The main component of chocolate is cocoa butter. Cocoa butter is polymorphic and thus can exist in different crystal forms. These crystal forms are created when chocolate is cooled. The crystal form in which cocoa butter mainly crystallizes determines the properties of the chocolate.
The type V crystals in particular provide a pleasant hardness, a glossy solid texture and a typical hollow sound when broken. Tempering is the process of obtaining these stable Beta V crystals. The temper meter measures the quality of the tempering, and is therefore the most important measurement that should characterize chocolate.
A temper meter is used to determine the tempering quality of real chocolate. This quality is expressed in an index between 1 and 9. The device can be used with the manual moulding machines or bean-to-bar Prefanibs devices, the automatic tempering machines Inspire and Continua, and with the continuous or batch tempering kettles from Prefamac.
