ATA #343: When to Upgrade Your Chocolate Equipment — Sylph vs Flux & Behmor vs Yoshan
The Real Question
Full disclosure. There is no one question here. Rather it is a theme about how to decide what equipment is right for you, how to decide which upgrade to make and when it is time to upgrade your equipment.
Two quite common questions I get are:
“Should I buy a Slyph Winnower or go for the Flux Commercial Winnower?”
“Should I get the Behmor or Yoshan Roaster?”
These are great questions, but the answers are nuanced.
This is not really about one machine being “better.” It is about scale, bottlenecks, time, budget, and how much chocolate you actually need to make.
The Three Questions to Ask First
This set of questions can help direct you to the right answer:
Is this a hobby or a business?
What is your need/capacity?
What is your budget?
caveat: if you just love your fancy toys, you should certainly buy a Yoshan and a Flux winnower if you have space for them. They may sit idle a lot of the time if you are making only a few pounds at a time, but they are a dream to use and the downsides are… hrm… I’m not sure there are any downsides.
For the rest of you mortals, the first question is still: is this a hobby or a business?
Hobby or Business?
Hobby
It might seem obvious but if you are not selling your chocolate, you are probably a hobbyist. You generally make 2-4 lb at a time 1-4 times a month. If this sounds like you, the Sylph and Behmor are what you need.
Now if you happen to be making a lot more than that, but are not selling your chocolate because you have become the local chocolate pusher, then you can just think about yourself as a business, albeit a philanthropic one.
Business
So you are doing this for profit or your chocolate habit has gotten so large that you are spending all your time either roasting or winnowing and some of the joy is fading. It is time to look at upgrading.
The key here is determining where your bottleneck is and coupling that with what your budget is. In short, you are building a business plan.
Think in Bottlenecks, Not Products
When is the proper time to upgrade?
For that we work backwards from how much chocolate you want or need to make.
The real issue is not “Should I buy the bigger machine?” The real issue is:
how much time are you spending roasting?
how much time are you spending winnowing?
where is the physical effort starting to become a burden?
is the joy fading because the process is becoming a chore?
Once you know the bottleneck, the right upgrade path usually becomes obvious.
Roasting Track: Behmor vs Yoshan
- Proven small-batch roaster that works well for cocoa without major modification
- Best cocoa behavior around 2–2.5 lb loads
- Can be modified for profile roasting
- Handles 1–4 kg batches with output up to 12 kg/hour
- LPG, or natural gas heating options
- Dual temperature display, and fast post-roast cooling
- Can integrate with Artisan software tracking
The Behmor is an excellent small-batch roaster. At lower weekly volumes, it does exactly what you need.
But as your output rises, roasting can become the first obvious bottleneck. At some point, doing repeated 2 lb roasts stops feeling charming and starts feeling like a time sink.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the other option many people go with. They buy a second or even third Behmor. I’ll tell you it is usually only a stop gap as you’ll need to divide your attention between multiple roasts to get a benefit out of multiple roasters. I honestly can’t imagine dividing my attention among 3 roasters in 3 different locations. Why 3 locations I hear you ask? Each roaster will draw 15 amps of power, a full standard circuit’s worth so you are going to have to find three separate circuits. A kitchen might have three outlets but they are almost always ganged together on one circuit. Anyway, I could probably roast on two roasters at once, staggering them, but as much as I love roasting it doesn’t sound fun to me.
That is where the Yoshan enters the picture. The 4 kg Yoshan can do 8.8 lb of beans per batch at about 20 minutes. There is no cooling period as the cooling tray is separate so you roast another batch while the first one cools.
So the roasting question becomes: are you content spending hours a week roasting, or has it become obvious that your time is better spent elsewhere?
Winnowing Track: Sylph vs Flux
- Winnows about 1 lb/min of roasted cocoa beans
- Compact hand-fed system with built-in vacuum flow control
- Fine-tunable air separation via discriminator valve
Flux Commercial Cacao Winnower
- Throughput up to 120–140 lb/hour with the Deluxe Cracker
- Stainless steel separation chamber with clear viewport and removable cover
- 50 lb hopper capacity with better tuning, cleaning, and production workflow
The Sylph winnower winnows at about 1 lb / min. At low weekly volumes, this is barely a burden at all. It is compact, effective, and for many makers it remains the right answer much longer than they expect.
But the Flux changes the equation when your scale grows.
With the Flux you go from physically taxing yourself for an hour to loading the winnower and having it process the beans into nibs for you in about 30-40 minutes while you are doing something else.
The Flux Winnower is a beast. We use them at Chocolate Alchemy day in, day out. Since they can run with the barest of attention (you need to load the 50 lb hopper every 30-40 minutes or so) it won’t be at capacity until you are needing over a metric ton of chocolate a month.
So the winnowing question becomes: is hand-feeding still part of the fun, or has it become a physical and time bottleneck?
NOTE: It is beyond the scope of this question, but if you just now started wondering if you are pricing your chocolate correctly or how to price your chocolate properly I suggest you get the Business of Small Chocolate. Brian Mikiten walks you through that and many of related questions in The Business of Small Chocolate.
Output Scenarios
2 lb/week
For that much chocolate you need about 2 lb of beans to make an 80% chocolate. Since the Behmor roasts 2 lb at a time in about 30 minutes (20 minute roast, 10 minute cool down) you only have to do one roast.
The Sylph winnower winnows at about 1 lb/min so that is about 2 minutes or so. Let’s assume 5 minutes for clean up and such.
To me, it is obvious you have no need to upgrade. If you aren’t willing to put in 35 minutes of roasting and winnowing you have the wrong hobby.
Takeaway: At 2 lb/week, Behmor and Sylph are clearly enough.
10 lb/week
For that much chocolate you need about 10 lb of beans to make an 80% chocolate.
Since the Behmor roasts 2 lb at a time in about 30 minutes, you will have to do 5 roasts. 5 roasts will take you about 2.5 hours.
The Sylph winnower winnows at about 1 lb / min so that is 10 minutes or so. Let’s assume 15 minutes for clean up and such.
So here is the question. Are you content spending just shy of 3 hours a week roasting and winnowing? You could break that up into 1 roast a day and then you don’t even have to be present for the cooling so you are only spending 20 minutes a day roasting.
I personally love roasting and have done this many times. But that is me. Does that sound good to you? I’m pretty sure you are doing this because you enjoy it so I suspect you are going to decide you don’t need to upgrade.
Takeaway: At 10 lb/week, Behmor and Sylph are still very workable unless time is already starting to feel tight.
24-25 lb/week
How about 24 lb a week? That’s three 8 lb batches in a Spectra 11 Melanger.
Again, with 2 lb per batch in the Behmor you are at 12 roasts or about 6 hours of roasting.
Using the Sylph you are going to be spending half an hour winnowing.
This is where you have to start deciding if it is worth it to you. Some people freaking love to roast. They won’t see this as ‘damn, I have to roast for 6 hours’, instead they see ‘Yay, I GET to roast 6 hours!’
If you are in the second camp, there is no problem. Happy roasting. But if you are in the first camp, it’s probably time to look at the alternatives.
The 4 kg Yoshan can do 8.8 lb of beans per batch at about 20 minutes. At 20 minutes a batch, you are at 1 hour.
So here is the question. Is the $5000 upgrade worth it?
I can’t answer that for you. All I can do is get you to the salient question. 24 hours a month vs 4 hours a month. It’s your call.
Going a step back, if you are making and selling 25 lb / week then you probably have the cash flow to afford to upgrade to the Commercial Flux Winnower with its Deluxe Cracker. It just makes good business sense.
Takeaway: Around 25 lb/week is the transition zone. This is where Behmor starts to become time-expensive, and Flux begins to make real business sense even if Sylph is still technically workable.
50 lb/week and Above
50 lb of chocolate/week. You know the drill. 25 roasts in the Behmor. 12.5 hours roasting. 7 hours (a full day basically) roasting with two Behmors. At this point it is glaringly obvious that it is time to upgrade your roaster. You can have all 50 lb roasted in a Yoshan in about 2 hours.
Winnowing. It is going to take you about an hour hand feeding in cracked cocoa to winnow that much with a Sylph. That may not sound like a lot but I’m here to tell you that can be very physically taxing.
If you are making, and presumably selling, 50 lb of chocolate a week there is simply no good reason not to upgrade to a Flux Winnower.
Takeaway: At 50 lb/week and above, Yoshan plus Flux is the clear answer.
So When Should You Upgrade?
To recap, look at how much time you are spending doing a certain activity and how much less you would be doing it with an upgrade and see if it makes both energetic and fiscal sense. With a properly set up business they walk hand in hand.
2 lb/week — Behmor and Sylph
10 lb/week — Behmor and Sylph
25 lb/week — 2 Behmor and a Sylph, but maybe a 4 kg Yoshan Roaster and Commercial Flux Winnower
50 lb/week and above — Yoshan Roaster and Commercial Flux Winnower
Planning Ahead
Before I leave you, and it is touched on in the aforementioned book, business plans are all about making educated guesses about the future.
If you know you want to be making at least 25 lb/week of chocolate you would be budgeting and buying the Yoshan and Flux out of the gate instead of upgrading just in time.
That is really the heart of the decision. Don’t buy the big machine just because it is bigger. Buy it because your scale, your time, your labor, and your future plans actually call for it.
And these same questions can be applied to nearly every aspect of your business. Melangers. Tempering machines. Wrapping machines. Look for the bottlenecks and when sweat equity can be shifted to more appropriately sized equipment.
Links
https://shop.chocolatealchemy.com/products/sylph-cacao-winnower
https://shop.chocolatealchemy.com/products/flux-commercial-cacao-winnower
https://shop.chocolatealchemy.com/products/behmor-roaster-2000ab
https://wholesale.chocolatealchemy.com/products/yoshan-cocoa-roaster-4-kg
https://shop.chocolatealchemy.com/products/the-business-of-small-chocolate
