Daily musings and writings from the Alchemist
I'm not quite sure why spambots have it in for us currently, but we are being hit hard and barely keeping our head above water. When we don't keep up, you are going to see the main site lag pretty bad and not load. We are working on it.
This is just so you know we know.
Thanks.
Level: Apprentice
Reading time: 10 min
I am struggling making my 70% chocolate with only two ingredients. It seems like what I should do but it is really thick and hard to work with. It blooms really badly. What am I doing wrong?
Why are you not adding a little cocoa butter?
I mostly keep my head down in social media but I’ve heard through various grapevines that two ingredient chocolate is becoming a *thing*. And I completely do not understand it. It is talked about like it is superior or the maker is superior for using only two ingredients.
I guess I am going to soap box here a little, and I don’t mean to offend anyone in particular. Just take it as my musings on the subject.
It seems maybe this is where you are getting the idea you should be using only two ingredients. Cocoa beans and sugar I assume. Trying to suss out why, people toss out phrases extolling the purity of flavor or staying true to the cacao or other such nebulous statements. At the end of the day, it feels like marketing. A way to set themselves out from the crowd. Ok I guess.
If that is what you like, by all means make it. But I caution the thinking that using only two ingredients is in inherently better. By what metric? Sure. Few people want to eat a chocolate with 27 ingredients where 95% of them are chemical names. But once you are out of that mindset, I don’t truly get how 2 is better than 3 or 4. Why not 1 ingredient?
But to my way of thinking, it is some kind of pendulum reaction to 27 ingredient chocolate product. That if that is considered inferior (no real argument there) then the absolute bare minimum must be the best. This is the same logic that raw chocolate folks make. Over roasting is bad, so no roasting is best. That’s bad logic and the world does not work that way. Too much food (obesity) is bad so no food is best? Really? It is the same logic and makes as much sense. None.
Going back to metrics and why two ingredients are better I would propose these two metrics for consideration.
1) Adding a little cocoa butter (2-3%) to you chocolate can actually enhance the perceived flavor of the chocolate. It does this by allowing the chocolate to dissolve faster in your mouth, creating the sense of more flavor. You are familiar with this phenomenon in regards to sugar. Which seems sweeter? Rock candy or granulated sugar? Both are 100% sugar, but the granulated seems sweeter since it can dissolve faster.
2) Two ingredient chocolate can be thicker, and more temperamental to temper. How does this make it better? It doesn’t.
It is also worth noting that in conversations with supposed two ingredient makers, well over half say they used *a little* cocoa butter in their melangers to make life easier…..which suddenly sounds like 3 ingredient chocolate to me. This more than anything makes me think they are just playing a marketing game and that it really doesn’t matter.
That all said, let’s see if I can help.
First off, I am going to recommend you reconsider why you want to use only 2 ingredients. Put aside what you see other people doing. Keep in mind that that two ingredient chocolate you tasted and love *may* contain extra cocoa butter. Evaluate the chocolate you are making for what it is. Did you actually try making it with a little extra cocoa butter and if so, did you like it better without added cocoa butter? And why didn’t you make 1 ingredient chocolate if you wanted to *pure* cacao flavor?
Seriously, this is about what you like and enjoy. And that means the process too. If you can’t temper it because it is so thick, and it blooms, and you didn’t like the chalky texture, just how did you improve the experience and/or final product by keeping it *pure*?
Ok. I was going to offer help. I have heard that people have had difficulty with Tien Giang being especially thick. So I roasted 6 lbs and divided it into 3 batches.
1) The control. 74% cocoa, 26% sugar.
2) Heated control
3) 20% vodka soak
Spring boarding off my success with the honey chocolate, I mixed in vodka 20% by weight into the roasted nibs. After soaking in for 2 days, I dried them in an oven for 2 hours at 150F. To make sure it was not just the heating that made any difference, I also heated an equal amount of roasted nibs the same way. My hypothesis here was that moisture was causing the extra thickness and that by reducing that moisture, I could reduce the viscosity.
The final results were everything I hoped they would be.
1) This was thick and very hard to work with.
2) This was thinner and easier to work with.
3) This was the thinnest of the three.
The extra drying helped significantly to dry out the nibs, even though they had been previously roasted. In many cases I think this might be all you need to do if you insist on only 2 ingredients.
The vodka really helped to pull out extra moisture. I took weight measurements before and after drying and out of 740 grams of nibs, the heated control lost 5 grams of water, and the vodka treated lost 12 grams.
And the flavors were basically the same.
Alternatively, 3% cocoa butter reduces the viscosity nicely and if you are not allergic, 0.5% lecithin will very nicely bind with the water and make the chocolate easier to work with. And to my tastes, they all taste just as *pure* and true to the cocoa’s potential. Your mileage may vary.
If you have not guessed, I lean toward solid data and rigorous evaluation. Don’t follow a path because everyone else is. Make what you like and be honest about it and challenge your per-conceived notions. Maybe they will be right….but maybe you will find there was a heavy placebo effect going on and that 2 ingredient chocolate isn’t anything particular special.
Chocolate you made yourself. That’s special.
Every Tuesday, for the next few months we are going to be putting out a new video on our youtube channel, How to Make Chocolate at Home. In a similar manner to my walls of words in text, I ramble a bit, taking this or that side path as it suites what I am attempting to convey. All about cocoa beans is new.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLYEGb3f5ps[/embed]
I hope you enjoy it.
Do you have any videos showing how to make chocolate? I’ve looked all over and can’t find them.
I was just going over with my a member of my team how to announce our video series. Thank you for the absolutely perfect introduction.
Yep, you heard it right. We have videos on the way.
I’m going to go into full self deprecation mode and say that although they hopefully will do the job, they are not as polished and smooth as I might want. And in pretty classic Alchemist fashion, noting that I often communicate in great walls of text, I talk a lot in these videos. No. Really. A lot. So here is the official announcement:
For years I’ve been thinking that a video series on making chocolate would be a good complement to this site and to my weekly “Ask the Alchemist” series. Well, I finally got it done and today we are announcing the beginning of Video Tuesdays. Every Tuesday we’ll add a new video to our You Tube Channel until all 15 of them are posted. Think of it as an online correspondence course in how to make chocolate at home.
If you subscribe to the channel you’ll be alerted whenever a new video is posted. Today our first one is an overview of the Chocolate Making Process I’ve developed over the past 14 years.
There is the first video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi2RY8zqy9g&list=PLy4KS4Q1T9sVHwqhdiand0d-1k6yzioJq
Eventually these will all live on our site as well as on You Tube, but we’re waiting until our site gets a facelift later this year (yep, more foreshadowing there).
The videos that are queued up are as follows:
Plus one on how to change the belt on the Spectra Melanger.
Enjoy. And please let me know what else you would like to see.
It's more like cocoa-tea-time but you get the drift I suspect. May I present Alchemist's series #7 - The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul.
TLDTTOTS is replacing Fire and Brimstone #4. It is a semi-dark, richly chocolate, brewing cocoa. Very possibly the best yet (at least I like it the best). I really enjoy it at 202 F in the Brazen Brewer.
New Direct Trade India is in. It also makes a killer Brewing cocoa. Hot or cold.
4 new Venezuelan are on the way. Fruity Sur del Lago, delicate Cuyagua, silky Canoba, and rich Guanino.
Most likely Belize and Maranon....still finishing the tasting and evaluation.
Testing and Evaluation beans are back.
Finally, I am now offering the Behmor 1600 plus with free shipping (lower 48 USA only and with no beans).
Oh, and some of you may have noticed that Ask the Alchemist went AWOL last week. That happens from time to time when no questions are in the queue. So, what do you want to know?
Level: Apprentice/Alchemist
Reading time: 13 min
How do I sweeten my chocolate with honey?
Sit back. It’s story time.
For years now I have not had an answer to this question. Or at least I didn’t have an encouraging answer. The best I could say was that you could not just pour it into your chocolate while in the melanger. If you do that the water in the honey will cause the chocolate to seize.
Over and over I’ve been told it was possible, but it was always via the classic friend of a friend. Or whoever told me had seen a *real* chocolate bar in the store sweetened with honey. In three separate cases I tracked down the makers of said honey chocolate. And in every single case they admitted, rather quietly and with their head lowered just a bit, that the chocolate just didn’t quite work well and that it was very difficult to remain stable. In 2 of the 3 cases all they did was stir honey into the chocolate during tempering, very gently so as not to cause a seizing reaction, and hoped for the best….and still had a high failure rate and shelf life issues due to the moisture.
For me this challenge had the same feel as my initial chocolate making endeavor back in 2003 when no one knew how to make chocolate at home. My goal then was to make real chocolate in a straight forward and approachable way. I wanted to do the same thing with honey. I wanted to come up with a way that anyone could do without hedging, and without admonishments to be careful.
Toward that goal, I have failed quite a bit. Failure is always an option. Let’s run down my list of failures.
The low hanging cacao fruit was powdered honey. The issue there turned out to be one of false advertising. I could find no real dried or powdered honey. It all contained huge amounts of dry sugar. There was enough to give a honey taste in teas and baked goods, but not what I was looking for. It’s is worth noting I did find one on-line but it was both horridly expensive and often out of stock. That in itself violated the goal of being straight forward and approachable to anyone. So I moved on. Failure.
I had this epiphany while making a batch of praline. Part of that procedure is to make caramelized sugar. You start off by making sugar syrup and then boiling the water off. I could find no good reason I could not boil off the water in honey.
It all went really well. It boiled. It hit hard crack temperature. I poured it up and it gave me a beautiful sheet of honey glass. And proceeded to suck up moisture fast and become tacky in the time it took to cool. Trying to powder it so I could use was a choir and by the end it was sticking together and in no shape to go into chocolate. Failure.
After that I decided it was time to step back and make it simpler so I tried to dry my own honey. I actually didn’t have high hopes here. AI tiny test confirmed that all you end up with upon dehydrating honey is something a bit akin to a taffy. Super thick but nothing you could add to chocolate. It forms a skin that keeps it from 100% drying out. Failure.
From there I jumped to coating a batch of roasted nibs in honey and drying those. I really thought I was onto something there. I had spread out the honey, radically increased the surface area and made the coating of honey so thin that it effectively could not form a skin.
After about 6 hours at 120 F the nibs were a tiny bit tacky. After cooling they firmed up and were crunchy. Looking good! I had previously weighted my nibs and honey and when the weight showed I had lost the 16% of the weight of the honey (the average moisture content of honey) I called it done.
I put the honeyed nibs into the melanger. I put some warmed cocoa butter and a little lecithin in just to help things along. After an hour they were all in and while not looking perfect, didn’t look too bad. Unfortunately somewhere between 1 and 24 hours disaster struck. What I came back to is virtually impossible to describe. But I will try. The melanger was still running. But it looked so very weird. It was bumping and thumping and splashing in ways it was not supposed to. Somehow, from the best I can tell, the honey started sticking to itself as it worked. There were globs of hard honey all over the sides of the bowl, the bottom of the bowl and there was this utterly bizarre ring of …..something…..around the central shaft. From the best I could tell it was wax or at least wax based. Pretty flavorless, kind of hard, but not really. It took me two days of hot water, repeatedly scrubbing and lots of elbow grease to get it clean. Oh, and the chocolate? Nasty. You know that odd flavor after you have chewed up all the flavor out of a piece of honeycomb? That! Failure.
But it’s funny. I have this streak in me that refuses to give up as long as what I am trying doesn’t go off and break physical laws. No perpetual machine tests for me! So I kept thinking, letting the idea rest and turn over in my mind. A few months later I was doing another test and had great success. It was not a honey test, but it was the key. I was playing with infusing some whisky with cocoa, noticed how much liquid the nibs soaked up and wondered what would happen if I went the other way.
I proceeded to add a small amount of bourbon to some roasted nibs. After 12 hours there was no bourbon left. I put the bourbon nibs into the oven and an hour later I was back at my original weight of nibs. And the nibs were totally dry. I made chocolate with them (recipe later) and I had a lovely bourbon chocolate that behaved perfectly.
As I said, this was the key. I think most of you know I am a retired chemist. This got me thinking about sugar’s affinity for water (everything gets tacky), but also alcohol’s affinity for water. I wondered if I could use the later to out compete the former. I’m not going to delve too deep into theory but I will say water and ethanol forms a mixture that is called an azeotrope. This mixture contains about 5% water. And the key is that no matter how you heat it you cannot make that water go away. My thought was to use that characteristic to force the water out of the nibs. Basically by heating ethanol soaked nibs, when the ethanol evaporates/boils off it draws water out with it. That is why the bourbon whiskey worked. I wondered if I mixed honey and ethanol (vodka) I could force the same reaction.
I guess by now you know it worked or I would not be writing this. It worked fantastic.
I dissolved 250 grams of honey in 160 grams of vodka. There was some calculations behind the choice of that amount of vodka involving partial pressures of water/ethanolmixtures, but suffice it to say it worked and it might well be possible to use even less. It took heating the mixture to 122F/50C to getthe solution to go clear. After that I mixed it with the nibs and let them soak for a day. I dried them in an oven at 150 F (the lowest setting in my oven) and they dried right out. They had a pretty sheen on them and were crunchy, not sticky. After some hours they stuck together but broke easily apart again.
Hedging my bets I heated 10% cocoa butter and a teaspoon of lecithin, and made a batch of honey chocolate. This time there was nothing funny at all. After less than 1 hour it was looking like this:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BI5qAJ8AuNj/?taken-by=chocolatealchemy
And after 24 hours this:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BI8DgcXAtWp/?taken-by=chocolatealchemy
Success!
For those that want to follow along I started with 750 g of roasted nibs, 250 g of honey and 160 g of vodka for a total weight of 1160 g. If everything works like you want it to, you should end up with the 750 g of nibs plus the weight of the honey minus 16% water or 210 g for a total of 960 g. 100% of the vodka is gone. I ended up with 948 g. I count that a total success as the 16% was an estimate.
Given how thin the chocolate was I think I could have greatly reduced the cocoa butter and/or lecithin amount. And it is very possible the amount of vodka would be also reduced now that I know what to look for. As I think about it I wonder if the vodka helped pull out extra moisture from the chocolate resulting in a thinner than standard chocolate. That might be worth looking into.
And the flavor? Here is the funny thing. I’m not a honey fan. It tastes of honey. I’m not a fan. But it tastes like I would expect honey chocolate to taste like. A little floral, a little tangy and a little back drop of comb and loam.
So there you go.
Honey chocolate.
Real honey chocolate.
Straight forward. No being delicate, no disclaimers, no conditions.
Pleasegive it a try and let me know how it works.
Level: Apprentice
Reading time: 4 min
I understand the no liquids rule, but I was wondering whether glycerin could work as sweetener? If it’s present in all natural fats, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem, no? I’m interested in its low glycemic index, and it seems ideal on paper. Is it possible or am I really off the mark?
When we talk about cocoa butter and tempering, you may often see the abbreviation TAG. This stands for Tri-Acyl-Glyceride. To translate that, Tri is three, acyl is a long chain hydrocarbon (the oil or fat) and the three Acyls are connected on a glyceride backbone. So, yes, glycerin is present in some form or another. But it usually is not in its free state. It likes to attach to thing, hence the TAG.
On its own it still likes to attach to things and therein is the first issue. By itself glycerin attracts water like a sponge. Glycerin is often added to lotions and cosmetics to help your skin hold onto moisture. Moving into potential TMA, when mixed into wax and used as a stool softener, glycerin’s moisture-attracting properties attract water from the body which stimulates….movement.
More in line with what we might use it for, it is often incorporated into fondants to help keep them supple, and certain filings to keep them creamy and soft. And as an additive to truffle filling it might be great.
I think you might be seeing the issue. If you were to put it into your chocolate, it may or may not seize. It would probably depend on how much water it had previously absorbed. But regardless would undoubtedly absorb moisture from the atmosphere and cause your chocolate to do really weird things.
It is also worth mentioning a few other things. With most any substance, there are going to be a small number of people that have sensitivities or allergies to glycerin and it can be an issue if consumed in large quantities. And it is worth noting that it is not calorie-free even though it is low on the glycemic index.. As a matter of fact, glycerin contains slightly more calories than sugar. Unfortunately it isn’t as sweet (about 60%) so you are going to need even more to get the same sweetness which is just going to compound the moisture issue.
And going back to the potential TMA, just as with sugar alcohols, consuming a lot of glycerin can produce a laxative effect which usually isn’t a thing most people look for in their chocolate.
So, here is a great example of ‘in theory it should work, but in practice it doesn’t’. Sorry. Good thinking though.
Level: Novice
Reading time: 10 min
I've tried to make "just add hot water" drinking chocolate. However I'm having two problems:
How could I improve these please? My basic recipe is:
27% sugar, 39% cocoa liquor, 9% cocoa butter, 24% milk powder, 0.7% vanilla, 0.3% sunflower lecithin
Also, how best can I imbue caramel flavour into a milk chocolate? I've tried caramelizing sugar, chopping it up and then conching it. But the caramelized sugar is super hygroscopic and also gets stuck in my conche. What else could I try please?
What you are running into are the preconceived notions of what and how hot chocolate should behave. What it seems you are used to with "just add hot water" is very significantly processed chocolate. I don't mean this negatively per se. Just that you are not seeing the massive amount of work that went into making a product that will dissolve virtually instantly for the American consumer market.
My very first thought on 1) is "that sounds about right". Chocolate is oil based and you trying to dissolve in a water. It would be exactly the same if you were surprised if you lightly stirred an egg yolk and cup of oil together and didn't get mayonnaise. It takes a very specific set of conditions to get oil and water to mix and be stable.....as you are seeing.
Now that I've said that, what I have had some success with is making a ganache with my chocolate and then mixing that into water. If you combine chocolate and water (or cream) at approximately 1:1 at 100F, rather gently, then let it set up, you may well find a spoonful of that then dissolves much easier into hot water without all the stirring and blobs at the bottom. Basically you have made an emulsion. Just like mayonnaise.
Your second item is playing right into the first issue. Let's go back to the egg yolk and oil. If you just mix the two together, it would look watery and thin. Certainly not creamy, yet mayonnaise is creamy. It's the emulsion that is giving it its creamy texture. Again, there is quite a bit added to instant hot chocolates to give them their creamy mouth feel instantly. Quite often guar gum, gelatin, modified starches, and the like. Basically a ton of food chemistry to get the mixture to behave smoothly and easily.
On to the advice now. Where you are going to find success is developing your technique. Basically, it is a variation of the ganache prepared on the spot. Have a look at both of these.
http://zoomyummy.com/2010/11/11/hot-chocolate/
http://www.wellplated.com/two-ingredient-homemade-hot-chocolate/
In short, I kind of hate to tell you, is that you have to give up the idea that you can have both an instant hot chocolate and one that didn't take time to prepare. It's sort of like a magic trick. You are used to only seeing the final trick - Ta-da! just add water hot chocolate - without realizing how much behind the scenes work there is to pull it off. i.e. pulling out a pan, heating everything just so, so that you form a nice thick, creamy emulsion.
As for the caramel flavor. I don't have a surefire answer for you. I can give you hints, but just like the above magic trick references, it isn't as easy as adding caramel to your chocolate as you have found. What I've found is you need to create it in the chocolate. Using high acid beans and elevated refining temperatures greatly increase the amount of caramel flavor in chocolate.
The hands down most caramel chocolate I ever tasted in a milk chocolate was from a Madagascar. In this particular case the 20% cocoa butter had been pressed (using the Nutrachef Oil press) from the same Madagascar beans used to make the chocolate. It resulted in a deep caramel flavor.
It is also worth pointing out you want a full fat spray dried milk powder. The process itself adds caramel notes. That’s one of the main reasons I offer the milk powder that I do. Non-fat milk powder just doesn’t seem to do it.
And I should clarify. Do you want the caramel flavor in your chocolate or in your hot chocolate? Making your own caramel syrup is the direction I would go if you want it in your hot chocolate. Basically, caramelize the sugar as you did before, but then immediately dilute it with hot water. This spells it out:
http://www.copykat.com/2015/01/19/caramel-syrup-for-coffee/
Prepare your own homemade caramel syrup for coffee (or chocolate) from scratch. It's easy to do.
Ingredients
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup boiling water
Instructions
Heat sugar over medium high heat until it begins to melt. Stir constantly. If the sugar begins to burn, discard, and try again. When the sugar begins to brown quickly stir in boiling water. Stand back, as the mixture may steam. Stir until well blended. Cook mixture for an additional 15 to 30 seconds. Do not let the sugar burn. Remove pot from heat source, and allow mixture to cool before placing in an air tight container.
That you can even add to your ganache as the liquid portion and the sugar content will both help it keep longer (ganache is perishable when made fresh) and allow the mixture to incorporate more water or milk to turn into hot chocolate.
I hope that helps.
Level: Novice
Reading time: 5 min
I’m considering creating a bean to bar chocolate shop. My reading so far indicates I’ve got a lot of reading to do. Good thing I’m not planning on starting it for about 18 months.
Other than Chocolate Alchemy.com and The chocolate life, what other resources & references can you recommend? I’ve quickly read through all your ‘ask the alchemist’ questions and didn’t see this one, or even similar.
Amazon seems to recommend Chocolate, Cocoa and Confectionery: Science and Technology 3rd Edition by Bernard Minifie and The Science of Chocolate 2nd Edition by Stephen T Beckett as decent books. If maybe a little heavy (especially the first one).
You have a good hand on a place to start. The two sites are invaluable and both of the books you mention are on my shelf. I particularly like Beckett’s book. In both though my take is that they are probably of limited value in the sense that my college text books are not useful to me right now on an active basis. They lay down quite a bit of fundamental information that I know and is worth knowing but do not particularly think about, but instead inform how I approach problems, issues and troubleshooting advice.
Reading them comes with a caveat that I hint at. I don’t think you should be reading them for the sake of implementing what is in them fully. My lasting memory of both is that they are geared for large production consistency and dealing with less than optimal cocoa beans. Basically they discuss using what was generally available when they were first written and on a very large scale.
As you say, they are a bit heavy. Industrial practices can be a bit heavy. And if you are opening a bean to bar shop, it isn’t really your world. And I suspect, you don’t want it to be. But it is good information you should have in your quiver of knowledge.
There are three other books that I think are worth looking at.
You used the phrase bean to bar, and that in the strictest sense may indeed be what you mean exactly. Stopping at the bar form. Those three books delve into chocolate confections and presentation of chocolate that is very appealing to many (read many customers). Again, good information and techniques to have. Maybe upon reading and experimenting with them you will discover you want to do more than bean to bar. Not that you have to, but again, it’s another arrow of knowledge.
Right now there is no book detailing the artisan bean to bar method. It is on my much too large to do list. But it is all on the site (and one thing that is chewing up time right now are videos and a site overhaul to make that information more accessible).
After all that, the other direction to take is just getting in there and making chocolate. You have to learn what you like and what you do not like and no book will tell you that. The heavy industrial books aim toward good and consistent which given the quality of beans now available and your smallish batches should be a pretty low bar. They don’t discuss how to make a bean more or less fruity or earthy or piquant. That is what you have to discover based on your tastes and the equipment you choose.
So that is it. Pretty short this week. In effect, go read and treat what you read as text book reading. Build your base of knowledge. Pick what works for you but don’t feel there is only one right way because there isn’t. Hopefully you have a passion for experimenting and learning as that will serve you very well.
Level: Novice
Reading time: 5-15 min (depending on how you follow maths)
I have a batch of 75% chocolate running. 70% cocoa nibs, 5% cocoa butter, the rest sugar. I want to make it 80% by adding cocoa butter. I started with 85 oz of nibs. Can I just add the same amount of cocoa butter again?
Sadly, no you can’t. But let’s run through the maths if you were to add that amount of cocoa butter and then how much you actually need to add.
It goes like this.
First I need to find out how much total chocolate you have so I can know how much cocoa butter you added.
T / 85 = 0.7 Rearrange that to:
T = 85 / 0.7 = 121.43 oz total chocolate
With that, I can get how much sugar.
121.43 * 0.25 = 30.36 oz sugar.
So you have
85 + 30.36 + 6.07 = 121.43 oz
If you add 6.07 oz more cocoa butter it is now
85 + 30.36 + 6.07+ 6.07 = 127.5 oz total chocolate
To find the new cocoa butter percent it is
(6.07+6.07) / 127.5 = 9.52%
The new chocolate total percent is:
(85 + 6.07 + 6.07) / 127.5 = 76.2%
Not 80%, even though the cocoa butter is near 10% as the new total is higher. The cocoa nib portion has dropped from 70% to 66.6%.
85 / 127.5 = 0.666 = 66.6 %
If you want to actually make it 80% you have to pull out algebra again.
0.8 = (85+6.07+x) / (121.43+x)
0.8 (121.43 + x) = 85 + 6.07 + x
97.144 + 0.8x = 91.07 + x
97.144 - 91.07 = x - 0.8x
6.074 = 0.2x
x = 30.37 oz
So, you make it all the way to an 80% bar with only adding cocoa butter you have to add a whopping 30.37 oz as:
(85 + 6.07 + 30.37) / (121.43 + 30.37) =0.8 = 80%
You didn’t ask, but I would add more cocoa nibs and/or a mixture of cocoa butter. Just for fun, let’s run through the maths involved in making it 75% cocoa nibs, 5% cocoa butter still, and sugar from your existing batch.
I’m going to take this in another direction calculation wise since we know how much sugar we have and don’t have to change it.
S = 30.6
We have decided it will be 20%, so we can get the new total from this:
30.6 / T = 0.2
T = 30.6 / 0.2 = 153
With that in hand, we can find out how much cocoa nib we need.
153 * 0.75 = 114.75
And since we had 85 oz:
114.75 – 85 = 27.75 oz cocoa nibs
We can do the same thing with the cocoa butter:
153 * 0.05 = 7.65
7.65 – 6.07 = 1.58 oz cocoa butter.
The main downside to this option is you have to refine your chocolate further.
Either way, there is the maths. I hope that helps.
This is almost, but not quite, an 'it's back' moment. I have offered a wild Bolivia in the past. That was from the Alto Beni region. This time the beans are from the Beniano. Basically the same local native (heirloom?) stock but a different elevation and soil type. And still very small and full of flavor. Also, a brand new origin has cleared customs and is in route to the warehouse. Direct trade India. I'm very excited working with a group of about 20 farmers there. Stay tuned.
Level: Novice
Read time: 5 minutes
When I peruse through your selection of cocoa beans for sale, the stark contrast in colors between the different origins always catches my eye. It's pretty interesting to look at for me. But then that's always made me wonder, have you standardized how you take the photo of each bean origin? As in, do you put the same mass of beans in the same container every time? Do you then use a tripod at a set distance away from the beans to take your shot? Is the lighting always consistent? Blah blah blah. The reason I ask is partly because of the motley colors I see, but also some of the origins simply look more attractive to me than others. I see some origins that are a beautiful consistent deep brown like the Madagascar. Then I see some origins that are really gray like the Honduras. The gray origins make me wonder if there's surface mold on those beans. Then I think if there's surface mold, what are those beans like on the inside? Other origins look multi-colored in the picture like the Mexican Chiapas. That makes me wonder if there's uneven fermentation in those beans or are those beans of mixed age or ??? I understand that you personally vet each origin you bring in and vouch for them. And I know you're not supposed to judge a book by it's cover, but for me some of the pictures may not be doing some of your origins much justice. Can you clue me in? Is there a similar story among gray-colored origins versus the multi-colored origins, etc?
Let’s put this on the table. I am a terrible photographer. So terrible that I should not even be allowed to use that term. I take pictures.
But to answer your question, I actually do my very best to standardize how I photograph the beans. They are all in the barrel I pack from, with a fill level near the top. The lighting is mostly the same, as is the distance. But I don’t use a tripod. For years I have known I should set up a white space so there are not shadows (I do know to keep my shadow out of the light source) but as of yet, I have not done it. Clearly.
At this point it is pretty much an ingrained rule for me to take photos of the beans as they come in. Nothing annoys me more than seeing the same repeated image when I am shopping for similar items. And I do my best never to do that. I also do my very best to capture the differences in the beans. Which it seems I am doing as per your comments. Again, there is little I find more annoying than misrepresentation of what is being sold. Some many years ago this slightly bit me when I reused an image of a previous crop year and although the image was of what I was selling, the new crop looked a bit different and some people objected to a small degree. Which I sympathized with. Which is why I now photograph each new bean.
Which brings me to how representative the beans are. Your comments actually reinforce my original statement that I am not a photographer. I think a photographer (a good photographer) does not so much take good photos, but captures what they see AND presents what they see. This is where I fall down. You mention the deep brown of Madagascar. This makes me cringe as to my eye it is a very solid red/brown. Auburn if that can be applied to non-hair colors. That is what I see. That is what I would like display. Likewise, when people visit, I show them the Honduras as the poster child of even and consistently colored beans without even the hint of mold. It’s almost crushing to hear some may think they are moldy. And then we have some beans like Rizek from the Dominica Republic. They look all over the board in the photo, but in person only show some pretty minor variation.
And I simply must address mold. I won’t sell moldy beans. What many people think of as mold is dried mucilage from the fermentation. Some is just crappy photography.
Recently I had two bags of beans arrive. One bag of great. The other was CLEARLY moldy (and not for sale). Not grey. Moldy! Have a look a what mold looks like.
On the other hand, here are two photos of Honduras. What is on the site (left) and how I personally think they look. Not moldy at all to me. The right photo is from my perspective more how they look.
Likewise, here is Madagascar. On the left is what I photographed. On the right is what (I think) is in my mind’s eye of what Madagascar looks like.
And the same goes for consistency. Sometimes lighting just magnifies subtle differences that when viewed in person are just not as stark. Let's do the Chiapas you mention. Left, again, as is, right what I think I see.
Is one more honest or representative than the other? Sure there is more variation than other beans, but when I look in the barrel I don't see the photo on the left.
It’s frustrating. And has been for years. I used try and adjust the color balance to what I saw….but I’m a ham fisted ogre there too and I made matters worse. And does it really matter that you think Madagascar is brown when I think it has a hue of red? I don’t think it does. Do you?
So now I shoot for basic consistency. And accept, for now, that you are right. Maybe I am not doing some of the beans justice. I point out time and again one should not judge a book by its cover (I’m glad you point that out too), try to write up really detailed tasting notes and paint a picture of senses, not just visually.
And at the end of the day, it mostly works. I’d rather be known for being straight shooting and earnest in my presentation of beans than being a photoshop wizard.
What are you thoughts on the matter?
Level: Alchemist
Read time: 6 minutes
I have been bowl tempering with good success until the ambient temperature in my kitchen went up. Typically in the morning when I temper the kitchen is about 60 degrees. We had some unusually hot weather and we have no air conditioning, so my kitchen was about 80. However, knowing this I took my liquid chocolate directly from the melanger, cooled it with a bowl of 65-degree water to 79 when it started to thicken, then immediately put it into a bowl of 100-degree water and slowly brought it up to 88. The molds then went immediately into a 45-degree refrigerator for 30 minutes, and then into my basement where the ambient temp is about 70. It’s with a bean, Bolivia, that I use a lot and my normal formula and melanging time. Yet the finished product had a soft temper. It was OK but I would not call it a full temper because it was softer than usual. It did not have the same snap and when you laid one bar on top of another it did not have that satisfying click. With this close control over my temperatures why did that 80-degree ambient temp have an effect on it, when the chocolate was not left at that temp at any time? (I even melted it down and re-tempered with the same result). Seems like I am not getting enough type 5 in there but can’t figure out why.
This is a really great question and I have to admit had me stumped for a little bit. You are correct, it sounds like everything should be working perfectly. Yet clearly it isn’t.
When I first read this I had an idea what it might be, but I needed to ask a few question In order to suss out.
It turned out that when it was not as hot, the molds hung out on the counter a little while since there was no rush to get them out of the heat.
This difference, the time on the counter, between going into the mold and chilling in the refrigerator, was the key.
Most of the time this time does not matter. But it can matter. Clearly. The problem was not so much that there was not enough Type V. It was that there was not enough time to allow it to do it’s job. By going from 88 F and a nominal amount of V, it was plunged straight into the equivalent of deep freeze. The Type V didn’t have time to do its job and propagate throughout the chocolate. Basically it was flash frozen. And the result was a soft temper.
Chocolate needs a little time for the Type V matrix to form. Just 5 or 10 minutes will often do the trick. At 80 F, as in this kitchen, it might have needed 15-20 minutes. The other alternative, which quite a number of chocolate makers use is to use a cooling cabinet. Those are cool, say 50-60 F, but not really cold. They give the Type V time to spread throughout.
In your case here I would have just taken the chocolate straight down to the basement where it was 70. Or alternatively, just left it in the 45 F refrigerator for 5-10 minutes. Not enough to flash freeze it as it were, but to take the edge off, get it cooling and crystalizing but not too fast.
And if you don’t have that 70 F basement, and the refrigerator is all you have, you may just need to wait out the heat. Chocolate can be a demanding and finicky lover.
So, in these warm days of summer, do keep that in mind. It’s still all about balance. You have to hit that Goldilocks zone. Get the chocolate chilling, but not too fast and not too long as you can have too much of a good thing.
Good luck and try to keep cool.
Level: Novice
Read time: 3 minutes
I am confused about the issue of “burning” or “scorching” chocolate. It is widely advised that when melting chocolate for tempering, one should not let it get above 120º F or else the chocolate will be irreparably damaged and will not be able to be tempered. However, while grinding in the melanger the chocolate gets up to 140º F to 160º F (the hotter being advised as a conching temperature). How come it is not damaged at this point but it will be if reheated/remelted later? I see some people talk about tempering straight from the melanger – which means essentially cooling from >140º F straight down to 84º F or so. Is there something about the chocolate cooling and “curing” after grinding, after which point it should not be brought above 120º but if tempered from these higher temperatures right away (without cooling first) it is OK? Any insight into this discrepancy would be appreciated. Thanks.
Nice observations. When faced with contradictory facts, the key is to tease apart which fact actually isn’t one.
In short this is a false fact from the days before home chocolate melting when people really didn’t know or believe they should gently heat chocolate. And what exactly it meant to heat chocolate gently. It seems like many people would put the chocolate in a pan, put the pan on the stove (on low of course) and proceed to burn the chocolate. How?
The issue wasn’t so much that the chocolate got to 120 F or 140 F or even 180 F, it was that the surface of the pan got much hotter. As in 400-500 F. And that is more than hot enough to burn chocolate. Now, if you constantly stirred, and mixed and kept that heat distributed, there wouldn’t be an issue. But people don’t tend to do that. They let it set….and burn that layer of chocolate that is setting on the bottom of the pan.
This is why it is pretty universally suggested that you melt chocolate in a double boiler. There is nothing magical here. It’s just that 212 F, the boiling point of water, is below the temperature at which chocolate will burn.
So feel free to heat your chocolate up. You can go beyond 120 F….if you do with properly. In a water bath. A warm oven does well too since the warm air has so little heat capacity. I often set my oven to 150-170 F and put much chocolate in there. It never burns and I don’t have to fret over water being near my chocolate.
That said, a variation of this is that you MUST heat your chocolate up to 120 F when tempering. This too is also untrue. It won’t hurt anything but it isn’t necessary. The though is that you have to take it that hot to destroy all the crystals in the chocolate do you get a good temper. As anyone who has messed up tempering by going to the mid 90’s know, all your crystals are fully melted at 100 F. Anything above that is just wasting time and energy.
We have a lone bag of 2016 Organic Belize in. At this point, given how the supplier is handling distribution, I'm not confident we will be seeing any more available any time soon. For those unfamiliar with it, the raw beans have an odor of old school juicy fruit hard candy. While roasting there is toasted macadamia nuts, warm proofing spelt bread and a lovely savory quality with a touch of tang from fermentation. Once in chocolate form (75% for my tests) there is sweet caramel......go read about it.
Level: Apprentice
Read time: 7 minutes
What is your opinion on the use of cocoa butter? Can you suggest how much I should add? I don’t want to add too much or too little.
It seems like if you have 4 chocolate makers in a room, you will have 6 opinions on its use. And a little surprisingly to me, they are often very adamantly held opinions. They run the full spectrum too, from loving it to thinking it is an abomination. Or stuff like “The best chocolate has only two ingredients”. I don’t see that. There is no best chocolate. It is a matter of what you like. Sometimes I think it is a type of machismo. Drinking the hoppiest IPA, eating the hottest wings, only having the darkest or ‘purest’ chocolate. Whatever. Me? I like chocolate with a little cocoa butter in it.
With that out of the way, let’s delve into cocoa butter.
First off, you don’t have to add extra cocoa butter to your chocolate. Or at least some of the darker chocolates. The reason being that cocoa beans as they come contain 50-55% cocoa butter naturally. That is what makes cocoa liquor flow. That is why I say extra, since it already contains some.
At the very basic level you need about 35% cocoa butter in any chocolate you make or it will be just too thick to refine. That means any dark chocolate above roughly 70% additional cocoa butter is purely optional because it will flow. For a 50% chocolate though, if you do the maths, you will find there is only about 25% cocoa butter in there, so you will need at add at least 10% extra just to get a workable chocolate.
But how about over and above what is strictly needed?
I add 5% cocoa butter to nearly all of my chocolates as a matter of routine. Currently my standard evaluation chocolate consists of 75% cocoa nibs, 5% cocoa butter and 20% sugar. I do it this way for the same reason many people add a couple drops of water to whisky when they are tasting it. In a rather counter-intuitive way, it actually brings out more flavor instead of diluting the flavor as you might expect.
There seem to be two prevailing theories why this happens. My thought is that it is probably some combination of the two.
The first goes like this. Think about a piece of hard rock candy. It dissolves very slowly in your mouth. Sure, it is sweet, but not overwhelmingly so. What happens on the other hand if you put a teaspoon of sugar in your mouth? It is instantly and powerfully sweet. But both are effectively pure sugar. What is different? It comes down to how quickly the sugar can dissolve and reach your taste buds. The sugar granules have lots of surface area and dissolve very quickly giving you an intense punch of sensation. The rock candy takes much longer.
In chocolate the cocoa butter is what carries the flavor to your taste buds. The more there is of it, the faster it melts and you can get that punch of flavor. The more the punch, the more flavor you perceive.
Of course, there is a limit. At some point you are indeed diluting the amount of flavor in there, and even with the punch, there is nothing behind it. I’ve found 5% is easy and makes a nice difference. 10% can really bring some extra flavor to the table. And in some cases 15% can allow flavors that you initially could not perceive to become noticeable.
I just recently did a Ghana bar from 50% cocoa nib, 30% sugar, and 20% cocoa butter. Technically a 70% bar, it was radically different from one without any cocoa butter. Without any, it was pretty neutral. There was a fine chocolate flavor, but not a whole lot else. With the addition, the chocolate was more intense, and there were notes are caramel and vanilla and overall was actually a more memorable chocolate.
And this show the second mechanism in play.
Ghana has a very intense chocolate flavor. It can actually be too intense in that it pummels your taste buds. The result is that they get saturated and you taste less. This particularly shows up in something like whiskey. You hardly ever see it at 55% ABV. It’s just too strong. And if you do, like in cask strength, it is very well known and accepted that if you add a bit of water to bring it down to 45% there are very noticeably more flavors and aromas. I’ve tasted this myself with chocolate. 85, 90, 95%. You are not macho for being able to handle it. Hell, there is nothing to handle. It’s just chocolate for goodness sake. But you could well be blunting your taste buds from the overwhelming input. Diluted down just a little bit allows you to taste things that otherwise might be lost.
Many a teenager blasted music to 11. At that level I’ll grant it is a visceral experience. And maybe you like it. But if the music in question has anything else going on, it’s going to be lost. Dial it back to 7-8 and suddenly there is more to notice and more to appreciate. As we get older, we learn these things. We mature. We learn balance. We discover more is not, well, more. Quite often, it’s less.
So I submit to you that there is no competition to eat the darkest, hard core chocolate. If you really, truly enjoy it, then more power to you. Hell, I love a good vindaloo dialed to 11. But maybe try dialing it back a little and see what other melodies and counter points come to light.
You might be surprised.
Level: Alchemist
Read time: 9 minutes
We roast 300g (10 oz or so) in our Genecafe.
We are trying a new batch at 350 F for 15 minutes, and one for 20 minutes. The beans start to pop really quickly after we start (around 3 minutes) though, is this unusual? Also, after roasting, some beans have their skin cracked open, and others don't. Should they all be cracked open, or maybe it does not matter at all?
We get a chocolate cake/brownie smell quickly as well, which we've heard is a good sign during roasting.
Regarding the 30 minutes at 300F , we decided on that from what we read online and what we saw in various videos...
You are bringing back memories of me using the Genecafe. I too seem to recall popping really, really early on. 3 minutes in is the sign that the heat is quite a bit high. And that does not correlate with 300 F unless the beans are that hot.
Let’s get a couple simple things out of the way. You don’t have to have pops or cracks in a roast, but can. You absolutely don’t and won’t ever have them all pop like popcorn. At most I don’t think you will ever get more than 2% popping. And maybe only 0.1%. That said, I personally have found I like chocolate made from cocoa that has popped. But that is comparing against the same beans that did not pop and are vetted beans that I know are good.
So it looks like we are talking roasting again. That is good. In my opinion, it can be the make or break step after fermentation. And it seems to be the hardest to grasp in it’s totality.
Let’s see if we can make some connections. Have a look at this graph. It is a version of the oven profiles I put up a few weeks ago. We will talk about it in a moment.
Here is the thing with what you are finding for roasting profiles and what you are using. 300 for 30 minutes sounds like oven roasting. Not drum roasting with forced air, which is basically what the Genecafe is. You have control over heat and profiles and should be trying to use them if you can. That means not using one temperature for a set amount of time. I like to call that baking, not roasting.
At first I thought you were under roasting with a 30 minute 300 F roast. I am going to back up and say that it may indeed be that you are/were over roasting.
Why? The key here is understanding how the heat is applied and absorbed by the beans. In an oven (even convection) the heat transfer is very slow. Only the top of bean on the top layer of beans is really getting heat. It means most are not in contact with heat so they can’t heat up quickly. It’s why it can take 40 minutes at 400 F to get the beans to 250 F. In a drum roaster, and even more so in one with blowing hot air, the heat transfer is MUCH faster. And that is what you are seeing in your roaster.
I recall having trouble stretching roasts out in the Genecafe (one reason I never pursued it or recommend it). Actually, if your bean temperature was indeed 300 F then you over roasted. 250-260 if as hot as you want for a bean temperature.
Keeping in mind I've not used this roaster in nearly 13 years, here is where I would start.
I would first start at looking at that graph. I’m going to decide I want about a 15-18 minute roast and find the curve/line that corresponds to it. The 400 F OVEN temperature looks good. We picked a line. Now forget the 400 part. It is for an oven. We don’t care. It is immaterial. What is important is the bean temperature and the time it takes.
Shoot for this profile. I'm mostly just taking numbers off the chart. Meaning adjust your temperature knob as you go, keeping an eye on your bean vs set point.
65 C/150 F for 5 minutes 80 C/175 F 4 minutes 96 C/205 F 3 min 110C/230 F 2 min 120C/250 F 2 min
In general, those are the set point and I'm trying to estimate where the beans will be at those time points. So, in this case, if everything goes right, those are also the bean temperatures. Or to give it its technical name, that is my “roasting profile”. To say it again, a roasting profile is the plot of bean temperature vs time. NOT ambient temperature vs time. Yes, sometimes you will be given an ‘oven profile’ because it is easier, but as you can see it isn’t that useful whereas a bean profile is. It is transferable to ANY method of roasting if you can get bean surface temperatures.
And that is where you went wrong. I mistook an oven temperature profile for a bean profile. The later is transferable to any roaster, the prior almost never so.
So what is going on up there in my suggested profile is that I hope to hit those bean temperature markers in that allotted time. I’m not just putting the ambient temperature at 300 F because this roaster transfers heat to quickly and you can indeed burn or scorch the beans. I’m effectively assuming heat transfer is going to be very fast and so I keep the difference between my target (say 150 F in the first step) and the initial temperature (ambient in this case) pretty small (only about 80 F). I stretch it out to 5 minutes so there is plenty of time for the heat to soak into the beans before I start my next step or ramp.
A couple final things. This roaster has a bean temperature thermocouple also. You get actual feedback. If at 5 minutes the temperature is at 120 F, then I want to increase my temperature set point to something a little higher. Press on the gas pedal more as it were to go faster. If they hit 150 in 2 minutes, the I need to back off the temperature a bit so they are not just hanging out at 150 so long.
I realize this may be way more that many people want or can use, but I also rather hope that if you read it enough, look at the situation different ways, that eventually there is be a click or ah-ha moment where you get it. With that, see if these make sense, and if not, give them some thought.
Give that a try and report back.
Oh, and one last thing. I don’t sell or really suggest the Genecafe roaster. It’s not because it can’t do a good job. It’s because I find it expensive to the amount of beans you can roast. It’s kind of off putting to my mind and my goal is all about approachability and affordability wherever possible. If you have one, go ahead and use it, but otherwise don’t go out and get one just for cocoa.
Level: Alchemist
Read time: 6 minutes
I really want to make chocolate with honey. I’ve seen it out there so it must be possible. How can I do it?
Not really. Every chocolate with honey out there I have found has turned out to only seem like chocolate. What I mean by that is that upon talking to the makers, I’ve learned that none are really tempered and have a tendency to separate after a short amount of time. In addition, they stir the honey in at the very end, very, very gently. Too vigorous and it would seize.
That all said, it got me thinking. I went down the rabbit hole of research and came up with a couple ideas I thought might stand a chance. My goal here was a real tempered chocolate, using honey refined in the melanger.
The issue here is of course the water. My thought of course was to remove the water.
I came up with the brilliant idea of making a caramelized honey not unlike the caramelized sugar used to make praline. Boosted by someone else's success, I tried it myself.
Sadly, it didn’t work. You do end up with a hard honey candy, but it is so hygroscopic it was impossible to work with. By the time it was cool enough to work with, it was so tacky that it was unusable. Within a couple hours it was flexing and the next day it was trying to flow.
The next thing I tried was dehydrating the honey. Past experience told me I could not just dry it in the oven. It becomes a solid, sticky mass that holds too much moisture. Did I mention it was hygroscopic? So instead I coated my roasted nibs with the honey and put that into the oven for 12 hours. I weighted the entire mass before it went into the oven, noted the approximate percentage of water in honey (18%) and kept weighing the nib/honey mixture until I was below that amount and stable for a couple hours.
By the end the nibs were dry….but just slightly tacky. That didn’t bode well.
To try and help the process along I pre-ground the mixture. Something I never do, but every little bit of help seemed prudent here. My thought was if I could spread out the honey enough, then powder it, I could keep the moisture away from the honey.
I proceeded to put the mix, little by little into the melanger. It all went in, and started to fluidize and flow. I really thought I had it. Did you catch the past tense there? Yeah. It failed. I came back about 12 hours later to a complete mess. It was still running, but it looked really strange. I can’t even begin to describe it. It was kind of coarse, but still flowing. And chunky. But not really sweet either.
Upon turning it off and inspecting it I found this thick, gooey, kind of nasty ring of what I guess was wax around the center shaft. Apparently there is quite a bit more to honey than just sugar. Wax. Propolis. Higher sugars. Basically a whole bunch of stuff that didn’t play well at all with the cocoa butter.
At that point I stopped. This was not the way to go.
So, I don’t have any good answers for you. You can try stirring it in at the end, and attempt to temper, but frankly I would not hold my breath on this.
Regardless, learn from my failures. You can't win them all and failure is always an option.
If anyone has any other ideas, I am more than happy to try.
Level: Apprentice
Read time: 7 minutes
I have been making a batch of chocolate over and over. It is sharp and astringent. I think I keep over roasting it but nothing works. I have tried roasting from 250 to 300 degrees for 15-30 minutes. What am I doing wrong?
Somewhere along the line the trend has been to roast cocoa lighter and lighter for fears of not over roasting it. That is an admirable goal. You don’t want to over roast your cocoa. Unfortunately this is the classic result that I am seeing every single week. Effectively under roasted beans or possibly even raw beans that are sharp, astringent and lacking in chocolate flavor.
Before we going any further, I want to define who I am talking to. If you like your chocolate and how you are roasting, then this article isn’t aimed at you.
If there is that little voice in the back of your head wondering why you chocolate isn’t quite right and you are fearful of over roasting because all the experts (self proclaimed?) out there who have never roasted a cocoa bean in their life warn against over roasting, then maybe you should read on.
I’ve tried to over roast. It is REALLY hard. I’m talking you have to try to over roast and you still might fail. I’m not joking here. I am kind of dumbfounded where the idea came from that it is easy to over roast cocoa let alone that it burns easily.
Let’s talk about roasting. As in really what is happening. To do that I need you to put away what you think you know about roasting cocoa and instead engage what you know about cooking and baking in general. Because the rules are the same. There is nothing special or magic about roasting cocoa beans.
Ok. Agreed? Great, let’s begin.
What has to happen when you roast? You need to take a cocoa bean that is around 70 F and take the whole thing, all the way to the center, to somewhere in the range of 230 to 260 F. From experience, I have learned that I personally like it best when that can happen in 15-30 minutes. And anecdotal evidence suggests so do most people. So that is what we are going to talk about.
I said this is like any other cooking or baking. So instead of a cocoa bean, let’s talk about roasting a hunk of meat. Or loaf of bread. Either works fine. I’m picking those because they are usually 2-3 lbs, start at room temperature and come to some higher final temperature.
What is the classic way to roast these? 350 F oven for an hour is not uncommon for either one.
You put your loaf/roast into a 350 F oven. Here is the first important thing. The surface does not immediately become hot. After 10 minutes, the surface is probably only 100 F and the interior is still room temperature. And you are not surprised, right? As time progresses, the heat sinks in. Two inches in becomes 90 degrees, 1 inch in is 100 degrees and the surface is 110.
Notice the gradient? That is how the whole roast is going to proceed. At 30 minutes in the surface might finally be starting to get hot to the touch. 150-160 F. But If you put in a thermometer to the center you will find the very center is still under 100 F. Raw.
Not until nearly an hour later is the center getting to 150-160 F for a small roast and maybe 200 F for the bread. The meat has more water so it heats more slowly if you were wondering.
Roasting cocoa is the same.
But cocoa beans are not a loaf of bread I hear you saying. Well, they kind of are. They are a solid like mass in the pile they are in. You can speed the roast along by stirring. Distributing the heat. This is exactly why I suggest stirring every 5 minutes.
And let’s look at a few other common things you bake.
Muffins or cup cakes. 350-375 F for 15-20 minutes.
Biscuits 400-425 for 12-15 minutes
What would have happened to either of those things if you had put them in at 250-300 F? Totally under baked, right? Yep.
It’s all the same thing. Cocoa behaves exactly the same. Why wouldn’t it? They are not magical. It takes quite a bit of heat and time to heat them all the way to the center.
You are worried about burning them at 350-400 F I hear you say. You notice that gradient I talked about? That is why they don’t burn. The oven can be 450 F even at the start. The only way for the bean (or you bread) to burn is if the whole entire thing is that hot. But it isn’t. The heat is continuously sinking in, in effect keeping the surface from burning.
I know many of you are shaking your head in disbelief. This isn’t just my theory. I spend a few weeks recently testing just this. Look a little of the data.
Those are actual surface temperatures. From everything we have seen the interior has to be cooler. They don’t have a choice. Absolutely none of those beans were even close to burned, let alone even over roasted.
What that means, even at 300 degrees for 30 minutes, your beans probably never made over 150 F on the surface. Which means 100-115 F inside. Raw by any definition for the majority of the bean.
That is why they were so sharp and astringent. They were massively under roasted. They were still raw.
It’s really that simple. It takes a lot of heat to roast cocoa beans in any reasonable amount of time. And to keep it to a reasonable time, you have to have a hot environment. Heat flows and how fast it flows is proportional to how big the difference is between your beans and the oven. At 300 F, although it seems hot, it isn’t that different from your target of 250 F. The consequence is it takes a long time to get there.
Just think about baking bread or a roast of beast and go from there. Be fearless.
So get the beans in the hot oven. Stir them often to help the heat distribute. Take temperature readings (I use this IR thermometer) and stop worrying you are going to burn the beans.
Be fearless. It’s only chocolate.
Level: Apprentice
Read time: 4 minutes
After winnowing I was told to remove all excess of twigs from the nibs (which is the root of each bean- see picture attached) otherwise my chocolate would be bitter! The task is huge!!! We can only remove 2 pounds per hour per person so for me it is rather an additional stress.
I have been grinding 3 different batches. The first 25lbs batch I left it for 24hrs. It was good but a bit over roasted, the second was much better and I left it for 36 yours. I tried a batch with the “twigs” to taste the difference and this batch grinded for 36 hrs too. I agree that it tasted bitter in the grinder but not so bad once tempered….Please give me your thoughts on these twigs.
My opinion is that it is utter nonsense. And I’ll say it again, it is my opinion.
Now let’s talk about it.
Those twigs are called the germ of the cocoa bean. The theory goes, as you described, is that they are horridly bitter and must be removed to make quality chocolate. I’ve heard this over and over, and have yet to see any solid proof of it. Just opinion. Which is all I am giving you.
But try this. Get a roasted cocoa bean. Look to the large end. You will see a small circle like indentation. With your fingers or tweezers pull out the germ. Or just crack the bean and pull it out. Taste it. Chew it up really well.
Is it bitter? To my tastes it is not. It’s a bit harder than a nib (but it will still refine down), but mostly I find it woody and neutral tasting. And even if it were, how could something that amounts to less than 1% of the weight of the chocolate ruin it? I have real trouble believing that.
So maybe it reacts with something in the chocolate and makes it bitter? Great theory, but having done tasting after tasting, I have yet to find that substantiated. I cannot taste any difference and I’ve never met a person that can tell me from a blind tasting whether a chocolate has had the germ removed. I’ve only seen the reviews where a bar is raved over and it is disclosed that the maker has gone to the extra trouble to remove the germ.
Correlation is not causation for one. And two, that sound suspiciously like cherry picking data or knowledge based bias. You know it does or does not contain germ and skew your expectations and what you think you taste accordingly.
And also the assertion does not take into account the huge number of award winning chocolates out there that have germ. It seems conveniently ignore that.
My suggestion is to do the test again. Make sure you use the exact same roast batch and that you blind taste the results. And in a perfect test, have more than just two samples. Make up 4 of each and taste them all. Blind.
I’d put money on you not being able to tell them apart reliably.
If it turns out you can, then ok. I’m a supporter of data and YOUR tastes. If you like it better without germ, then by all means remove it. But do it because it REALLY makes a difference AND you like the difference more.
My suggestion as always is to make the chocolate you like. And not do extra work that is not needed.
In my case that means I ignore the germ. And think you should too.
Those are my thoughts.
