My first attempts to roast cacao wasn’t so great…
Living in Chicago I was entranced by the intense aromaAroma refers to sensations perceived by the olfactory bulb and conveyed to the brain; whether through the nose or "retro-nasally": The aromatics of a coffee greatly influence its... ...more of a local chocolateA general flavor or aroma term reminiscent of chocolate. But what type? Usually described with more specifics.: Chocolate is a broad, general flavor or aroma term reminiscent of... ...more manufacturer, Blommers. They are not your typical chocolate confectionery business …they roast the cocoa beans and sell their chocolate to folks who make the sweet stuff. They also seem to produce their own line of chocolates which they sell from a storefront right there at the factory.
Since I started roasting coffee at home again, I kept thinking about the feasibility of roasting your own cocoa beans, either to produce some sort of refined chocolate or to add to coffee. I realized that the relationship between roasting coffee beans and cocoa beans is basically non-existent. Cocoa has an outer husk that would make it flammable in a coffee roastingThe application of heat to green coffee seeds (beans) to create palatable material for brewing a great cup!: Coffee roasting is a chemical process induced by heat, by... ...more device, and I knew that it goes through several roast/refinement stages, although I was (and still am) unclear exactly what they are.
While visiting Chicago, I went to the back of the factory which was along an old bike route I used to take. It was there I had seen them unloading cocoa beans by the rail car tracks. They shoveled them from the cars into a chute in the loading dock. With a plastic bag, I peered inside the rail car parked there, but not a cocoa bean was in sight. Then I shifted a plywood cover over the hole in the sidewalk and hit the motherlode. The chute must have been backed up all the way, and I quickly filled my sack. (By the way, it was a Sunday, so I couldn’t ask anyone in the store for permission, and I did get a tenuous “thumbs up” from a disinterested employee on a smoke break.)
I roasted about 10 oz of beans just as I would oven roast coffee, for about 15 minutes. They popped loudly, but there was no indication they would ignite. After cooling, I hulled them, ground some, and tried to make a chocolate-coffee beverage by simply mixing them in with the coffee grind. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good. If anything, it had a very nuttyNutty is a broad flavor term, reminiscent of nuts ... but what kind exactly?: Nutty is a broad flavor term, reminiscent of nuts. It is tied intrinsically to... ...more flavor but didn’t smell or taste like cocoa at all.
Later I attempted to recook the ground cocoa beans in a pan with oil. I read on a web page that you could make a coffee drink this way, by creating a mash of oil and ground cocoa and forming it into cakes. The results were awful. When I tried to make a beverage from it, the big course chunks of cocoa floated in the cup-like pieces of driftwood, and the flavor still wasn’t anything like cocoa or chocolate.
If you like chocolate in your coffee every so often, this image represents my two favorite options:
So I leave you with this …a few pictures and the hopes that someone out there knows more than I do about what a fellow can do with some raw cocoa beans. Please, share your knowledge!
-Tom
My Sad Sack tale of cocoa bean roasting elicited this response of a professional who explains why it might NOT be a good idea to roast cocoa at home. Well, he makes some good points but I think the industry is scared of this thing catching on … or at least it makes you wonder….
From: Simon.Blake
Subject: Roasting cocoa beans To: tom@
Tom, I am a process engineer working for Cadbury at their bean-processing site in the UK. I was trawling the net looking for info on a project I’m working on, and your site came up.
You seem to have tried to roast your own cocoa beans. Full marks for effort! However, unlike coffee, cocoa beans don’t lend themselves to home processingThe removal of the cherry and parchment from the coffee seed.: Coffee is either wet-processed (also called washed or wet-milled) or dry-processed (also called wild, natural or natural... ...more.
In order get anything remotely pleasant from cocoa beans at home you’d need to:
(a) thoroughly clean the beans – after removing stones, etc. we blast them with superheated steam. Not a practical proposition for the home user, and there is a quantifiable risk of infection from consuming a cocoa product which has not been properly “debacterised” so it really isn’t advisable to try processing cocoa beans at home
(b) dry and roast the whole bean – possible in a home oven I suppose, but not recommended as the shell is flammable. Particularly inadvisable in a gas oven. Industrial roasters are protected with deluge systems in case of fire – is your oven?
(c) separate the shell – i.e. “winnow” the beans. Smash them up with a hammer and throw them in the air in a breeze. The light shell will blow away, the heavier nib will fall back in your tray. Like separating wheat from chaffChaff is paper-like skin that comes off the coffee in the roasting process. Chaff from roasting is part of the innermost skin (the silverskin) of the coffee fruit... ...more.
(d) grind the nib. This will make it liquefy – you have made “cocoa liquor”. This is going to make a *real* mess of your grinder. It’s unlikely any grinder you have at home can get the liquor as fine as the ones used in industry.
(e) alkalize it to adjust the flavour and colour. Extremely tricky to get right at home, so don’t even try this.
(f) separate the cocoa butter from the cocoa solids. You’ll need some sort of filter press. Industrial presses reach enormous pressures – I can’t think of anything you could put in your kitchen which could do this.
(g) give/sell the cocoa butter to someone who makes chocolate – you won’t be able to use it for anything.
(h) grind the press cake into a fine powder. Add to hot milk and add sugar to taste. As you can see, getting a pleasant drink out of a cocoa bean is a LOT more involved than getting one out of a coffee bean!
For further info, come to the UK and visit Cadbury World in Bournville, Birmingham!
Also, see Cadbury’s website
Regards… SB
 | Guess what – one of our home roasting folks was inspired to create a roast-your-own-cocoa web site that sells cocoa beans and offers great information! Yes, you can roast cocoa at home …Visit John at Chocolate Alchemy; http://www.chocolatealchemy.com |
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One Response
Looks to me like Simon Blake was doing his utmost to discourage people from processing cocoa beans at home. Pretty much all of he said was fully blown out of proportion (eg. “quantifiable risk of infection”, what absolute nonsense.) I bought a 1 lb. bag of unroasted beans, sorted them, threw them on a cookie sheet, roasted them in my *electric* oven at 250 degrees F (120 degrees C) for 35 minutes. Ater that, I de-shelled them by hand -tedious, but not difficult. Then I ground all of the beans in my small, electric coffee grinder. Yes, it made a little mess, but it was absolutely not a huge problem. I put all the ground beans in a plastic tuperware container and put it in my refrigerator. The smell from the ground beans was GREAT! It was like the best milk chocolate you’ve ever smelled. I put it in cakes and cookies. Don’t let that Cadbury’s guy discourage you from doing your own thing. Remember that he has a vested interest in doing so.