Kyoto Oolong 60% Dark Milk

Synopsis
Damson Chocolate’s dark milk chocolate with Oolong tea.
Author
Amanda Greene & Dom Ramsey / Damson Chocolate
Version
1.0
License
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Short URL
xtc.tc/106
Last Updated
30 July 2019

Ingredients

  • 50% Roasted cocoa nibs
  • 10% Cocoa butter
  • 6% Whole Milk Powder
  • 31.6% Cane Sugar
  • 2% Oolong Tea
  • 0.4% Sunflower Lecithin

Technical Information

  • Roast: Standard (20 minutes @ 120°C)
  • Grind / Conch time:  Standard (24 hours for 3kg Premier grinders, 72 hours for 30kg CocoaTown melangers)

Method

  1. Sort and roast beans.
  2. After cooling, break and winnow.
  3. Slowly add nibs to heated melanger.
  4. Add pre-melted cocoa butter. This can be added in parallel with the cocoa nibs to help speed the process.
  5. When nibs and cocoa butter are flowing freely, slowly add the sugar. For larger batches, this can be done on the second day of the 72 hour grind.
  6. One the sugar has been combined, slowly add the milk powder.
  7. Add the tea leaves directly into the melanger.
  8. Allow to grind / conch for prescribed time.
  9. One hour before the end of the cycle, add the lecithin.
  10. Pour into containers and allow to set.
  11. Temper as per the dark milk chocolate settings of your tempering machine.

Notes

We prefer to do flavoured batches in a small Premier-type melanger, as cleaning larger equipment can be time consuming. For reference, this is how the weights break down when making a small (2.6kg) batch:

  • 1300g Roasted cocoa nibs
  • 260g Cocoa butter
  • 156g Whole Milk Powder
  • 819g Cane Sugar
  • 52g Oolong Tea
  • 10g Sunflower Lecithin

For this recipe, we used Nicaraguan Nicalizo beans from Ingemann paired with Kyoto Oolong tea from Lalani & Co., but you can use any Oolong tea and experiment to find a good cacao flavour match. The tea flavour is quite subtle, so some experimentation with the quantity may be useful, but we found that 2% worked well.

We experimented with various methods of infusing the tea into cocoa butter and nibs, but found the best way to get a good flavour was simply to add the leaves into the melanger. As long as this is done early on in the grinding process, we found the resulting chocolate to be completely smooth in texture.

Tempering any high cocoa milk chocolate can take a little trial and error. We had success tempering this using the dark chocolate settings on our Chocovision tempering machine, but you may want to push your temperatures towards the milk chocolate range if you have problems.

We like to use Sunflower Lecithin in all our milk chocolates as it can significantly aid with viscosity and make moulding much easier. We use it in preference to Soy Lecithin which some people have allergies to. Again, if your chocolate flows readily you may want to omit this entirely and increase the cocoa nib or sugar content accordingly.

We find ageing the chocolate can have a significant beneficial effect on the final flavour of single origin chocolates, particularly those with high acidity. However we don’t recommend ageing for more than a few weeks, as the subtle tea flavour may fade a little over time.

License

Creative Commons Licence
Liqurice & Sea Salt Chocolate by XTC Chocolate is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://xtc.tc/106.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at https://xtcchocolate.com/licensing/.