140 qt hobart vs spiral mixer

[johnmorrison]

Paul, if you were setting up a new shop which do you prefer ? For 100 lbs flour…what would be your choice for grating cheese…currently use 60 qt hobart with pelican head for cheese (32 lbs flour),also what model and capacity of empire spiral do you use ?

 

[paul7979]

The spiral I use is an Empire 160A I believe. We regularly mix 100LB of flour in it but it could handle 150 with no problem. The Hobart V1401 also handles 100Lbs of flour easily and there really is very little difference in finished product. I’m not really partial to either one other than the spiral is easier to pull the dough from. If the mixer couldn’t be right next to the table that the dough will be cut on, the Hobart would certainly be the mixer of choice. It seems that great deals are easier to find on spiral mixers than they are to find on Hobarts.

As far as cheese, if you warrant mixing 100Lbs of flour at a time, I have a hard time imagining doing cheese in a pelican head. I’ve only used a pelican head at one job and it seemed awfully slow. We use an HCM for cheese as it gives us a finished product closer to diced than shredded. Four 6Lb sticks take about 45 seconds to dice.

 

[johnmorrison]

Thanks Paul ,the Big footprint of the spiral mixer is a concern for me, also i grind my own garlic, grate parmesan, grind fresh basil for pesto on the Hobart…the HCM are in my plans for cheese !

 

[GotRocks]

I’ve always used a planetary mixer to make dough, the first time I saw a spiral mixer, I thought to myself “WTF is that piece of garbage”

but now after using a spiral mixer for the last year, I do not see myself ever doing dough in a planetary mixer unless I am absolutely forced to do so. Yes, they are that easy and that nice for dough.
To grind my sausage, I use tabletop powerhead unit that takes a #22 grinder attachment, Check out these guys, >>> http://www.waltonsinc.com/ they have some heavy duty home grade, and commercial grade grinding equipment for a decent price, You may also score on craigslist I suggest using adhuntr.com to search all of craigslist nationwide.

I mix my BBQ dry-rubs in my spiral mixer, and it actually works quite well for mixing my sausage, the heat generated is minimal, so smearing the fat has less chance of happening.