A practical guide to scaling chocolate equipment without guessing. Learn when Behmor + Sylph is enough, when Yoshan + Flux makes sense, and how weekly output, labor, and bottlenecks shape the right upgrade path.

The Wordy-assed Alchemist

First time maker. We had some issues for sure but the one thing you for sure take for granted is how to work somewhat cleanly, and how to handle liquid chocolate well. We made a serious mess and it was quite a process to get the melanger clean again. So turn that big brain on and dump all your knowledge about working with chocolate and cleaning.  Please be gentle with me.

Drum roasters are so expensive.  They are only a drum, motor and some heat.  Isn’t there a cheaper alternative?  Couldn’t I roast in a pan like they do where they make the cocoa beans.  Would you tell me how to do that?  Should I use low or medium heat?

What an interesting set of questions I’ve been receiving this last year. Well, I am using the term interesting in sort of a gently sarcastic way. I find them interesting because

In the attached, are the temperatures mentioned air temperatures or bean surface temperatures?

Think of this as the start of a FAQ. I also want to note there are some oddly phrased questions below and I’m leaving them as written, not to make fun of anyone as it is pretty obvious they are from folks who do not speak English as their first language and being monolingual myself, I applaud them for writing in. Their English is worlds better than my Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin or Italian.

I know you don’t like chocolate roasted in an oven. There are lots of chocolate out there that have won awards and roast that way. I’m having trouble figuring out how to roast in my oven. The chocolate is only ok or bad. What roasting profile should I use? Can you tell me what temperature I set my oven to and for how long?

After last weeks in depth conversation about roasting cocoa in a coffee roaster, I wanted to, nay, needed to take it a little easy this week. There are a bunch of pretty simple questions that don’t really merit a full long winded response but in that there are no stupid questions (that is NOT a challenge folks) I still want to answer them. It also helps clear a little of the back log.

If we can roast cacao with our Diedrich IR12 that would solve everything.

Thanks for all the great blog posts on roasting, and specifically the Behmor. Thanks to Uncle Sam and tax returns, it's time to upgrade from oven roasting to the Behmor.

I wrote an article yesterday. It was kind of a venting rant session for me. Call it therapy. But I started having doubts that I might be just railing at the world and it wasn’t useful or delivered the message I wanted.

I am a recent convert (2wks) from my coffee to brewed chocolate, and I don't ever see myself going back. I live in an apartment now, so for the winter this would be strictly oven roasting. Can you be truly successful in a basic oven roasting method?

I’ve read, re-read, and re-read again your articles and blog posts (Ask the Alchemist 200-205) on roasting. As much as I’d like to have all the proper equipment, there’s only so much I can do on a budget in a small apartment with limited storage space. For the time being I’m trying to oven roast. The engineer in me understands momentum, ramp (slope), and I’ve been trying to apply your Drum Roasting profiles to at least have similar concepts with Oven Roasting ... trying to go into the various phases appropriately.

I’ve heard broken beans are a sign that the beans are too dry and that I need to adjust my roast profile. What is the minimum moisture that is acceptable, how do I measure it and how would I go about that?

We are starting a new bean to bar factory in the industry so I would like to know what is the best cocoa nibs there is to order for making chocolate? And what equipment do we need?  Can you supply me with a recipe for making the best chocolate?