Chocolate Tempering MachinesA complete guide to chocolate tempering machines and making chocolate candies

Before the age of chocolate tempering machines, the ordinary hobbyist or homemaker had to temper chocolates manually through three different ways: tabliering, seeding, and the easiest, tempering by microwave. Other hardier souls relied on double-boilers and calibrated thermometers to temper their chocolates.

Still, even with the trusty microwave, tempering by hand remains to be painstaking, tedious work and for most complete beginners, is also hit and miss. Automated tempering was for the industrial manufacturers and commercial chocolate makers because they had tempering machines that could handle 500-pound volumes per batch, way too huge for the ordinary hobbyist/homemaker.

Thanks to Skip Snyder, a computer expert from Poughkeepsie, New York, what has once been a process that was strictly the commercial giants’ domain became, in a manner of speaking, the hobbyist’s playground. Tempering has become as easy as popping one and a half pound of chopped chocolate bars into a tabletop appliance; and in some instances, chocolate can be put on hold overnight without losing its temper!

Snyder took several months to perfect his software-based technology. According to a circa-1999 press release, his gadget focused on controlling the difficult aspects of temperature control. Chocolate tempering, as you’re probably discovering by now, is a precise process. Real chocolates have cocoa butter, and cocoa butter has fatty acids. The problem arises from the fact that these fatty acids crystallize into six different forms, and each crystal dominates the process at different temperatures. The trick is in heating the chocolate at a specific temperature so that as many Type V crystals as possible are produced. The Type V crystals are responsible for the clean snap, velvety texture, and glossy sheen in good quality chocolate.

After perfecting the temperature-control system on his technology, Snyder obtained a patent for his new invention and promptly introduced the Sinsation Chocolate Maker in 1996. With its compact size, the Sinsation was marketed to appeal to hobbyists and homemakers, and was billed as “a kitchen appliance”. (The New York Times, in its Food Notes section, described it as “half the size of a bread machine.”)

The Sinsation was first sold by Chandre LLC when it came out of the market. Apparently, Snyder, Chandre’s chairman, obtained a $1 million-dollar investment from Indotronix International Corporation (IIC), another IT company in Poughkeepsie. Chandre concentrated their advertising campaigns in culinary or chocolate magazines, making the countertop tempering machine available by mail order.

Then in 2000, ChocoVision started selling the Sinsation and started calling it the “New Sinsation.” Later, they rebranded the tempering machine into the Revolation line of products. It appears that the same investor, Indotronix, still retains a major interest in the new company.

ChocoVision’s initial marketing program for the Revolation was mostly conducted online as seen from a flurry of press releases in online news and cooking sites as well as intensified participation in discussion forums on chocolates, candy making, and baking. Most of the orders received came from ebay. Later, they included participation in industry trade shows and events like the 2006 World and National Pastry Competitions.

ChocoVision has also expanded their target market from the early focus on hobbyists and homemakers. Increasingly, the “New Sinsation” was finding its way into the worktops of professional pastry chefs, well-known chocolatiers, restaurants, coffee shops, and even midsized confection manufacturers. Capitalizing on the countertop tempering machine’s speed, efficiency, accuracy, reliability, and proprietary technology, the Revolation is now available in different countries from different retailers through different distribution channels.