NewWay to Crack Cocoa Beans

By way of a customer's comment (thank you John H.) I tried cracking some cocoa beans with my Champion Juicer. I had thought of this some time ago, but never pursued it because the Crankandstein Cocoa mill works so well. I just ran the whole cocoa beans through the juicer without the lower plate on. It cracks them with a single pass and shoots them out the bottom. It works with both raw and roasted beans. When I first tried this, I was a little worried about how well it works and whether I had just made the Crankandstein obsolete. Well, after a number of pounds of beans, both raw and roasted, I have the following observations:

• The Champion cracks the beans into smaller pieces than the Cocoa Mill
• There is more dust, and thus more waste with the Champion
• The Champion makes a larger mess while cracking (nibs fly everywhere)
• It takes longer to crack the beans with the Champion (about 1lb/90 sec vs 4-6lb/min)
• The Champion does a better job at separating the husk from the nib in raw unroasted cocoa beans.

And likewise, this leads me to a couple of conclusions.

• The Crankandstein is not obsolete as it is quicker and creates less mess and waste
• If you are only doing a couple of pounds, the Champion may work fine for you.
• If you want to make you own raw nibs (for eating or post roasting), the Champion does a great job

Basically, it is up to you and what your needs are. I found the husk pieces were smaller with the Champion and so winnowing was a little easier, but as I said, there was more dust (husk and nib) that needs to be removed (I shook my nibs in a fine mesh colander for this test) so that takes a little more time. Either way, we have a new tool in out Alchemy arsenal, or more like, a new use for an existing tool.

Please try it out and report back. I am especially interested in those of you who have both a Champion and Crankandstein Cocoa mill.

Venezuelan Barinas Cocoa Beans Have Arrived

I am going to keep this very short. After quite the wait, the new stock of fermented and unfermented Venezuelan Barinas Criollo cocoa beans have arrived. I will begin processing the back orders and get them out ASAP. If you have been waiting to order until they were actually in, here they are. Also, I have been experimenting with the prototype mill from CrankandStein. It works like a charm. It looks like we will be adding a large hopper due to bottlenecking. I had 3 lbs of cocoa beans cracked in a little over a minute even so. With a good strong hair drier set on cool, they winnowed out in only a couple minutes. 3 lbs of cocoa from roaster to nibs in about one half an hour. Sweet!

Finally, we have begun discussing conch/refiner designs with CrankandStein. This could be it folks. The last piece in the Home Chocolatier's Alchemical Laboratory.

Make Your Own Cocoa Nibs At Home

Prototype CrankandStein Cocoa Mill

Mill Cracked Ocumare

Ok, not quite, but very very soon and hopefully I got your attention. A number of you have asked why I don't sell cocoa nibs. Well, frankly, they are a lot of work, and I don't see the point in that they are only an intermediate step in chocolate alchemy. And I want you to be able to make your own from any cocoa bean you find. So instead of roasting and peeling pound after pound of nibs for sale, I have been pursuing a cocoa mill that will crack the beans efficiently and then let you blow the husk away effortlessly. To that end, I roasted up a few pound of beans and sent them off to a couple of mill designers and builders. So far the best results have come back from CrankandStein (I really love that name!). They have modified their standard grain mill. The gap is now larger to accommodate cocoa beans instead of grain and is a dual drive, three roller design that cracks the husk very nicely I am told. They said it best:

"I got the mill to feed like mad by gearing the rollers together. There will be some differential in the roller speeds due to some design requirements on the gaps between rollers and clearances for the gears, but the fines are being kept to a minimum using a light knurl on the surface. The best setup produced almost no nib flour and husk removal was nearly complete, which I assume is the goal. The chunks of nib haven't been too large, but the winnowing doesn't require screening since almost all of what you would get coming through the screen is husk flour and that blows off easily. The overall crush is showing big improvements with each design change. "

Once again, stay tuned. You will be able to make your own nibs in the near future. The estimated price of the mills will be around $130.00.