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Post by lyndon on May 27, 2013 16:36:18 GMT -5
I was just wondering, as someone who lives in the UK and doesn't have access to any of the hardware for sale on this site, what other affordable options are out there for cracking beans?
Can it be as simple as a bag and a big wooden hammer for 5 minutes?
What do other people here use apart from what's for sale on this site and the juicer?
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Post by jamie on May 27, 2013 21:57:07 GMT -5
Hi Lyndon depends on how many you want to crack but a mallet and a bag would work fine. I often just crack 500g with a scissor type nut cracker or with my fingers. They really are not that tough and it only takes about 10-15 minutes sitting down outside in the sun. As for the juicer, I don't bother I just put the nibs straight into my grinder. Don't just dump them in though, feed them in slowly and it seems to work OK. A hair dryer when the grinder is going also seems to help to get the nibs to turn to liquid and stop working your grinder so hard. It does take a bit of a beating though.
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Post by princessvaliant on May 28, 2013 20:44:43 GMT -5
When I first started - shortly after seeing the Johnny Depp/Juliette Binoche movie "Chocolat" a stone carving friend offered to make me a metate and I used that for many months. A little labor intensive, but I liked working with the cacao in the way it's been done for centuries. Find a nice flat stone that your hands like, and just crush the roasted cacao gently on a marble slab. Don't crush it to powder, though - too hard to winnow (with a hairdryer in a bowl slightly turned sideways so that the husk flies out - messy but worth it).
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Post by feedme on May 29, 2013 6:52:37 GMT -5
Pasta machine... stick some silicone rubber to the wheels?
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Post by Alchemist on Jun 10, 2013 14:04:44 GMT -5
Pasta machine... stick some silicone rubber to the wheels? Tried it years ago - failed. The gap and diameter are too small creating too acute of an attack angle.
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Post by lyndon on Jun 10, 2013 16:20:24 GMT -5
I ended up cracking 500g using a tin of beans and a plastic bag. I entirely recommend this process for anyone who owns both plastic bags and tins of beans.
For the winnowing, a large bowl and a hair dryer worked pretty well I think, I just got stuck in with my hand, picking up handfuls and letting it drop back into the bowl again.
I should have done it outside.
I think this sort of manual approach is the most economically viable for me right now, since I'll not need to crack and winnow more than 1.5kg of beans at any one time, any time in the near future. I might invest in a little fan though rather than a hair dryer. And a bucket.
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Post by feedme on Jun 11, 2013 7:04:22 GMT -5
Pasta machine... stick some silicone rubber to the wheels? Tried it years ago - failed. The gap and diameter are too small creating too acute of an attack angle. Good to know!. I'm working on upgrading my cracker and adding it to my winnow machine... cant wait to show you!
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Post by Adrian on Jun 11, 2013 15:11:14 GMT -5
I've had success winnowing outside with a large fan. cracked the shells with my fingers and used a nut cracker for the smaller harder beans. I found that using a baking sheet worked really well to bounce the nibs and getting the shells blown away. Works fast and effective when you get a technique down.
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Post by Randy on Oct 14, 2013 15:17:25 GMT -5
I'm the newest of newbies, but I happened upon a cracking method that works quite well for me. First, I lay down an office floor mat -- the flexible plastic kind with no nubbins on the bottom of it -- on a hard surface. I put a heap of roasted beans in the center. Then I take out my length of four-inch diameter white PVC plumbing conduit, which I've capped on both ends with an extender piece, the kind you would use to continue the pipe length if you were actually plumbing. This creates a sort of reverse rolling pin, higher on both ends than in the middle.
The pipe is longer than the mat is wide, so the "wheels" make contact not with the mat, but with the floor. The mat is rather thin, thus leaving about 3/8 inch for the crushing process. I simply roll the pipe over the beans a few times, and (with a newb's level of experience, so take all with a grain of salt) have found it works pretty much flawlessly. I would think you could crush a pound or two every minute, though I've not timed myself at it. Pick up the flexible mat, pour the contents in a contain, on to the winnowing. (Santha due in three days. Nibs await!)
Sorry if my "new idea" is centuries old or anything. :) I've been reading this forum and whatever else I can find and hadn't seen this method elsewhere so I thought I'd try and give back what I could. Also, sorry for not being a real member, registration is fighting me.
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Post by feedme on May 3, 2014 16:56:44 GMT -5
Tried it years ago - failed. The gap and diameter are too small creating too acute of an attack angle. Good to know!. I'm working on upgrading my cracker and adding it to my winnow machine... cant wait to show you! We upgraded our Mill and its working like a dream... its a little softer creaking than the Crankandstein Cocoa Mill, as in if you have flat beans it just squashes than and does not fully break them up. But the gears and wheels will never wear out and I can just walk away and leave it to do its thing. Its still a prototype. We call it the rain maker as the beans sound like rain falling on a hot tin roof... time to upgrade winnow machine
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Post by lyndon on May 14, 2014 14:32:05 GMT -5
Seeing this thread pop up again got me thinking. Has anyone tried converting an old clothes mangle into a bean cracker?
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Post by rose01 on Nov 10, 2016 23:52:50 GMT -5
Please where did you buy the upgraded rain maker? We need to make rain too as we need something with a bit more cracking strength than cranckienstein mill.
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