Chocolate Temper

The first thing I'm told that I need to understand in the kitchen is that chocolate has temper. Temper was explained to me with the following anology; if you think of freezer burn having crystals that's considered "bad temper", if you think about the crystals within ice cream, that's considered "good" or "correct temper". Temper needs to be tested every two hours by collecting a sample from both of our chocolate depositors and running computer checks. This is to ensure the chocolate has the correct consistency and temper to be molded for the kisses. When chocolate comes into the plant, it's about 65 degrees in a climate controlled trailer because our chocolate is "shocked" at 54 degrees, this is where temper occurs. After it is "shocked" it is brought up gradually in a hopper to 81 degrees where the crystals have melted away and it is now ready to be deposited. When we conduct our checks we are checking the temper and slope of the chocolate. Just like algebra in high school we record the temper on a graph chart to make sure the temper is within its parameters. If the slope is high or low, we must then adjust the temperature accordingly to ensure the temper is within its parameters at our next check. We have a changeover coming tonight when I go in, so I will be learning everything that goes into cleaning and changeover tonight.