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title: "Deep Dive: Making Chocolate"
url: https://stacklist.com/card/576256b1-ec5b-44a3-aafb-d33d816f8b49
source_url: "https://chocolatealchemy.com/how-to-make-chocolate-the-complete-text-guide"
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summary: "Chocolate Alchemy provides a comprehensive bean-to-bar guide covering every step of making chocolate at home, from roasting and cracking cocoa beans to grinding, refining, and tempering. The guide details recommended equipment such as the Behmor roaster, Champion Juicer, and Spectra 11 Melanger, along with practical tips for each stage of the process."
tags: "chocolate-making, bean-to-bar, cocoa-beans, roasting, melanger, winnowing, home-chocolate"
key_entities: "Chocolate Alchemy (organization), Behmor drum roaster (technology), Champion Juicer (technology), Spectra 11 Melanger (technology), bean-to-bar chocolate making (concept), Crankandstein cocoa mill (technology), Sylph winnower (technology), Flux Commercial Cacao Winnower (technology), tempering (concept), conching and refining (concept)"
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# Deep Dive: Making Chocolate

`How to Make Chocolate at Home - Complete Bean-to-Bar Guide | Chocolate Alchemy` — Chocolate Alchemy 0 The Complete Guide To How to Make Chocolate How to make chocolate? That is THE QUESTION isn’t it? It is sort of the Schroedenger’s cat of questions in that it is both, and at the same time, very simple and incredibly complicated. The simple version is this: Roast good quality fermented cocoa beans. Get rid of the outer husk. Grind the nibs and some sugar in a melanger until smooth, 24-48 hours. That’s it. You have made chocolate. I told you. Simple. The more complicate version: Note, this is why Chocolate Alchemy is over 4 million words spread over 1000s of pages. In those pages you’ll discover: What makes a cocoa bean good? Different ways to roast. How to crack the beans and winnow away the out husk. That you can add other other ingredients like cocoa butter, milk powder, vanilla and/or lecithin. Different ways to refine chocolate. How to temper, even though that isn’t technically chocolate making. And so much more….. Let’s get into some of the details. On This Page Making Chocolate 101 Cocoa Beans Roasting Cracking & Winnowing Grinding Conching & Refining Tempering & Molding Make Chocolate At Home (VIDEO) Equipment list: Roaster : It's possible to use your own oven, either conventional or convection.  I am not a fan of that method due to a distinct lack of control but many people do it with a lot of trial and error.  The Behmor drum roaster is probably the best option on the market for small scale.  Other varieties of larger professional coffee roasters beyond the Behmor can work.  Pan roasting and air poppers really don’t work all that great. Tip: The Alchemist uses his home built one or a slightly modified Behmor currently. Cracking the Beans: I like the Champion Juicer to crack beans.  It's fast and efficient.  It gives you double duty since it can also turn roasted nibs into liquor.  Peeling by hand is low tech and the way it was done long ago (and in some origins), takes a while, and may be more or less efficient for winnowing at the same time depending on your technique. It's less efficient on time. The Crankandstein cocoa mill works ok but I find the pieces a bit large for winnowing. For the serious Maker, we have developed the Deluxe Cracker that pair with our winnowers. Winnowing :  The lowest tech method (after hand peeling which isn’t technically winnowing) is a hair dryer set to cold, or a small shop vac set to blow over a large bowl of nibs and husks. The bowl is circulated with a tossing motion of the hand bringing nibs and husks up slightly into the air, giving the husks a chance to blow away.  After that, there is the hand fed Sylph or the automated Flux Commercial Cacao Winnower . Expect to lose about 25% in husk by weight. Grinding : Champion Juicer : there doesn't seem to be a good substitute for this one yet except not doing it.  Regular food processor and grinders don’t work well.  With a small amount of nibs (1-8 lb) you can skip the grinding stage and go straight to the Melanger, but the larger batches take more time, often a couple hours but is still viable. You lose a set amount every time you put cocoa beans through the Champion -- six ounces (6 oz) no matter what weight you are processing. Most any grinder that can make a nut butter will make cocoa liquor. Refining/Conching:  You need a Melanger, full stop.  Either the Spectra 11 for home use or one of the larger ones if you need more capacity. There's not a kitchen appliance substitute for this. Melangers are motorized granite bottomed bowls which have two granite rollers that crush the cocoa nibs (along with your other dry ingredients and extra cocoa butter, depending on what you're making) into something you'll want to hand to your friends and grandma. A separate Conche is not required and more to the point, doesn’t currently exist for small scale chocolate makers.  A melanger both refines and conches naturally at the same time. There are also currently no small scale ball mills for chocolate. Optional Equipment Most of these pieces of equipment will make your job a bit easier.  Most are not specific to chocolate making, the exception being tempering machines. thermometers bowls spatulas tempering machine sous vide chocolate molds Edible Ingredients What ingredients make good chocolate? Edibles Sugar Makes your chocolate sweet. Must be dry sugar, not honey, syrup, etc. There are many you can use including some alternative sweetners. Brown sugar, turbinado, demerara, etc. If they crawl you need to dry them. Read in detail about the various Sugars in Ask the Alchemist 319 Use between 20% to 40%.  Outside of those ranges can work but are not common. Milk Powder : You need dry milk (powder) if you want to make milk chocolate.  It can be whole or skim. You can't use ANY liquid ingredients.  You can also use cream powder, oat powder, buttermilk powder, and the like. Use between 5% and 25% of various milk like powders. It is not recommended to use more than 5% heavy cream powder as the extra butterfat can make the chocolate very hard to impossible to temper, making it extremely soft. Lecithin: Lecithin is made from soy generally but sometimes sunflower and even egg. Although most people think of it as an emulsifier, this is not strictly true for chocolate making. In this case it modifies viscosity under certain conditions. It makes a thinner chocolate, but generally only when there is excess moisture in the chocolate. It is often used in place of cocoa butter since it is cheaper, but also isn't a direct replacement.   It is not a waste by product or toxic. Use between 0% and 0.4%.   Excess lecithin can make your chocolate thicker. It adding lecithin does not thin the chocolate then there was no excess trace moisture. Recipe Formulation: The percentage of a chocolate is the addition of the cocoa beans and cocoa butter.  A chocolate with 65% cocoa nibs and 5% cocoa butter is a 70% chocolate as is a chocolate with 70% cocoa nibs and no cocoa butter. Cocoa nibs contain about 50% cocoa butter. A final recipe requires around 35% fat meaning a chocolate with 70% will contain about 35% fat and is about the lowest you can go without adding additional cocoa butter or other fats. Milk chocolate often require at least 40% fat or they will be too thick. It is a little old school, but you may find this Formulator handy. Other ingredients: As long as it does not contain water, many ingredients can be added to chocolate anywhere in the 1-20% range. Coffee Spices Herbs Nuts Fruit powders Essential oils If the ingredient contains an oil, like nuts, you can include that percentage in your total minimum fat needed (35 - 40%) but testing is recommended.   Not all oils play well with cocoa butter and might make your chocolate behave oddly.  In particular, coconut oil inhibits tempering and makes the chocolate extra fluid and difficult to harden.   In nearly all cases I suggest you do small test and methodically experiment before ruining a whole batch of chocolate. Cocoa beans : The variety is your choice and you need to start somewhere.  Look for something that resonates flavor wise.  The Alchemist  loves strong, deep flavors; smoked meat, dark ale and whisky and tends toward strong deeply flavored chocolate.  Leather, loam and such.  Two pounds is a good amount to start with because you loose some weight in the winnowing process, and some more if you grind them. If you don't get them from the Alchemist he won't have sympathy for you if they taste bad. (the Alchemist is smiling at this as he reads it - not that it isn't true).  He puts in a ton of work to only offer quality cocoa beans that make good chocolate. Use between 10% and 20% for typical milk chocolates. Use between 20% and 40% for dark milk chocolates Use between 40% and 60% for sweet chocolates Use between 60% and 80% for dark chocolates 100% cocoa is called cocoa mass, cocoa liquor or unsweetened chocolate. Cocoa butter : Cocoa butter is technically optional but sometimes required for certain recipes so there is enough fat to refine properly. A little counter intuitively, the addition of 5% cocoa butter makes for a fuller and bolder chocolate since it will melt a little easier in the mouth Use between 20% and 40% for typical milk chocolates. Use between 10% and 20% for dark milk chocolates Use between 5% and 20% for sweet chocolates Use between 0% and 15% for dark chocolates The Basic Steps to Making Chocolate The Recipe: Possible the most common question I get is either what recipe should I use? or what cocoa bean should I pick? The recipe is both the least and most important part of making chocolate.  It is hard to get where you are going if you don’t have an idea where you are going but at the same time, there is no perfect recipe and few recipes on their own are going to make bad chocolate.   Using bad beans or not roasting them correctly is going to impact how good your chocolate is way more than the recipe. Getting cocoa beans from us guarantees you have good beans. It can’t get any easier than getting a Chocolate Making Kit.  These come with roasted nibs and allow you to jump right to refining. We also have a number of Recipes.  Any will get you started just fine. If you like developing your own, this is a basic Formulator to help you out. As for picking a bean, read the descriptions and pick one that sounds like something that sounds good.  It is not really any harder than picking what you want to eat at a restaurant. If this is your first go, I recommend a pre-portioned kit or roasted nibs.  It removes the roasting variable right from the start. Storage Unless specifically labeled, the cocoa beans or nibs you have purchased from us are raw.  They are best kept in a cool, dry, sealed location.  Like this, they should remain "fresh" 6 months to a year.  I don't recommend refrigeration or freezing as it is easy to trap moisture which is not good for cocoa beans. I recommend leaving them in their raw form until you are ready to use them.  Roasted beans go stale quicker than raw beans, usually with a shelf life of around a month. Cocoa doesn’t go bad, but it can go stale. If you have raw beans, it is a good idea to read our article about cocoa moths and their implications. Roast your cocoa beans: Once roasted, cool them to room temperature. It's easiest to do this at least half a day before anything else. Six hours is the minimum and a full day would be even better. Roasting cocoa beans often smells like baking brownies. Expect to attract spectators if there are any around.  Depending what you roast in, cocoa beans can be roasted in 15-30 minutes and end up in the range of 245-265 F at the end. Crack and Winnow the beans: Either with the Champion without its screen in, or by hand. You feed the fully cooled beans beans in the top and the nibs and husk come out the bottom. Then you do the blowing air and tossing nibs part until there is little or no husk left in the beans if you are using a blow drier.. You'll also have about a six foot circle of husk around you. Winnowing is best done outdoors, or in an area that's open and easy to sweep up. The kitchen is not such a good option.  A neater alternative is to use the Sylph or the automated and Flux Commercial Cacao Winnower . It is very important to cool roasted beans least 6 hours and preferable 1 day before cracking and winnowing. You will lose about 25% by weight to husk. Refine/conch: If you are starting with liquor (ground cocoa nibs) melt it (100-120 F) and put it in the Melanger. If starting with roasted nibs, warm them to 120-150 F and slowly add them to the melanger. If your recipe calls for cocoa butter (I recommend it) add that first to help everything along. Keep adding the nibs taking care not to stall the machine. Once the chocolate is running smoothly add the other ingredients a bit at a time. There is no need to wait to add your sugar but neither is there a problem doing so. And remember NO WATER BASED LIQUIDS! It will seize your chocolate. It takes 18 to 48 hours depending on the chocolate and other ingredients for it to become smooth. You can stop it and check how smooth your chocolate is by dipping a spoon in (like tasting batters). It is difficult to over refine chocolate in a melanger. There is no need to relax the pressure on the tension knob. Some people claim this is conching but it isn’t. It is time wasting and won’t change your chocolate at all. The heat from friction and the continuous stirring of the rollers will naturally conche the chocolate. Tempering: If you want shiny chocolate you have to temper it, which takes warming and cooling chocolate a specific way to cause the right crystals to form. As for all of this, see the Alchemist's real instructions for how to do it. Silk is a GREAT way to temper. It’s much more stable, easier to learn and produces better results. Mold your chocolate: Once the chocolate's smooth and no longer feels grainy. Temper it and pour it into molds, or whatever final holding device you're using. Clean up for as long as it takes go get all the chocolate off the Melanger and you're done. The molds need to cool for a few hours before the chocolate comes out of them. What Now? As I said at the beginning. This is quick and dirty. It's not meant to teach you how to make chocolate but to give you an overview. Read on for the full story.  TOP Cacao Beans Cocoa beans have numerous similarities to coffee beans, with some important differences in processes. They are both fermented (fermented cocoa almost looks already roasted), roasted and ground for use. Cocoa beans come in three primary varietals, Criollo, Forastero, and Trinitario but there are hundreds of strains for each. Very loosely, Criollo are analogous to Arabica coffee in that it is the cream of the crop and has the most delicate and complex array of flavors.  But in many cases, this can also mean a very mild chocolate. The Forastero can be compared to Robusta coffee in its disease resistance and higher production, but that is where the comparison ends. Where robusta is just horrid 99% of the time, Forastero is not like that. It has a strong full cocoa flavor, but depending on the grade and preparation, can be rather one dimensional. Well prepared Forastero is what most of us are used to eating in chocolate. Finally, Trinitario is a hybrid of the two, and can have various characters of both parents. Often a Trinitario bean is spoken of as having a strong or weak Criollo influence. I really like how the C-Spot lays it out. I recommend you check them out instead of me copying all of their stellar information here. I will quote this though. Practically every popular resource divides cacáo into 3 primary varietals: Criollo , Forastero , & Trinitario ; an overly simplistic & deeply flawed scheme, & by no means hard & fast distinctions because cacáo is notoriously promiscuous, engendering classification nightmares, & often plain guesswork. With so much genetic cross-pollination, hybridization, mutation, & recombination, it’s rare & increasingly difficult to find any pure forms. To adapt a thought from Immanuel Kant… out of the crooked timber of Theobroma cacáo, nothing entirely straight can be picked. And yet complex crosses are necessary in order to select for genotypes with fine flavor, high yield, & resistance to diseases/pests. You may see a 4th general varietal mentioned, Nacional. I tend to fall into the class of folks who consider it more of a Primary Strain along with the following: Amazon Amelonado Beniano Bicolor Contamana Criollo Grandiflorum Guiana Juruá Nacional Purús The next step down in granulation are Cultivar Strains . Amazonas, Bahia, Cacao Monka, Canoabo, Carenero, Catongo, Caucano, CCN-51, CCRP, Ceylan, Chuao, Chuno, Comum, Cumboto, Cuyagua, EET, Esmeraldas, Guasare, ICS, IMC 67, Indio Rojo, Java, La Red, Maracaibo, Matina, Merideño, Nicaliso, Ocumare, Pajarito, Pandora, Perija, Playa Alta, Porcelana, Rio Caribe, Sur Del Lago, Theobahia, Trinitario  Roasted vs Raw I know there is a lot of information out there about the health benefits of chocolate, and I know some people like to eat cocoa in it's raw form for "maximum" health benefits.  Personally, I do not recommend eating ANY cocoa raw .  All commercial cocoa beans have been fermented by various yeasts and micro organisms, and are often open air dried.  In addition, e.coli and Salmonella can be present on the surface of the husk.   Proper roasting completely kills any potential surface contamination that may be present, makes them safe to eat and develops the flavors associated with chocolate.  And proper, delicate roasting does not significantly reduce the health benefits of cocoa - after all, the benefits were originally found in finished chocolate, not raw cocoa beans.  Keep that in mind. There is even some debate as to whether the nutrients and various flavonoids are even nutritionally "available" in the raw form since roasting alters the physical structure of the cocoa bean and makes it easier to digest.  If you do want to eat cocoa beans whole as a snack, go right ahead - just roast them first.  And if you really don't want to roast them, please peel them.  Sorting I strongly believe that cocoa beans should not be sorted for anything except foreign materials.   The very short version are my observations that 1)     The look of a bean bears no correlation to its flavor, either good or bad. 2)     Unpalatable flavors on their own can lend complexity and depth of flavor (think clove or all spice). 3)     As beans preparation has become more sorted and pretty, flavorful dynamic chocolate have become more rare. Why you should not sort in more depth. If you are in doubt I suggest making two batches, one sorted and one not.  Taste them blind and see what you think.  Let science and observation be your guide. Recipe Formulation and names: To get you started, here are some basic windows for making different types of chocolate.  Just don’t forget your total much always equal 100%.  Our Formulator is helpful for that. Dark/non milk chocolate Cocoa nibs 60-80% Cocoa butter 0-10% Sugar 20-40% Milk Chocolate Cocoa nibs 10-40% Cocoa butter 10-30% Milk powder 10-25% Sugar 20-40% White Chocolate Cocoa nibs 0% Cocoa butter 30-40% Milk powder 30-40% Sugar 30-40% The FDA regulates what certain types of chocolate are called when they are sold.   White Chocolate: 0% cocoa solids More than 20% cocoa butter More than 3.5% milk fat More than 14% milk solids Less than 55% sugar Sweet Chocolate More than 15% cocoa liquor (total of cocoa solids and cocoa butter) Less than 12 milk solids Milk Chocolate More than 10% cocoa liquor (total of cocoa solids and butter) More than 3.39 % milk fat 12% milk solids or more. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) states that dark chocolate, whether labeled bittersweet, semisweet, or dark, must be at least 35 percent cocoa. There is a more in depth here: FDA Guidelines to Chocolate Those rule only apply if you are selling your chocolate.  If you are making you chocolate at home for personal consumption you can do whatever you wish as long as you hold to some basics that assure the recipe can actually be made. There are two big rules in chocolate making. #1 NO WATER #2 Make sure you have enough fat in the recipe to allow sufficient fluidity to refine. For #1 that just means no honey, syrup, etc.  Chocolate is what is known as a non-Newtonian fluid and in this case, if you add water in any form, it stops being a non-Newtonian fluid so it stops being chocolate.  Feel free to geek out about it here in our Viscosity Article. For #2, it is notoriously hard to give exact answers but there are really good rules of thumb.  Basically, most dark chocolate recipes require around 35% fat.  There is a good margin of safety there.  In some cases you can get down to 30% fat and all is good. If you dry all your ingredients  you can often get away with even less fat. On the other hand, milk chocolates often require upwards to 40% fat or more due to interesting chemical bonding that occur between some of the milk protein molecules that lead to a higher viscosity.   How much more cocoa butter do you need?  I don’t know as there are just too many variables involved.  What I suggest is that you add it empirically while you are making the chocolate and record your numbers.   At the end of the day, that is the real key to recipes.   Pick a recipe. Make it. Taste and evaluate it. Make an educated guess what  is and isn’t to your liking and either add more of one or more ingredients to it (recording everything of course) or make it again and repeat the process. Said another way, iterate, learn, iterate again until you are happy. Our Formulator is helpful when you are contemplating changes as it gives you how much fat and various proportions that are in your proposed recipe. Other ingredients There are a large number of non-standard ingredients that  can be added to chocolate for a variety of flavors and textures.   For ones that you want or need to refine in, I strongly recommend you do very small test batches to determine if they are even compatible. Testing Ingredients Start with very small (<1%) amounts of essential oils and other strongly flavored ingredients.   For bulk ingredients like coffee and various freeze dried fruit powders start at 1-2% and work your way up. Roasting Most cocoa beans that you will encounter for chocolate making are fermented, but are not roasted yet.  Regardless of how hot the fermentation was, these are still refereed to as raw cocoa.  The fermentation process does darken them up considerably and you may think they are already roasted, but the lack of an evenness in color and texture is the key to telling when they are unroasted. Roasting accomplishing a number of things. It helps separate the outer husk from the inner bean and makes cracking and winnowing much easier. It also virtually sterilizes the cocoa bean. This is rather important as the conditions in which cocoa beans are fermented are naturally full of bacteria, fungi and molds. There is a "quantifiable" risk of infection from unroasted cocoa beans. Roasting reduces this risk. Various chemical reactions occur when cocoa beans are roasted and proper roasting is integral to good flavored chocolate. The vinegar smell from fermenting is driven off. Raw beans don't taste like chocolate. Roasted beans do. Finally, for those of you who have read about the nutritional value of chocolate and cocoa beans, and worry that roasting destroys these nutrients, please remember that all of the research (to the best of my knowledge) has been done on fully roasted, fermented cocoa beans and chocolate. Sure, if you over roast or over process it, you may well loose some nutrients, but I personally take the nutritional benefits of chocolate as a benefit, not a goal. The flavor is my goal at Chocolate Alchemy. Whole beans or nibs?  Ignoring the fact that no roaster out there will roast nibs, the biggest issue with roasting nibs is the danger known as tipping in coffee.  The uneven nature of the nibs can lead to over roasting the edges because they dry out so fast and introducing defects that can lead to harsh acrid flavors.  Whole beans roast a whole lot more predictably.  Stick to those if you can.  Plus, we are mostly discussing how to use cocoa like coffee, and as we will get to, using the whole bean (ground up) makes a better beverage the just nibs. That said, if you do want to roast you own nibs, you’ll have to stick to roasting in an oven and treating them a bit more gentle that you normally would lest you damage them. Options for Home Roasting Cocoa Beans There is a ton of information out there on the web about roasting coffee at home. If you can roast coffee at home (I do), you can roast cocoa beans at home. Sweet Maria's is a great source for coffee roasting information and some supplies. Unlike coffee, which roasts anywhere from 400-460F, cocoa beans need more gentle treatment. In that there are no hard or fast coffee roasting rules, the same holds true for cocoa. In general though, they can be roasted from 5-35 minutes anywhere from about 250-325 F. To do this, there are four options, but only two are feasible: Coffee roaster (the Behmor 2000 is our pick) Oven roasting Air roasting (not feasible) Drum roasting with a gas grill (not feasible). With all of the methods, the basic technique is the same. Subject the cocoa beans to a high temperature initially, slowly reduce the temperature and stop the roast when the beans are "cracking", but well before they start to burn. The initial high heat lets the beans gain some thermal momentum and allows for a good separation of the husk and nibs as the beans expand. You lower the ambient temperature so as not to burn the outside of the bean, but let the interior continue to roast. Finally, the cocoa beans will start to pop and crack as water vapor is explosively released. This happens when the cocoa bean temperature is around 250 F. This is your sign you are just about done roasting. Experience and smell (you don't want any burned smell) are the key indicators when the beans are roasted. Once the cocoa beans are roasted and cooled, try separating the husk from one. If it comes off easily, you did well and the beans are fully roasted. Likewise, taste some. They should have a nice cocoa flavor, with no raw or burned flavors. Generally I like to have a roast take 15-20 minutes, regardless of method. Under that amount of time and the beans seem to retain a raw unfinished flavor. Over that and they start to taste baked and sort of flat. Drum Roasting If you are going to be serious about roasting cocoa beans at home, and/or making chocolate, this is the method I recommend. It has the most flexibility, the most consistency and gives the best overall product for the least amount of work. In this category there are three ways you can go.  Going from simply to complex they are: Home made, using a gas grill. Stand alone home coffee roaster Commercial coffee roaster. All have their advantages and disadvantages. Gas Grill In the early years I used and recommended this method.  It worked well enough but takes quite a bit of user competence and is difficult to make solid recommendations since you basically have to construct it yourself.  Many home coffee roasters use the RK Drum but I’ve found they don’t do great with cocoa due to the large mixing vanes.  Unlike coffee that has predictable audible cues, 1st and 2nd crack, cocoa doesn’t have this so unless you go through the not insignificant job of modifying the RK Drum you will be roasting mostly blind.  I mention this mostly out of posterity. Home Coffee Roasters There are only two off the shelf coffee drum roasters that I know of that can do a reasonable amount of cocoa beans on a small scale. The Behmor 2000  and the Hot Top. Between the two, there is just really isn't any contest. The Hottop will do 6-8 oz of cocoa, maybe 12 oz if you push it.   I don’t recommend it. The Behmor 2000 roasts 2-2.5 lb.  I suggest not trying to roast less than that.  Using it is very simple. Load 2 - 2.5 lb of cocoa Roast on Profile P1 for 18-22 minutes, stopping when you smell the characteristic chocolate brownie smell.   Cool How to roast on the Behmor 2000 AB In the same way you can use a Behmor 2000, you can use pretty much any commercial drum coffee roaster if you have the use of one.  There is no cross contamination of taste either.  I roast coffee and cocoa in the same roaster and both taste as they should. I personally use an old Royal #5 which runs off propane and can handle 15 lb of coffee.  But because cocoa roasts so much cooler than coffee, I routinely roast 30-35 lb of cocoa.   As a rough guide pre-heat to 350-400 F, and drop in the cocoa.  With a thermometer in the bean mass, the temperature usually drops to the low 100's.  I typically roast, adjusting my heat input, to reach 250-260 F over about 13-18 minutes.  Yours of course may vary, but as a bench mark, for me, the beans just start to crack in this temperature window.   How to use a Professional Coffee Roaster for Cocoa None of that above really tell you how to roast cocoa, only the equipment that can be used.   Let’s get into the weeds of how to roast.  I’ll grant it is a learning curve, but the benefits are numerous. Profile Drum Roasting I have developed a method of Profile roasting cocoa that is remarkable similar to the profiles used by coffee roasters. You have a drying, flavor development and finishing phase. In lieu of repeating (for now) what I have written in great detail, I recommend you go read Ask the Alchemist 200 through 206. I go into each phase in great detail and how you can adjust each one to reliably alter the flavor profile of your chocolate to suit your tastes. I want to make it VERY CLEAR this is about DRUM roasting and can NOT be applied to oven (even convection) roasting. Oven Roasting That I am aware of, virtually everyone has an oven in their kitchen, and you can roast cocoa in it.  Unfortunately it is not quite as simple as baking a batch of brownies. Over the years I have written a lot about the difficulty of roasting in an oven .  I’ve settled on two moderately robust methods that I outline below as Option 1 and 2.  If you care to see why I recommend drum roasting, feel free to dive in. Issues with long and low roasting. In general, if you try oven roasting, you will start hot (350-400 F) for a short amount of time and slowly lower it to your target temperature (275-300 F).   This is for about 2 lb/1 kg of beans.  The more you are roasting, the higher your initial temperature can and has to be and the time will probably be a little longer. Option 1 Remember, you want to roast the cocoa beans, not bake them.  This is how that looks: Whole cocoa beans 375-400 F 5 minutes 350 F 5 minutes 325 F 5 minutes 300 F for 10-15 minutes or until done*.  Look for the aroma of baking brownies and/or pops.  Both are good indicators you are there.   *For an even better indicator of a complete roast, use an infrared thermometer and roast until the beans show 250-260 F.  Make sure you stir the beans before taking your reading so you don't have a high bias. If you have nibs, you both can and need to take them a little more gentle. 350 F 10 minutes 325 F 5 minutes 300 F 5 minutes 275 F for 5-10 minutes or until done (again 250-260 F IR thermometer reading) That is really it. Of course, there are LOTS of other ways you can do this.  I know some people roast at 250 F (or even 220 F) for 45 minutes to an hour or even two.  I am personally not a fan of this style, but you may be.   Option 2: I find this procedure works pretty well and is a little simpler than the method above, having fewer adjustments.  It is moderately predictable, repeatable and although not as dynamic and controllable as a drum roaster, does a good job. You will need an IR thermometer.   Roast 2 lb of beans.   Preheat your over to 350 F.   Place your cocoa beans in a single layer on a baking sheet and into the oven. Stir the beans at 5 minutes and check the temperature.   Continue roasting until the surface temperature reads 205-215 F (it may well vary across the beans).   At that point, turn your oven down 10-15 F above your target end roast temperature (EOR) If it is 255 F then add 15 and set your oven to 270 F and continue to roast without stirring every 5 minutes until approximately 255 F.   Again, there will be variation but the beauty of this method is having turned the oven down it is difficult to over roast.  If you do find your roast is progressing too fast, adjust accordingly, starting at 325 F and/or changing your target to 265 F.  Overall you may well roast 30-40 minutes.  The important part here is to get good momentum going in a hot oven and then basically coasting to finish. What about <insert name> roaster? There are a number of small home coffee roasters out there and I mention them here for completeness.  Spoiler, none really work for roasting cocoa. All Fluid bed Air roasters including but not limited to the FreshRoast, Poppers, Sonoffresco, etc. Pros: None Cons: The won’t lift and fluidize cocoa beans. Nibs tend to ‘tip’ or have their ends scorched. Nibs can fall through the holes at the bottom. Capacity tends to be quite small.  In some cases if you have temperature control (most don’t) you can control tipping but the small amount you can roast isn’t usually worthwhile other than for novelty sake. GeneCafe: Pros: Not many.  Beans tend to not mix well due to their size.   Nibs are ok.   Cons: Capacity is low The airflow tend to strip flavor from the nibs and beans. Mixing is subpar. No bean temperature probe Hottop Pros: None Cons:  Beans tend to jam and nibs fall through the drum Allio Bullet Pros: Has temperature probe Cons: Whole beans jam and nibs sound crunchy and might damage the roaster Expensive Cooling your cocoa beans? Whatever method you use for roasting, it is important to cool your beans in a reasonable amount of time so they don’t keep developing. Anywhere from 5-15 minutes is just fine.  It is very important to cool roasted beans least 6 hours and preferable 1 day before cracking and winnowing. Why?   Check out my Article. TOP Cracking & Winnowing To make chocolate, the husk must be removed from the cocoa bean.  The goal here is to crack the cocoa beans into pieces and then separate (winnow) the husk from the nib. The goal is to go from whole beans to nibs. Cracking It can be done by hand, but this is rather tedious and not very approachable. Like most things, there are many things that do not work, and only a few that do work. Here's a basic list of various ways you can and can not crack cocoa beans. Do not work for Cracking: Meat Grinders Food processors Grain mills Coffee grinders Works OK, but not great or not feasible Hand peeling Corona type Works Great Champion Juicer w/o bottom screen (see it used with Chocolate Alchemy winnowers below) Deluxe Cracker - Deluxe Cacao Cracker for Champion Juicer - stainless/brass cracker for consistent cracking, higher throughput, and better winnowing performance with the Flux system. After proper roasting, you will notice the outer husk is much looser and easier to remove. It sounds simple enough but just a few years ago, there were no equipment that worked off the shelf.  I contacted two companies to see if they had any interest in modifying one of their products to handle cocoa beans. Crankandstein worked with Chocolate Alchemy and the Crankandstein Cocoa mill was born - a heavy three roller, dual drive, set gap mill.  Sadly they decided to stop making them. At this point I can recommend the Champion Juicer for cracking both raw and roasted cocoa beans. Winnowing After your fully cooled beans are cracked, you then need to separate them husk and nib. In exactly the same vein as cracking, there are a range of things that work and don't work. In most cases you should expect to recover about 75-80% of nibs by weight. It is very important to cool roasted beans least 6 hours and preferable a day so excess moisture can escape from the beans. Does not work well: Champion Juicer - years ago I proposed separating (not really winnowing as no air is involved) the husk and nib as you grind.  I technically will work if you are doing small 1-2 lb batches, but it is VERY hard on the Champion and the cocoa and not something I generally recommend any more.  It's fine for a final filter (see below) but not the initial separation. Works ok, but not great: Long tube PVC winnowers.  There are various permutations of these winnowers.  Some have one fan, some have two, some have speed controllers, some have valves, most (maybe all) are hand feed.  Most work well for seeds, but none work simple and easy with a single pass and without a LOT of hands on user intervention. Hand peeling - 1 lb/ hour.  'nuff said.  Well, I will say more.  Works fine, but is slow, tedious, hard on the hands and not approachable. Works Good: Bowl/Blow dryer Method Works Great: Sylph winnower Flux Commercial Cacao Winnower Winnowing the cocoa beans with a hair dryer Bowl/Blow dryer Method The goal here is to blow the lighter husk away but leave the heavier nibs.  It's a bit messy, and not good of indoors, but does a fine job.  I recommend wearing a dust mask.  There is definitely user technique involved.  Once you find that technique, you can expect to do about 0.75-1 lb/minute. 3-4 minutes later, just over 3 lb of Homemade Cocoa Nibs Use any old hair dryer, although a small shop vac works great. Come in high and stir with your hands (or those of your apprentice, you can see my daughter Logan helping below). You will soon work out how close the blowing air needs to be to blow the husk away, but not the nibs. After a few minutes, you should have a nice bowl of nibs ready for the Champion Juicer or Melanger. Don't fret too much about a few pieces of husk here and there.  The industry standard is less than 1.5% husk.  That's actually quite a lot. This method can easily get you under 1%.   The screen in the Champion will remove those few bits if you are making liquor, and actually make a very nice filter bed if you go that route.  And otherwise, nibs can go straight into your Melanger. Flux Commercial Cacao Winnower After many years of hand winnowing via the above method, and seeing that no one else was coming up with any good versions of compact, simple , reasonably priced winnowers, I finally invented the Aether Winnower which evolved further into the Flux. A Commercial grade cacao winnower. If you are doing enough cacao that hand winnowing is getting old, the Flux is the machine I use for real production work. It is built around a simple idea: crack the beans well, move the nib and husk through a controlled air stream, and let the lighter husk go one way while the nibs go the other. The setup uses a Champion Juicer as the cracker/feed motor, with the Flux doing the separation. The Deluxe Cacao Cracker is the better way to feed it, especially if you are doing volume or raw beans, but the standard Champion cutter head can work at a lower rate. Once the beans are cracked, the mix enters the separation chamber. The husk is pulled up into the vacuum side and the nibs fall down into your bucket. Because the chamber is clear and the airflow is adjustable, you can actually see what is happening and tune it instead of guessing. With the Deluxe Cracker, roasted beans can run around 120-140 lb/hour, and raw beans around 100-120 lb/hour. With the standard Champion cutter head, expect more like 70-80 lb/hour roasted or 50-60 lb/hour raw. Those numbers still depend on the beans, the roast, and how cleanly they crack. Winnowing is always a little bit of tuning, not magic. The important thing is that the Flux is not just faster. It is easier to dial in, easier to clean, and much more pleasant to use when you are past the “small bowl and hair dryer” stage. You still need a Champion and a vacuum, and you still need to pay attention to the crack size and airflow, but once it is running well it becomes a very straightforward part of the chocolate making workflow. See the full product page for the Flux Sylph Winnower You can find more information for the Sylph here .   Here is a nice overview of both the blow dryer method and using the Sylph. And likewise more information about doing it yourself (DIY) Chocolate Alchemy’s DIY Winnower Chocolate Alchemy's DIY Winnower Part 1 Chocolate Alchemy's DIY Winnower Part 2 Chocolate Alchemy's DIY Winnower Part 3 I need to point out that those were the first posts and plans, and as you can see in the photos above, the design has changed slightly.  Below are MUCH better. What I need to point out is it is a hybrid of both winnowers, neither quite full sized Aether, nor smaller Sprite.  It uses the larger PVC of the Aether, but the basic bucket configuration of the Sprite.   It shows no supports, and has purchased ball valves instead of the slider valves I have on the working models.  Most important though it has the Discriminator air flow in the 'correct' place, namely fully under the nib/husk entrance, instead of somewhat adjacent to it as in the first design. You may be saying to yourself, 'self, isn't that a PVC winnower that above he said didn't work well?'.  And I will answer, no.  This has three critical differences: There is no long drop tube.  Instead there is a deflector to stop the velocity of the nibs and husk, which was the only reason for a long tube. There is a Discriminator air flow below the nib/husk entrance.  Honestly I am not 100% sure why it works from a physics standpoint (although I could ramble and give some semi-half-baked ideas, but I won't), but I do know it works with it, and does not work without it.  'nuff said. It's simple to operate. Eventually there will be both full plans available.  But there is more than enough information to make your own, and I will always answer questions if you have them. Finally, for those that like to see the progression of an invention, this is the Aether Winnower start to finish. TOP Grinding Expect a Mess! After your cocoa beans have been roasted , and cracked and winnowed , the next OPTIONAL step in chocolate making is to grind them until they liquefy into cocoa liquor. Expect a MEss! What does not work: I have found many pieces of equipment that just are not up to this task. To name a few, General food processors Vita-Mix coffee grinders (burr and blade) meat grinders (manual and electric) mortar & pestles (we are talking alchemy here after all) None are up to the job. I have heard that a Cuisinart juicer attachment can work, but most juicers will not work.  None of the slow and cool juicers will work. What does work: The Champion Juicer. It grinds and separates any remaining husk rather nicely. It does take a few of passes, and care must be taken not rush, as the cocoa mass can become too hot, and flavor can be impacted. I have successfully done a 4 pound batch of cocoa beans in about 30 minutes.  The only real downside aside from the time and mess is you will lose about 6 oz of liquor in the grinding hub/snout so if you only put in 8 oz, you are down to 2 oz.  It is much better to do 2-3 lb so your loss is minimized. @media screen and (max-width: 767px) {