Level: Novice
Read Time: 7 minutes
When you make liquor, some solids are screened out by the (Champion) juicer. However, when you just add nibs straight into the melanger, all these solids end up in the chocolate. Is there a difference in the end product either way?
The very short answer is the loathed ‘it depends’. The current practical answer is no, it does not affect the final chocolate in any meaningful positive or negative way.
Way back in yesteryear, back in 2003 I embarked on the journey to make chocolate at home. Before that point, it simply was not possible. I tried so many things to turn roasted cocoa beans into chocolate. One of the steps I set for myself was to make unsweetened chocolate also known as cocoa mass, cocoa liquor and occasionally liqueur. After many failures with all manor of home kitchen appliances (centrifugal juicers, food processors, the Vitamix, the magic bullet, immersion blenders) I finally came across the Champion Juicer and low and behold it worked....with some caveats.
Back then I still didn’t have way to separate the husk from the nib. You have to keep in mind, there was no bean to bar movement. What I’m talking about here is the literal origin story for chocolate making at home and the entire Bean to Bar movement. I can’t stress that enough. I’ve been asked now countless times why I didn’t look it up on the internet. That is like asking why Einstein didn’t look up e = mc^2 or why Gregor Mendel didn’t ask someone about genetics and inheritance. They were literally the pioneers of information that is now taken for granted. If that isn’t 100% clear, every single time you see a mention of using the Champion juicer for chocolate, it leads back <looks for a link to when I announce I’ve discovered the Champion works....and fail....> OMG, I just spent nearly an hour searching my own Archives to show you my discovery of the Champion Juicer only to discover it occurred before I was posting publicly . The best I have is reference to it here in 2004....what was I saying? Oh, yeah, every path will eventually lead you back to Chocolate Alchemy and my discovery that you could use a Champion Juicer for taking cocoa nibs and liquefying them.
The very messy way to winnow cocoa nibs.
Because there was no great winnowing back then (I had developed what is known as the bowl and blow dryer method, yep, that leads back to Chocolate Alchemy too, but had not yet invented the Aether and Sylph winnowers as a means to alleviate my cocoa dust induced asthma (cocoa lung?) my nibs had quite a bit of husk in them and I discovered that the screen in the Champion juicer did a great job of filtering them out. So for many years that is what I both recommended and did myself. More about this in a moment…..
Let’s take an aside to another question.
I tried making liquor from nibs but from a pound I only got about 8 oz. Is that normal or am I doing anything wrong? Do you have much experience with the Champion juicer that everyone recommends?
As for this second question, yeah, you could say I have some experience and I have a mix of emotions and responses reading it. If it isn’t clear from up above, I probably have the most experience of anyone using the Champion Juicer for chocolate making since I’m the one who worked it out nearly 20 years ago. That that knowledge isn’t common knowledge makes me kind of feel like I’ve not been doing my job and a little sad. Regardless, let’s keep going.
When you use the Champion juicer, there is a void volume in the space around the cutter head and the body. There will be about 6 oz of material that always stay in there. This explains why when only 1 lb or 16 oz of nibs are passed through, you end up with 9-10 oz of liquor. Are you doing anything wrong? Not really, but if you do 4 lb or 64 oz, you will end up with about 58 oz of liquor. That way you are minimizing your losses. When doing a rough winnowing, the majority of that 6 oz was husk but when winnowing became much better (see Sylph and Aether) and there was little to no husk, you lost actual product.
Just because it is part of the story and goes to answering both questions, when I originally worked with Santha (now Spectra) to modify their wet grinders into melangers (yep, melangers started here too) they were not strong enough to grind nibs into liquor. The belts would slip and it just didn’t work. You had to make liquor so that 6 oz loss was the cost of doing business. But after a few iterations, the melangers became strong enough to grind nibs. Coupled with good winnowing, there became little use to make liquor any more.
What all that means is that if your nibs are clean, the solids caught in the Champion void volume are going to be nibs you could use. If you have mediocre winnowing then you might find a benefit from catching that husk. For the astute though, you will note I say might.
Again, in the before time, I made a bunch of test chocolates with differing amounts of husk in the chocolate to compare flavor, texture and general quality and very contrary to current belief, I found no differences up to about a whopping 5% husk. You read that right. 5%. The industry standard for chocolate sold says no more than 0.5% and this is ten times that level. Over the years I’ve given high husk chocolate to various self proclaimed experts (who shall remain unnamed for sake of not being a jerk) along with a husk free comparison and not a single one has been able to note a difference.
One final disclaimer, I am not advocating you leave 5% husk in your chocolate. But I am advocating that you be reasonable in your husk removal and not worry over every little piece. When you can’t tell the difference between 0.01% husk and 1% husk, when the flavor and texture are identical, is one better than the other? ‘Better’ requires a metric and if all the metrics are the same, the answer MUST be no. Neither is better.
Also, because it comes to mind, there’s a belief going around that husk will wear out the granite stones of melangers faster. Just no. Sugar is way harder and more abrasive than husk.
I think that wraps it all up in a couple nice little answers and gives a little history lesson to boot.