I recently purchased a Sylph Winnower and Spectra 11 Melanger from your website, along with raw cacao and other ingredients, moulds, etc. to make bean to bar chocolate. I am using a Behmor roaster to roast, left over from my early coffee roasting days and in good condition (I now roast coffee in a small commercial propane-powered drum roaster). I have also recently purchased a used Champion juicer on eBay and 4 pounds of raw cacao from Sweet Marias. The profile that I am using to roast the cacao is P5 D, which, as you are most likely well aware, is lowest temp, slowest roasting cycle, taking 23:00 minutes.
First question: Am I safe to roast all (or the majority) of my cocoa at this Behmor setting/time?
Second question: When I winnow with the Champion (so far I have only hand-winnowed) and then use the Sylph, how much cocoa nib weight will be lost/sucked up by the Sylph and is that anywhere near the amount that would be lost if I were to use the Champion to make cocoa mass/liquor? My intention is to winnow with the Champion, then use the Sylph, and then drop those cocoa nibs into the Spectra 11, but I want to ask if you believe that this was the most efficient way to go.
Recently Sweet Maria’s offered cocoa beans for a little while, paring it up with coffee from the same country. They and many of their customers learned very quickly that as much as they wanted cocoa and coffee to be alike, it was like assuming an elephant and a rhinoceros were basically alike in that they are both huge grey mammals that can casually maim you. Yes....but no.
I find it really interesting watching coffee people on various forums experiment with cocoa. I’ll be very frank (yeah I know, that is a total shock to my long time readers), it is also a little painful to watch but also deeply nostalgic. People are trying the same things they did 20 years ago when I first started experimenting with cocoa despite Tom (one of the owners of Sweet Maria’s) sending them to Chocolate Alchemy where we lay out what does and doesn’t work. For instance:
Blenders don’t work.
Ovens don’t roast consistently.
Cracking with a rolling pins and hand peeling beans are barbaric.
Sugar just stirred in will make a gritty chocolate.
Honey causes the chocolate to seize.
I’m watching so many people struggling out of ignorance when there is just no need since we have cracked that code as it were years ago. It is an interesting set of emotions I’m feeling, wanting to jump in and help yet I’m also terribly excited seeing people having so much fun. I’m mostly letting people be as I don’t want to be that guy explaining things he wasn’t asked about.
That all said, some information is getting through and this and many other questions show that. And I get to applaud people that are having fun. It is mostly a variant of deja vu and the saying ‘Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it’.
Ok, sorry for making you listen to my mini therapy session. Let’s get into some real answers with a caveat that some of this might seem a bit snarky and really it is just me just not peppering the text in delicate responses and just laying the information out. Cool? Good. If not, you can duck off LOL.
Alright, ducking good on you for getting a Melanger, Champion, Sylph and using a Behmor. Well done!!
Am I safe to roast all (or the majority) of my cocoa at this Behmor setting/time?
That is a surprisingly hard question to answer because it goes to the heart of you not knowing what you don’t know. And that is cool. The literal answer is you are probably safe using that setting.
I don’t think you should do it though for a few reasons.
Did you like the chocolate you made from it? If not, then clearly you need to not roast there again. If you did, what is your goal? If you want to repeat it? Then sure, I guess? I’m not really sure what you mean by safe.
I’m wondering why you want to do this. Part of learning is experimenting and often that means changing things. It is of course possible you want to experiment with different recipes to see how the one bean behaves. In that case, sure, use the same roast. I have a preference though for changing the roasting profile and keeping the recipe the same. Neither is right or wrong, just have a plan.
I can’t tell if you mean all your cocoa now, or eventually. If you mean now, no. Don’t do that. Wait until you have tasted the chocolate you have made with the first batch and see if you like it or want to tweak it a bit. Also, raw beans stay fresh longer compared to roasted beans.
Really thought, the main reason is this. One of the biggest things I noticed on the message boards and Facebook Groups was that people got it into their heads that you had to treat cocoa more careful than coffee (not untrue) and the result was going to the very far end of the scale and in nearly all cases, that was too far (also not untrue). There is a grain of truth when saying cocoa has to be roasted gentler than coffee. It is the difference in playing catch with a hard boiled egg vs a fresh egg. It isn’t like trying to play catch a blown egg that has been carved into a delicate lace pattern that might shatter just by picking it up. Cocoa isn’t a delicate snowflake.
Day in, day out I roast on P1 on the Behmor. Never, ever, do I use P5. That is treating it like a carved eggshell in the shape of snowflake. The way I deal with treating the cocoa beans more gentle is to roast 2 to 2.5 lb at a time. After 18 years of doing this, that is hands down the best method in the Behmor. I’ve not found any other consistent setting that will allow you to roast less than 2 lb. Partial power is good in theory but in practice it just is fraught with issues of knowing where to stop the roast.
Here is the thing. Cocoa benefits from a lot of heat. Just like coffee, it wants to be roasted, not baked. That is how so many flavors are developed. The harder you push it (up to a limit of course) the better it will taste. The ONLY place it is more delicate is how hot you take it. Coffee requires a final temperature in the 410 - 460 F range. Cocoa on the other hand is 240 - 260 F. The roast times can be about the same and really should be about the same or you are just wasting time and leaving money on the table. This is why P1 works fine. You need that much energy to heat up twice the mass of beans in proper amount of time.
I can hear you asking “But the Behmor gets to over 400 F on P1, isn’t that too hot?”.
Again, that is the wrong question based on not understanding how the Behmor and thermostats work. The Behmor has an upper temperature limit of over 400 F in P1. With 1 lb of coffee (or cocoa) the chamber can work its way up there, and when it does, it turns off the heating elements until the temperature is below that upper limit. The whole key here is that with 2 lb of cocoa the roast chamber will never reach 400 F so there is literally no issue. The roaster will never turn off the elements. It is like saying your car has a speed limiter of 70 mph. That is fine and good when you are tooling around through the city. If you hook up a trailer to that has a speed limit of 50 mph and with the extra weight you can only get up to 40 mph, is there any issue? Clearly the answer is no. Through much trial and error (and a thermocouple in the bean mass via a hole in the side and drum shaft) I’ve worked out P1 on the 1 lb setting will get you in that 240-260 F range in 18-22 minutes and give you the best chance of success. As it is, many of the profiles are going to behave exactly the same because you never even get to their trigger temperatures.
You are more likely to under roast the cocoa on P5. That assumes you are using 2 lb of beans. If you are using 1 lb you might be over roasting them. In short, I don’t know because I don’t know how much you roasted. I don't roast on P5 because I get the best chocolate from P1.
If you check the roasting notes on pretty much any of our cocoa beans, you will see a section on roasting with the Behmor and I say to use P1, load 2 - 2.5 lb and stop the roast when the aroma gets sharp or a bit after smelling that chocolate brownie smell. Here is an example with a few other details for using the manual mode:
Behmor: Due to the cold start of the the Behmor, you can just set it on the 1 lb setting with 2.5 lb of cocoa and go. When you begin getting aromatic notes, somewhere around 4 minutes left (14 minutes elapsed of the 18 minute start) drop the power to P3 (50% power, not Profile 3) and continue roasting for about another 6-8 minutes, waiting for the aroma to either decrease or get sharp. This is all of course if you don't have a thermocouple in the beans (Modifying your Behmor link please) If you have that you can follow the profiles above.
When I winnow with the Champion (so far I have only hand-winnowed) and then use the Sylph, how much cocoa nib weight will be lost/sucked up by the Sylph and is that anywhere near the amount that would be lost if I were to use the Champion to make cocoa mass/liquor? My intention is to winnow with the Champion, then use the Sylph, and then drop those cocoa nibs into the Spectra 11, but I want to ask if you believe that this was the most efficient way to go.
Pedantic a$$hole alert.
Ok, not really. It is that words have meaning and I’d rather you use the right terms. I’m making this clear so as not to confuse newcomers, not just for the sake of being right.
I doubt you hand winnowed. I suspect you hand pealed. Winnowing is the act of blowing husk or chaff away with an air stream. Similarly, you are not going to winnow with the Champion. You are going to crack the beans into nibs and husk that you will either use a blow drier or the Sylph to winnow.
If you have not, you should check out our How to make Chocolate Guide. All of these answers are there. I’m happy to give them again here.
I no longer recommend making liquor with the Champion Juicer. I certainly used to, but that was before I had invented the Sylph winnower and the Melangers were made more robust so as not to stall when you added nibs. Now it is way more efficient to crack with the Champion, winnow with the Sylph and add the nibs direct to the melanger.
If you use the Champion to make liquor, you will lose about 6 oz inside all the voids, no matter how much you make. That can a huge loss if you are grinding only 1 lb of nibs. You end up with 10 oz and that’s not great. That is still a lot even if you are doing 2 lb, ending up with 26 oz.
When you winnow, you should expect to recover about 75% of what you started with and that might be a few points lower. That is mostly just the mass of the husk. It is way heavier than coffee chaff. With our professional Deluxe Cracker and Aether or Flux winnower, that recovery can get a touch over 80%. Mostly I suggest you not fret about a few points here or there. This is about having fun, not minimizing costs. Just enjoy the process and awesome chocolate.
I’m really glad Sweet Maria’s reignited some interested in cocoa in the coffee crowd. That is after all the crowd I came from and Chocolate Alchemy would not exist if not for Tom and Sweet Maria’s. I hope all you new comers find as much joy in making chocolate as I have over these last 20 year.
Now get out there and make some chocolate.
Don’t forget to ducking have fun. If you are not having fun, you are not doing it right!