is using the sharpie to trim the corner off to make it fit. I showed that to the whole company during our team meeting Friday.

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From the looks of it you’re looking at a plastic lid that has 2 holes cut into it. One for a metal bowl to temper chocolate, and the other for a bracket to hold the sous vide stick in the water bath below.

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Ah, I get it. I use an analog crockpot with a temperature controller/relay,
and a high temp water pump. I never thought of using it for tempering
chocolate, I may have to rig something up for this–thanks for the
illustration!

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Here’s the whole story.

Tempering chocolate is an artform, but only when you have to do it with no seed chocolate and by hand. Chocolate starts hot, when it comes out of the melanger it is in the area of 120°F. To get crystals to start forming you spread, fold, spread, fold and continue on a dense surface that can wick away heat… my old marble counter top was ideal. You bring the temp down to the low 80s… but now you have two types of crystals forming… and the lower temperature ones are bad… so you have to bring the temp back up by adding heat (usually done by putting into a double boiler. Once at 92° or so the bad crystals have melted away leaving only the good crystals (seed) and melted chocolate. As the chocolate comes down in temp now it will form off of the seed crystals and be properly tempered. It can be put into molds now to set up.

Tabling is a tedious process and takes a lot of skill and patience. When doing more than a pound or two of chocolate it becomes really tedious. However, there are machines that can accomplish the task for you, taking the art out of it, but making the finished product much more consistent. A few years ago when I was getting into this hobby I wanted a tempering machine, but the one I wanted was around $900. I decided to make my own. I spent around $100 but I could never get the thermostat to work the way it was supposed to (probably my wiring of the components attached to it). I gave up. Then I heard of Sous Vide. I thought that it was perfect. When I got one just a few months ago the first thing I did was vacuum seal chocolate into a bag and try to temper it. Turns out that submerging chocolate into water, even in sealed bags, is not the best. And since the mass couldn’t be properly agitated, the resulting temper was pretty bad.

So, my intention was to create an acrylic box using the Glowforge. In the lid of the box would be two holes, one for a metal bowl and one for the sous vide. Water would go into the box, the bowl would sit in one hole and the sous vide the other. Then I could set the temp on the sous vide and have a perfectly temperature controlled bowl in which to temper my chocolate.

Perusing a restaurant supply store a few weeks ago I found a box that I could use instead of having to cut and glue my own. I cut the holes for the bowl and the sous vide but the problem was that the box was too shallow and the sous vide rested on the bottom. I needed a stand on top of the lid to lift the sous vide off of the bottom of the box… enter Glowforge and some 1/4" acrylic.

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Exactly.

The problem with a crock pot is that they tend to not have the temperature control on the low end of the spectrum. Tempering chocolate means holding the temp in the range of about 80°F to 94°F. Even the warm settings on most crock pots are above that.

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I’m still missing the complete thermal dynamics of the system. Are you relying on the water starting at room-ish temp for the first cool down and then the Annova to bring it back up? But then you need another final cool down or will you just slab it? Is there something to stir the chocolate so you achieve an even heat distribution?

So I’ll have the Anova set to the desired “bottom” temp to start… 82-85°. Once the chocolate mass has reached that temp I’ll bump the Anova up to the target temp which is 90-92°. Once the mass reaches that temp it can stay in the bowl in temper indefinitely so long as the bowl remains that temp and the mass is stirred regularly. Then you just mold it. I used to use pastry bags for that part, but I found that the heat from my hands would make the temper inconsistent. I got some syringes and I’m pretty sure they will work beautifully. Haven’t tried them yet though.

The beauty is that unlike any other heating element, the sous vide will keep the water at the target temperature, so there is zero chance of the chocolate getting too hot and knocked out of temper.

At this time I don’t have a mechanism to stir the chocolate, so I’ll have to do it by hand. Eventually I may add a top-mounted motor and a geared ring under the lip of the bowl, along with some kind of fixed paddle… but for now, this will be adequate.

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Thanks for the finished pics with the multiple angles.

I might see if my wife would like this type of setup. She is an excellent cook/chef (though never employed as such).

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Ok, so you do at least occasionally stir by hand. I couldn’t figure out how you could achieve a good temperature balance for proper crystal formation with the top exposed to air at room temp, the sides exposed to a metal bowl and liquid heat sink at a higher temp and then of course the big mass of chocolate in the middle that needs to be cooled as well.

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I would say for getting the chocolate into temper you probably want to be stirring more often than not on a consistent basis. Once in temper, if you plan to leave it in the bowl for a while… maybe your truffle fillings are chilling or something, then you probably want to stir it 3-4 times in an hour period. Anything above the water line will have dropped in temp. The chocolate on the surface will have dropped in temp… but you don’t want the “mass” to drop in temp until it’s been molded.

Good point … maybe the metal bowl needs a lid until the mixing paddle thing is ready

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