nate
Neophyte
Posts: 12
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Post by nate on Feb 9, 2008 14:56:08 GMT -5
Hello ---
I've now made several batches of chocolate using a Behmor Roaster, Champion Juicer, and Santha Melangeur, and while the results have been pretty tasty, I've concluded that the weak part of the system (for me) is the winnowing and grinding. Maybe the problem is that I don't really understand what's actually happening in each step of the process.
I've been doing 5 lb batches of beans, roasted as two 2.5 lb batches in the Behmor (1lb-P1-A +- 30 seconds depending on bean). I then crack the beans by running them through the Champion with no screen in place. Now that I've learned to drape a towel over the bowl catch scatter and to pour straight from the Behmor hamper into the Champion feed, this feels smooth and efficient. Then come the parts I'm uncertain about. How completely do I need to remove the chaff, and what's the best way to do it?
I've tried winnowing the chaff from the nibs using a hair dryer set to no-heat. With a relatively small amount of beans in the bottom of a large rounded mixing bowl, this is messy but seems to get most of the chaff out. If I try to get every last bit of chaff, it's rather slow, but if I just aim for most of it it's relatively efficient --- a minute or two per pound.
I've also tried no-winnowing, and just running the rough crushed nibs directly through the Champion with the fine screen in place. In both cases, despite re-running the 'waste' output back through the juicer several times, it seems like I'm wasting quite a bit of the liquor. More confusingly, it seems like the amount of chaff in the waste is not particularly increasing. Where does it go?
I'm fearing that the chaff just gets ground up finely enough to eventually pass through the screen of the Champion.
Does anyone have a good idea of how effective the Champion is at separating liquor from husk? At how many times one can run the waste back through before the husk is ground fine enough to pass through the screen? I'm wondering if I should either winnow more completely and then use all the output ('waste' and all) or if I should just tolerate the higher losses ('extra virgin' liquor).
Thoughts appreciated. I'm also interested in the other solutions that have been discussed here --- peanut butter grinders, home-made winnowers, and the like. I'm suspecting that if I try to scale up at all, there might be some better solution than the Champion.
Thanks!
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Post by jamescary on Feb 19, 2008 15:02:47 GMT -5
Hey Nate, Good point. I think winnowing has not got its fair share of treatment. Amano claims that there will be a difference in taste of chocolate made with husk and those made with little/no husk: www.amanochocolate.com/articles/cocoabeanwinnowing.htmlSo far, I have winnowed once and I used the hair dryer and bowl technique and I agree it created a bit of a mess and did not remove all of the chaff. I'm looking into the 'saveseeds.org' approach. I'm also looking into ways to sort beans and nibs. I haven't tried the Champion as a sheller. Does it cause the bean to liquefy at all with no screen in place? When you re-run the liquor/chaff back through the champion, you should be seeing less 'waste' coming back out as the liquor is separated from the chaff. One interesting experiment may be to separate the nib/chaff and just run (and re-run a couple times) the chaff through the Champion with fine screen in place. See if anything comes out the bottom.
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Post by seneca on Feb 19, 2008 16:38:24 GMT -5
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Post by jamescary on Feb 21, 2008 21:26:02 GMT -5
Thanks, Seneca. Any suggestions on which blower to use? I'm considering a shop vac, but I'm worried that might be too much power (I guess that could be overcome by changing the length of the inlet tube or letting it leak a little).
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Post by seneca on Feb 22, 2008 0:24:22 GMT -5
I used this: www.grainger.com/Grainger/items/4C443I also did fit an old shopvac to the outlet to increase the pull and clean up the process a bit. Works very well! Building the system with flow controls at top and bottom allowed us to really dial in the pressure--in this case I just used ball valves on both ends, but you could also do it with electrical controls...
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Post by seneca on Feb 22, 2008 0:26:44 GMT -5
One other thing to keep in mind--you'll want to crush up your roasted cacao really well. The smaller the pieces, the more effective this type of forced-air winnowing process will be. In my experience, the crank mill is a great start, but running the whole mass through a finer mesh before winnowing really improves results.
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Post by jamescary on Feb 22, 2008 0:39:39 GMT -5
Fantastic! That valve idea is great! And the vacuum at the outlet is a nice touch to keeping the mess to a minimum. Thanks!
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Post by sharkman on Feb 22, 2008 0:51:24 GMT -5
Aloha! i used a smaller shop vac with a rheastat spliced in the cord to regulate the speed of the vac motor. I used 4 inch pvc as the column and made it about 3.5 feet in length. Use a screen on you catch bucket to grab bigger chunks and run thru a few times. The cocoa husks are great for keeping slugs {or snails] off my vanilla vines. Aloha sharkman
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nate
Neophyte
Posts: 12
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Post by nate on Feb 22, 2008 13:52:41 GMT -5
There is definitely a distinct negative texture caused by the chaff, although I haven't done a side-by-side to confirm a difference in the taste. Thanks for the link! No liquefication. It's fast and does not warm the beans much. It produces a range of nib sizes, from dust to small, but all dry. As I asked in another thread, I'd love to know how the nibs from the Champion compare to the nibs coming out of the Crankenstein. There is definitely less that comes through on each pass, until one reaches a limit based on what gets left in the chamber of the Champion. But I'm not convinced that this is due to separation of chaff from liquor. I fear the after several passes it may just be grinding the chaff finely enough that it eventually passes through the screen. I tried something similar to this, with poor result. I thought I'd try to recover the liquor left in the chamber of the Champion by adding a couple handfuls of dry chaff at the end of the run. Instead, it backed up, popped off the screen, and dumped all the chaff into my bowl of liquor. The Champion does not like being run with dry chaff!
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Post by jamescary on Feb 22, 2008 14:12:41 GMT -5
I have the Crankandstein. I'll give the Champion a try at shelling and take some pictures and post them as a comparison. However, just looking at the 2 it's fairly obvious that shelling is going to be a lot faster in the Crankandstein.
That's a bummer about the screen popping off. It looks like the tray held it on fairly tight.
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nate
Neophyte
Posts: 12
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Post by nate on Feb 22, 2008 14:26:09 GMT -5
One other thing to keep in mind--you'll want to crush up your roasted cacao really well. The smaller the pieces, the more effective this type of forced-air winnowing process will be. In my experience, the crank mill is a great start, but running the whole mass through a finer mesh before winnowing really improves results. Hi Seneca --- Thanks for the links in the earlier replies and the winnower advice. The Champion seems to do a fine job of producing small pieces, although I don't have much to compare it to. How are you using the screen, though? I tried screening the batch I did yesterday through a coarse wire colander. I'm guessing that the particles that went through the screen were about half chaff, so it was a pretty effective first pass. And it was a lot cleaner when using the hair dryer since all the dust was gone. Here are the numbers I got from a batch yesterday for 2.5 lbs of Panamanian: Start: 2.5 lbs (shaken in Behmor cage to remove dust) Roasted: 2.4 lbs (Behmor 1lb-P1-A +30s) Screened: 2.1 lbs (coarse wire colander, .3 lbs fell through) Winnowed: 1.75 lbs (hair dryer and large bowl) The finished nibs seemed very clean. There were very occasional flecks of chaff if one searched, but at a cursory glance they were perfect. I ground them coarsely in a blender and then put them directly in the Santha. I did try winnowing the screenings to recover the fine nibs, and was able to get about .05 lbs of clean tiny nibs from the .3 lbs I started with. In the future I'll probably skip this step as not worth the effort. How do these numbers compare to the winnowing devices? I'm guessing that the quality of the nibs I got was as good as can be done, but that the time spent was higher and the amount of nibs lost during the winnowing could be reduced significantly. What percentage of the initial bean quantity are you ending up with as cleaned roasted nibs?
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Post by seneca on Feb 22, 2008 15:15:45 GMT -5
As a general rule, your rate of loss from roasted bean to liquor should be around 30%. Another way of thinking of this is that for every 1 kg of roasted bean you have, you should expect to be able to make 1 kg of 70% chocolate (figuring just real cocoa mass). It looks like you're basically on target as far as that goes, but I'm getting the same results with fewer steps and (I suspect) a lot less time.
I'm using the crankandstein, then crushing the whole mass through a finer screen manually, then running that through my winnower for a couple of passes. For me, the process from running the crank all the way to clean nibs is currently taking less than 15 minutes for 5kg or so of roasted bean...
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Post by reelchemist on Feb 24, 2008 20:22:12 GMT -5
I am using a hair dryer and roasting tray (with high sides) to winnow (I am def. thinking of making a winnower). Anyway the time I spend winnowing is considerably reduced by using 3 grades of sieves. I use a soil sieve first then a modified colander (I added more wholes) and then a wire strainer. I get two grades to winnow and the stuff that goes through the strainer is mosly shell dust and is chucked. This works a treat for now.
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Post by ripvanwinkle on Feb 25, 2008 1:51:14 GMT -5
Seneca - Clay's winnower is a gem! I will make one like it with only one difference: I have a small (new, clean) shop vac that will produce a powerful blast of air on the outlet of the blower. I will use that and valve the air stream to prevent showering my neighbors with roasted beans.
I suppose that I could run the vacuum's suction to the chaff outlet and use the squeal of the pig but that can come after getting the winnowing working efficiently.
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Post by seneca on Mar 6, 2008 16:35:56 GMT -5
Good plan...you can worry about the chaff cleanup once you get the outlet pressure dialed in. Let us know how it turns out!
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