Post by jamescary on Apr 21, 2008 1:24:18 GMT -5
I thought I'd share some of the things that I've been using to make chocolate and some things that I'm considering.
I picked up a George Foreman GRV660 9-in-1 (it says 8-in-1 but I think there should be a ninth use: appliance to turn your kitchen cabinets into a fireplace as the thing is not well insulated). It contains a rotisserie drive which turns at around 3 rpm. The rotisserie uses a 1/4" square drive socket. The oven is about 12" wide (I've got a better measurement, but I'm not near it now). It has a 3 manual turn knobs: temperature control, action selection, and timer. The timer can be set to "Stay On," which is the setting I use. The oven does not come with a drum; however I found that the Behmor drum with minor modifications will fit in the oven. The Behmor drum is around 10.5" long and has a 1/4" square shaft on one end and a round shaft on the other. The Foreman has a slotted piece of metal attached to the non-drive side of the oven where the rotisserie point slides down and rests on. Therefore I extended the drum with an 11mm socket as a sort of male to female adapter and put a paper clip bent into a point into the other end of the socket. I roasted up a batch of Ocumare today following the Alchemist's notes of 400F for 10 minutes, 350 for 10 minutes, and 300 for 10 minutes. And it turned out very nice.
A big disadvantage to the above system is that it's a hassle to get a bean out to test if the roast is complete. The electric oven elements are exposed so I throw on an oven mitt and fumble to get out the drum and then fumble to open the drum's door on its end and grab a hot bean from inside then close it back up and load it back in. Not very easy.
I may keep trying on the roaster. I've got a heat gun, a bundt pan, and a flower pot that seem to want to try their hand at roasting. We'll see.
I've been using a box fan and collander to cool the beans. It took about 8 minutes to get the beans down to room temperature.
I built the winnower from Clay / save the seeds. However, I just picked up the pipe parts. I also had a 2.5 gallon/2.5 hp shop vac already. I made a funnel from some paper and a chaff chute out of some foil. I used a 3x3x2 wye at the bottom of the winnower and a 2x1.5 reducer to fit the shop vac tube. I used 2 pages of paper with some holes punched out to regulate airflow at the shop vac inlet (by rotating the pages ala weber).
It was very nice to use. Although, a frame will need to be built since holding it up is a bit of a pain. It kind of makes winnowing a bit more fun now that the husk gets dumped somewhere (I guess everywhere is kinda fun too). However, I am still learning to use it and ended up doing a little winnowing from the bowl too.
I made a light roast of the Tabasco and it came out rather astringent. I had already had it in the Santha for 10 hours, so I decided I'd throw the chocolate in the stand mixer and introduce some heat with a heat gun. I picked up the HomeRight heat gun with adjustable temp control. It does a good job of maintaining a given temperature. I set it up for 160 F and let the stand mixer stir the chocolate for an hour. After that hour there was a marked difference! The chocolate was considerably less astringent.
I'm still thinking about a sifter/sorter to use pre-roast. I guess I'll have to look at the distribution of bean sizes first.
I picked up a George Foreman GRV660 9-in-1 (it says 8-in-1 but I think there should be a ninth use: appliance to turn your kitchen cabinets into a fireplace as the thing is not well insulated). It contains a rotisserie drive which turns at around 3 rpm. The rotisserie uses a 1/4" square drive socket. The oven is about 12" wide (I've got a better measurement, but I'm not near it now). It has a 3 manual turn knobs: temperature control, action selection, and timer. The timer can be set to "Stay On," which is the setting I use. The oven does not come with a drum; however I found that the Behmor drum with minor modifications will fit in the oven. The Behmor drum is around 10.5" long and has a 1/4" square shaft on one end and a round shaft on the other. The Foreman has a slotted piece of metal attached to the non-drive side of the oven where the rotisserie point slides down and rests on. Therefore I extended the drum with an 11mm socket as a sort of male to female adapter and put a paper clip bent into a point into the other end of the socket. I roasted up a batch of Ocumare today following the Alchemist's notes of 400F for 10 minutes, 350 for 10 minutes, and 300 for 10 minutes. And it turned out very nice.
A big disadvantage to the above system is that it's a hassle to get a bean out to test if the roast is complete. The electric oven elements are exposed so I throw on an oven mitt and fumble to get out the drum and then fumble to open the drum's door on its end and grab a hot bean from inside then close it back up and load it back in. Not very easy.
I may keep trying on the roaster. I've got a heat gun, a bundt pan, and a flower pot that seem to want to try their hand at roasting. We'll see.
I've been using a box fan and collander to cool the beans. It took about 8 minutes to get the beans down to room temperature.
I built the winnower from Clay / save the seeds. However, I just picked up the pipe parts. I also had a 2.5 gallon/2.5 hp shop vac already. I made a funnel from some paper and a chaff chute out of some foil. I used a 3x3x2 wye at the bottom of the winnower and a 2x1.5 reducer to fit the shop vac tube. I used 2 pages of paper with some holes punched out to regulate airflow at the shop vac inlet (by rotating the pages ala weber).
It was very nice to use. Although, a frame will need to be built since holding it up is a bit of a pain. It kind of makes winnowing a bit more fun now that the husk gets dumped somewhere (I guess everywhere is kinda fun too). However, I am still learning to use it and ended up doing a little winnowing from the bowl too.
I made a light roast of the Tabasco and it came out rather astringent. I had already had it in the Santha for 10 hours, so I decided I'd throw the chocolate in the stand mixer and introduce some heat with a heat gun. I picked up the HomeRight heat gun with adjustable temp control. It does a good job of maintaining a given temperature. I set it up for 160 F and let the stand mixer stir the chocolate for an hour. After that hour there was a marked difference! The chocolate was considerably less astringent.
I'm still thinking about a sifter/sorter to use pre-roast. I guess I'll have to look at the distribution of bean sizes first.