Roast using same roaster as coffee beans?

[shadewolf]

I roast my own coffee beans at home. If I used the same roaster for both coffee and cocoa, would my cocoa beans come out being flavoured like coffee? I am looking at purchasing the Behmor 1600 and am wondering if I can get away with just one roaster or if I absolutely must get a 2nd roaster for the cocoa. Currently we use popcorn poppers to roast small amounts of coffee beans and we definitely wouldn't want to try using the poppers for popcorn anymore as they would taste like coffee.

[Brad]

I just use my home oven. It works great.

Remember that the trick to roasting cocoa beans is low temperature, and longer time.

[kellymon]

I've never used the coffee roaster machine for either coffee or cacao.
I also use a (modified) popcorn poper for roasting coffee.....
And the oven works fine for me for cacao.....
As Brad mentions, slow and low is best with cacao....
I probably roast way lower than most folks here.... I like 225f to 275f, usually about 20-40 minutes with a toss (stir) of the beans in the middle.
All depends on the beans of coarse.
But I find that I LIKE many of the aromatics in the beans that a higher roast temp will drive off...... I don't want to lose too much of the acetic compounds too early in the process, I just want to drive off excess water and sterilize the cacao.... later refining and a long conching period (36-45 hrs) in the santha with the lid off at the end works for me to mellow final bite:)
I don't prefer milk chocolate though, I make dark. 70% or more nibs and 5% cc butter.... I want to taste the chocolate
peace,
robert

[holycacao]

You can definitely use the same roaster for cacao as coffee. Things to check are if the drum is one piece or is a cylinder with a back and front. Also the rotation of the drum might need to be slowed down if it breaks up the cocoa.

I believe that the coffee roaster is a much more efficient roaster-evenness repeatablilty, and you are able to control the heating of the beans much more accurately. You do roast at a lower temperature than coffee- but the roaster doesn't care what temp you use.

I think the advantage of a coffee roaster is the ability to efficiently use hot air for different periods of time to speed up the drying phase, slow down the roasting phase and have very specific roast curves which definitely affect final flavor in the chocolate. If you make chocolate prinicipally for the "brownie" flavor than an oven will be fine, but if you want to really play with the origin flavor, and tweak the roast flavor to your bean variety- a coffee roaster offers much more.
Just my 2 cents.
All the best,
Jo

[cheebs]

Probably to avoid cross-contamination of flavors, the best thing to do would be to get a different drum for each.

[holycacao]

you don't really have issues with cross contamination as there is a tremendous amount of air changes- the hot air travels fast through the beans and out of the roaster- our drum is made of stainless- and we definitely don't have any mismatch of flavors.
Of course I am talkinh about an industrial roaster- not a behmor type.

[beandreams]

holycacao I want to roast Coffee and cacao in the same roaster as well. every one I know roasting Coffee or making cacao is warning me about cross contamination, but none of them actually did roast both of them in the same machine. Since you have experience with roasting both and are saying you never noticed flavour transfer/cross contamination would you please tell me more about it? Do you have a cleaning routine in between Coffee and cacao roast for example? Or don't you have to adjust anything at all to avoid flavour transfering?
I'll be using a 5 kg drum roaster with adjustable airflow and drum speed.

[Ben]

John Nanci (the Alchemist of Chocolate Alchemy) roasts both and says there is no concern of cross-contamination. From Ask the Alchemist #199:

If I have a coffee roaster, can I roast cocoa or will my chocolate taste like coffee?
You can roast both coffee and cocoa in the same roaster. There is no cross contamination. I’ve been doing it for years. Even in a roaster used for the darkest coffee roasts the oils don’t transfer at the lower cocoa roasting temperatures and even if they did, the husk would take up any minor transfer and be winnowed away. And likewise, cocoa butter won’t leak into your coffee roaster. The cocoa butter is all encased in cells. That butter isn’t released until you grind the nibs.