Things are looking up. 48/30.5 at 85%, cooled in the refrigerator for 25 minutes and left in the mold overnight...

Thanks... I am attempting to load a picture, but it doesn't seem to be working.

I was able to speak with someone at Callebaut yesterday. He suggested 45-50/30 and 70-80% on the auger. He also suggested a longer time to set up in the fridge (20 minutes). I usually work at about 43 melting and 32 working with the seed method and am.used to bars setting up in about 10 minutes. I had some progress yesterday but still needed approx. 30 minutes in the fridge and had release marks.

@HChoc -

Can you get recommended temperatures from van Leer? They often provide them on their technical data sheet. These might not be perfect for the Unica but they will provide a good starting point.

From a known starting point (50C and 31C above) it's important to give the chocolate time to come into temper in the first place. You then test the temper to determine if the chocolate is too warm (in which case you'd lower the working bowl temperature) or too cold (in which case you'd raise the temperature of the cooling system. After each change (no more than 0.5C) you need to wait a few minutes for the system to reach equilibrium.

Start off with the speed of the auger at 90%. You can slow it down or speed it up if necessary. If you start at 100% you can't speed it up.

Also, it's easier to determine temper points using two of the three zones. When that's done you can turn on zone 3 (if needed) and that temperature should be about 1C higher than zone 2 as a starting point.