How to Process Cocoa Beans
Cocoa beans come in three varieties: Criollo, Forastero and Trinitario. The Forastero is the most commonly used type of bean for chocolate production. There are four stages of cocoa bean processing: roasting, cracking, winnowing and grinding. Home processing of cocoa beans requires minimal equipment, but is a trial and error process that will improve only with experience. Does this Spark an idea?
Things You'll Need
- Fermented cocoa beans
- Oven
- Cookie sheet
- Cocoa mill (optional)
- Hair dryer (optional)
- Small fan (optional)
- Juicer
Instructions
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1
Find a reliable source for obtaining fermented cocoa beans. Tava.com is an online source for pesticide free Forastero cocoa beans.
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Roast the beans. Roasting will get rid of any harmful bacteria, make the cracking and winnowing less labor intensive and can be done in a standard kitchen oven. Give your full attention to the beans during the roast. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Place the beans in an even single layer on a cookie sheet and roast them at this temperature for five minutes. Slowly and continuously lower the temperature to 250 over a period of 15 minutes. Keep the beans at 250 until they are cracked, darker in color and emit a cocoa smell. Remove from the oven and allow cooling.
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3
Remove the outer shell from the inner "nib." You can remove the shells by hand, but this takes a significant amount of time and is labor intensive work. Investing in a cocoa mill is worth the cost if you plan on processing cocoa beans regularly. You can purchase one here at chocolatealchemy.com, or shop around to find one that fits your budget and needs.
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Winnow the nibs to remove large chunks of leftover husk. Winnowing is done with a hair dryer or small fan and simply means that you will be using the air stream to blow the bits of husk, which are lighter then the nib, away from the nib without blowing the nibs around. This takes practice, and will likely result in a large mess the first time. If you wish, you can do this by hand, but it takes much more time. Do not worry about removing all of the husk pieces, but do get the majority of them. Leftovers will be filtered out in the juicer.
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Grind the nibs in the juicer. Feed the nibs in slowly and do not apply excessive force; it takes time for the blade to liquefy the nibs, so patience is key. The result should be liquid cocoa dripping out the spout into a collection vessel.
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Tips & Warnings
You will need to experiment with the time and temperatures for roasting the beans as they vary by oven.
Processing cocoa beans involves cleaning up many messes.
Household grinders (coffee or meat) should not replace the juicer; they are ineffective for this process.
