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Post by reelchemist on Nov 5, 2008 0:50:20 GMT -5
I have noticed a lot of chocolate makers have been scaling up their home chocolate making to bigger things. I am pretty up with what it takes for scaling up most of the steps in the choc making process but how and what are people using to do their roasting on the 25-50lb scale?
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Post by cheebs on Nov 5, 2008 9:09:14 GMT -5
Small coffee roasters come to mind. The place that processed my cocoa butter uses just that, and the roaster handles 50 lbs at a time.
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Post by Brad on Nov 5, 2008 17:29:48 GMT -5
No need to get fancy.
A commercial convection oven works just fine for batches of about 35 lbs at a time.
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Post by holycacao on Dec 14, 2008 8:53:55 GMT -5
A 10 yr old gas dryer-maytag, thermostat modified with a cutout in the door for sampling- OH YEAH!
well almost there... hopefully will be ready in a week, awaiting test results still ...
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Post by jamescary on Dec 14, 2008 15:32:13 GMT -5
Gas dryer?!  Serious?? |
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Post by holycacao on Dec 15, 2008 1:52:03 GMT -5
Yeah its a gas dryer. Today I'm ripping it apart, checking everything inside, and replacing the thermostat. I bought it used with the thought that it basically is a rotating drum with a gas burner that heats air and goes through the clothes. I spoke with a friend who services old american gas dryers and told me the drum could definitely handle the heat to roast cocoa, probably coffee as well. I'll let you know how it goes. This piece of machinery is significantly cheaper than a a coffee roaster and keeps the beans in motion-unlike a convection oven (which is what I have been using until now with pizza racks and baking stone)
My initial concerns were over plastic parts inside (which I removed) and that there wasn't enough heat. The burners on the old dryers are pretty strong and that's why I decided to search out an old dryer for sale. I lucked out and found one in great condition for cheaper than a behmor with a much larger capacity (its rated for 8 kg of laundry not sure what that it in cocoa yet)
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kmio
Neophyte
Posts: 1
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Post by kmio on Dec 16, 2008 12:00:20 GMT -5
Actually this is a good idea (in my mind), in a past life I had a fluid bed dryer constructed out of an industrial dryer (stainless steel)for the purpose of forcing moisture out of polymer beads. The modification we made was to use an external thermostatically controlled hot air source and blew the air through the rotating dryer drum - it worked quite well...
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Post by holycacao on Jan 12, 2009 0:35:29 GMT -5
Yesterday I roasted several kg of DR hispaniola in my maytag roaster. The burner on the roaster tops out at around 170C. I roasted the beans for 15 minutes at 150-160 and then ran the auto fluff feature to cool in the drum. 5 minutes later-beautifully roasted and cooled beans. I'm not sure the capacity yet. As is- it appears to be able to handle 15-20kg per roast. I'm going to be adding some stainless steel mesh inside the drum to prevent such a drastic fall-which breaks up some of the beans during the roast. I could have a drum made-but steel work is expensive here. The quality of roast is tremendously superior than what I have been able to achieve in the oven with stone tiles and pizza racks. The beans were lightly roasted-yet peeled easily- and were sufficiently dry. The tough part of the overhaul was finding the various internal thermostats that needed to be cut or bridged. However it is well worth the tinkering.
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Post by jamescary on Jan 21, 2009 18:27:21 GMT -5
That's awesome, holycacao! Auto-fluffed cocoa beans! ;D
Do you have any way to dial in the speed of the drum? I wonder if that would help your bean breakage. Actually, does the beans breaking apart cause any roasting issues? Are the broken ones over-roasted?
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Post by holycacao on Jan 22, 2009 12:00:59 GMT -5
In order to solve a multitude of problems with my maytag roaster- fire hazard+broken beans-
I made a drum out of metal mesh, and fastened it to the fins of the dryer. The broken beans were not so brunt, in fact the entire roast was rather easy. The exhaust pipe makes it obvious when to stop the roast. Also this particularly model tops out at about 167 deg Celsius, which is really where we shoot for some of our roasts. When the burner is lit continously for 30 minutes the temp never drops and holds predominately at 150-160. The problem with the broken beans is they get small and make dust and get all over the bottom of the dry due to the way the air comes into a dryer. This dust, shell etc. can start a fire. After two roasts we tore apart the entire machine and covered every opening with tight meshings and made the drum to keep the beans from breaking. So far so good-it's still way cheaper than a convection oven-it's pretty easy to use-very low chance of scorching-you have a timer-and you can even use the auto fluff feature to cool the beans in the drum since there is tremendous airflow going through the unit. The beans are cool to touch in under 5 minutes.
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Post by jamescary on Jan 22, 2009 16:40:53 GMT -5
Ahh, isn't there a fire safety feature/ auto-shutoff on the unit??  |
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Post by holycacao on Jan 22, 2009 17:03:04 GMT -5
Unfortunately that is one of the wires that has to be cut to override the thermostat on the burner. We basically took an oven thermostat and bridged it to the burner. We had to cut different wires to keep the burner lit. The fire hazard is not so much the burner, as is all of the chaff that was collecting in the vicinity. There also is the buildup of cocoa butter on the drum itself that was also a result of the broken beans.
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