16 replies to this topic

[Frenchygal12]

Please anyone who works in a chocolate factory in this forum should feel free to introduce themselves. Looking forward to chat.

Thanks

[LECHUMI]

Hi ya! Glad to know you. I am also from a chocolate factory background.

Edited by LECHUMI, 03 April 2021 - 12:30 AM.

[veruca]

I'm from a chocolate background and still have some roots there. Loved the industry! Keep playing with the idea of going back. Welcome!

 

veruca

[Frenchygal12]

Thank y'all for replying. I am new to the Chocolate industry and I feel lost because this is the first time they had any quality or food safety manager. I have been in foods and beverage for about 10years now but I am totally new to chocolate and I am starting from scratch too. I have so many questions and I hope not to burden any of you but I would love to get as much resource as possible.

What are the quality check you guys have on the floor from roasting to packaging? What sanitation methods do you guys use and how often do you wash your moulds?

Thanks.

[Quality Supervisor]

Thank y'all for replying. I am new to the Chocolate industry and I feel lost because this is the first time they had any quality or food safety manager. I have been in foods and beverage for about 10years now but I am totally new to chocolate and I am starting from scratch too. I have so many questions and I hope not to burden any of you but I would love to get as much resource as possible.

What are the quality check you guys have on the floor from roasting to packaging? What sanitation methods do you guys use and how often do you wash your moulds?

Thanks.

 

Hello: I have been in chocolate industry for over 2 years now and recently promoted to Quality Assurance Manager/Supervisor. To answer your questions: We are using quality checks on production records for weight, appearance, and the time checked every 1-2 hours. Metal detection is every two hours (maybe move it down to every hour), nut roasting inspections must be turned into quality after roasting for verification, (we roast tree nuts and peanuts), and for sanitation purposes: we are only using hot water and a mild soap (Dawn) for allergen residues. We have a sanitation changover sheet that must document when the line was properly cleaned/sanitized, and the molds used and same process.

 

 

[Scampi]

I was in cannabis for a time and we made high end chocolate edibles.  The run of thumb with the molds is let them tell you when.  The cocoa butter will eventually buildup on the mold and the finished product won't be crisp and shiny, then and only then, do they need washed

 

If you have an allergen (nuts, coconut) i would get different coloured molds so that you can wash them as infrequently as possible. 

The machines were only washed down quarterly.........when running from milk to dark we had validated that push through was sufficient to remove the dairy to a NTD limit which allowed them to run continuously for 3 months

 

 

The web is chock a block full of really good information re: sanitation.  If you're buying the chocolate from a great vendor, they will have a technical team that can help as well.

 

The switch to chocolate was hard for me---------- when you're used to a daily clean, wrapping my head around quarterly was really hard.to change your thinking. Once i understood that chocolate was the enemy, not just because you're chocolate will seize, but because chocolate + water = salmonella, it was much easier to proceed with a sanitation plan that made good sense

 

Batches were verified for each ingredient addition----employees had a batch record that showed them the target by weight, and they recorded the actual (+/- limits posted)

 

 

To Quality Supervisor----i wouldn't recommend dawn in a commercial setting.....

[Frenchygal12]

Thanks @Quality Supervisor for this, its really helpful for me. Do you check your weights during tempering or in packaging. Does that mean all the checks will be done in packaging? Do you perform any checks at tempering? What sanitation methods do you use for your tempering machines? I am quickly learning that the chocolate industry is not a clear cut one. There are so many processes unlike food where you cook, cool and freeze mostly monitoring temperature and time. 

Do you only wash the the line moulds when they come in contact with allergens? Right now we are dry cleaning and there is no soap being used on the lines and I am freaking out because I am used to wash, rinse and sanitize. They don't want to introduce so much water to the lines due to salmonella risk. 

[Quality Supervisor]

Thanks @Quality Supervisor for this, its really helpful for me. Do you check your weights during tempering or in packaging. Does that mean all the checks will be done in packaging? Do you perform any checks at tempering? What sanitation methods do you use for your tempering machines? I am quickly learning that the chocolate industry is not a clear cut one. There are so many processes unlike food where you cook, cool and freeze mostly monitoring temperature and time. 

Do you only wash the the line moulds when they come in contact with allergens? Right now we are dry cleaning and there is no soap being used on the lines and I am freaking out because I am used to wash, rinse and sanitize. They don't want to introduce so much water to the lines due to salmonella risk. 

 

We check weights during packaging, since we make a variety of candies and sometimes caramel for example can come in various shapes and sizes. We package this in an 18-cavity tray that weighs 8 ounces. So we do weight checks at this time. We do have tempering checks for our line lead operators to enusre that chocolate is in god temper before running; we have a chocolate tempering unit. so we are only using a sample size for chocolate testing. we do not have a sanitation for this as it is little samples through a unit with no allergens other than milk and soy which is in our Milk and Dark raw material. We wash moulds before putting them away.. if it was just milk bars and they were dirty, we would wash just with hot water. If they had peanuts or tree nuts in them, we would use a little Dawn or a food grade degreaser.. I am working with a Quality Consultant with over 20+ experience and he said that Dawn was okay to use for allergens.. I have used sanitizers and chemicals from EcoLab

[Frenchygal12]

Thank you @Scampi. We are a Bean to Bar company. We get our supply of Cacao beans from South America, Asia and Africa. We roast the beans and process the nibs into bars and various bonbons. We also use the push through method when going to dark from milk. We don't have a sanitation team right now, employees scrape most chocolate residues from the tempering machines, use heat guns to melt the remaining chocolate wipe down and sanitize.  Can you please give me the web information you referred to so I can get it? I have been researching on dry and wet cleaning and was a bit confused that's why I asked on here for some guidance.

I am really grateful for all these information. When you say washed down quarterly, do you mean a total wash down of the equipment with detergents and water? I can work with quarterly because it makes sense. We would have to dedicate one day to cleaning our equipment quarterly. 

Thanks again.

[Frenchygal12]

Hey @ Quality Supervisor. Thank you so much, I am really grateful for all the insights you have given me. The tempering checks you do, are they being documented? Do you run each piece of candy on the metal detector. We run various types of bonbons and we don't have a metal detector now but I am going to push for one ASAP. Like I said, I am new to this, it's barely one month I have been in this business. 

Thanks again!

[Quality Supervisor]

Hey @ Quality Supervisor. Thank you so much, I am really grateful for all the insights you have given me. The tempering checks you do, are they being documented? Do you run each piece of candy on the metal detector. We run various types of bonbons and we don't have a metal detector now but I am going to push for one ASAP. Like I said, I am new to this, it's barely one month I have been in this business. 

Thanks again!

 

We are not documenting the temper readings only because it is the benefit for our company that we are producing tempered chocolate. There is no law or requirement for chocolate tempering and we have science testing on our end to prove our standard. We run almost every product produced at our facility through metal detector. We do have 2 lines that are metal detector free. One being moulding department as we have 3 spinning melters for chocolate so its not necessarily being grinded away or other machinery. The second is hand dipping and it is not required as it is a hand made process from melting chocolate. Other than this, we have thought about making metal detectors CCP but speaking with consultant we have chocolate in-line screens that we are listing as our CCP #2, our first is Nut Roasting. Metal detectors are not required as a CCP and he told me that more and more companies are heading towards in-line screens.

[Scampi]

Here's some good starting info

 

https://inspection.c...64529664?chap=8

 

https://www.confecti...nt-Sollich-tips

 

https://www.research..._and_Processing

 

https://fsi.colostate.edu/chocolate/

[Frenchygal12]

@ Quality Supervisor, I was wondering about the tempering temps because they were not quality checks. Do you guys use water to clean your melters /tempering machines? ours run 24/7 so we cant clean it so they are just wiped down and sanitized. I was wondering how others in the industry do it. I think I should just work on validating our sanitation methods through environmental monitoring to show that the cleaning is effective or not lol. Thanks. 

@Scampi, Thanks for the web information. I particularly loved the Canadian inspection one. I had seen that one on one of my research days and went ahead and saved it. 

Thanks everyone. I am trying to get my document all together before I delve into my HACCP and Food safety plan. I will have so much questions then as this is my first time starting a program by myself. I have always met a program and I am grateful for this opportunity to start from scratch. I am learning a great lot thanks to all the resources available on this platform and online. 

Please feel free to drop any knowledge on chocolate quality and food safety anytime.

[Frenchygal12]

Goodday All, How often do you perform environmental monitoring? what do you test for? We are not a very big chocolate Bean to Bar company so I am looking at the cost here but I am thinking product and equipment teesting for Listeria, Salmonella, E.coli and Coliform and maybe yeast and mold Quarterly?  Is there an industry requirement for these or companies do what and how they feel best?

Thanks!

[Frenchygal12]

We check weights during packaging, since we make a variety of candies and sometimes caramel for example can come in various shapes and sizes. We package this in an 18-cavity tray that weighs 8 ounces. So we do weight checks at this time. We do have tempering checks for our line lead operators to enusre that chocolate is in god temper before running; we have a chocolate tempering unit. so we are only using a sample size for chocolate testing. we do not have a sanitation for this as it is little samples through a unit with no allergens other than milk and soy which is in our Milk and Dark raw material. We wash moulds before putting them away.. if it was just milk bars and they were dirty, we would wash just with hot water. If they had peanuts or tree nuts in them, we would use a little Dawn or a food grade degreaser.. I am working with a Quality Consultant with over 20+ experience and he said that Dawn was okay to use for allergens.. I have used sanitizers and chemicals from EcoLab

What are your ATP acceptable range during pre-op?

[teamomama1957]

Please anyone who works in a chocolate factory in this forum should feel free to introduce themselves. Looking forward to chat.

Thanks

 

Hi,

 

I worked in a chocolate factory for 3 years, and i just came back to a chocolate place since last month. For the time that i worked in the chocolate factory, the way we used to clean the pipes was with a pigging system basically. Water is the worst enemy of chocolate, so we didn't use water for the piping. We used to wash and properly dry the dies to deposit, the finger magnets and barrel filters, catch pans, side plates from refiners, and tanks when we have to dig out due to chocolate getting solidified. But in general when cleaning depositor for change overs conches, mixers, refiners hoopers, emulsifiers, etc. was basically scrape down and then with cocoa butter remove as much as possible. Then perform a oil or coco butter flush and that was it. We never had an issue applying this cleaning processes.

 

Thanks

[SerenityNow!]

I see this is an older thread, just jumping in to say I too had some experience in the chocolate industry.  I sure do miss it!