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Post by phillip on Jul 19, 2011 23:21:20 GMT -5
For various good and not-so-good reasons, I am just now getting around to using the beans that I bought a year ago in the 2 lb sampler pack. I have a Behmor roaster that I use for coffee, so I'll be using this for my beans as well. My question is this: can I roast a 1/2 pound of beans? Well, I'm sure I can, but is it worth it? Should I do an "espresso" mix of these different cocoa beans? The beans that I have are: Ghana 09 Forastero; Ivory Coast 09 - Forastero; Venezuelan Ocumare 10; Papus New Guinea 09.
This will be my first roast. From what I've learned on the boards, I'll be waiting for the brownie smell to say I'm done. If I remember correctly from one of Brad's posts, it was chocolate smell, vinegar, and the last stage was brownie with a bit of vinegar.
Thank you, phillip
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Post by phillip on Jul 25, 2011 22:36:14 GMT -5
In the spirit of adventure, I chucked the four different beans into my Behmor on P1 for 18 minutes and roasted away - yesterday. The blend of beans weighed 1 kg. Other than smell, and something about cracking, I didn't know exactly when to stop (I've since read more on the forums). As it was, I think just about every bean cracked (well, probably not all), and I maxed out the P1 setting at 22:30 (I think that is max, notebook not in front of me). The beans were definitely dark, but not burnt. I think another minute or so and some of the beans would have gone over that edge.
I spent 15 minutes or so cracking by hand, some nibs came out very easily, others fell apart in my hands (too dry? over roasted?). After this became tedious, I decided to put together the crankandstein mill - wow, that made the task easier. Winnowing with a hair dryer was a breeze.
Today, I ran the nibs through the Champion and was surprised by how little waste was produced. I ran the "waste" mass through three or four times and ended up with a few tablespoons of leftovers - I was sure there would be more. Even more surprising was the wonderfully complex taste of my liqueur - and it was relatively free of grit. I was half tempted to start tempering. However, the Santha is now running with the chocolate and sugar (pre-ground in my food processor). The internal temperature is 117F and the kitchen temperature is 76F.
1 kg whole beans to start 720 g of liqueur into the Santha 220 g of sugar ~70% chocolate
It has been a very exciting day!
-phillip
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Post by oaxacalote on Jul 26, 2011 14:16:47 GMT -5
There are passionate lovers of everything from raw to dark roasted chocolate, so almost everything is a matter of personal preference. Differences in size, fat composition, fat %, and moisture level in the beans will influence how quickly they roast. The flavor compounds in different beans will develop differently depending on how hot and how long you roast, as well.
Happy chocolate adventuring Philip!
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Post by phillip on Aug 16, 2011 1:03:52 GMT -5
Update. I should have tempered at 100% chocolate. Maybe. The sugar cost me some of the complexity, quite a bit actually. I also should have done a better job of grinding the sugar ahead of time, it came out far more gritty than I would have liked. However, after my star of a wife tempered it into wafers - it seemed much better.
One of the lessons learned is simply that different people have different tastes. I had a about a dozen people taste test our chocolate, and the first couple of times I excused myself for making such a gritty chocolate. However, I stopped doing that because many people preferred it. For the most part, I did a three way blind test between Mast Brothers, Potomac Chocolate, and us - all 70%. The order was always the same: Mast, Us, Potomac a distant third. I'm keen to continue.
-phillip
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