Forum Activity for @Clay

Beth:

You can certainly "reconstitute" cocoa powder and cocoa butter with sugar (and other ingredients) to make chocolate. You do not have to start from liquor or mass.

You will need something to mix the ingredients together, get the particle size down, make sure that any clumps of particles (called agglomerates) are broken up, and that the particles are completely covered in fat. Some flavor development may also be necessary.

I do know people who just melt the cocoa butter, mix in (by hand) the cocoa powder, and add a non-crystalline sweetener (e.g., agave syrup). In this case, they do not use a melangeur/conche.

However, if you are using a crystalline sugar (e.g., white, evaporated cane juice), then you will need a grinder to get the texture right.

Beth:

Idon'tknow if i'm qualified to reply or give advice considering how little experience i have with making chocolate compared to the others on this forum

I am experimenting with bean to bar currently and have discovered that a wet stone grinder(widely available here in India and not too expensive. I got mine for Rs4200 which works out to roughly USD80 ) does a very good job of both refining and conching.

regards

I pressed return too soon, excuse my spelling.... I want to be clear that I am currently not a bean to bar maker, because of the immense cost and labour, but I am in another unknown category using powder, paste and butter to make my own chocolate. I am powdering coconut sugar in a vitamix, but find it still have graininess. I am trying to decide if I should purchase a conching machine as well as a temperer. thanks And also if a conching machine is the same thing as a melanger?

Wondering if anyone knows if a conching or melanger is necessary to mix cacao powder, butter and sugar, or does it have to be liqeur? [ sic: liquor is the correct term and spelling. ]

Hi everyone,

As an option for my school project I want to go over the costs of the machinery needed to produce chocolate. My partners and I are not knowledgeable in this area so I could use your expertise! The following are the machinery and respective prices that I have found (mostly from alibaba.com). Please let me know if the costs are wrong and if I am missing equipment or should replace any of them!

The production capacity for the company is 2475 kg of dark chocolate per month, so around 15 kg per hour.

Process: bean cleaning, roasting, cracking, winnowing, nib grinding, refining/conching, tempering, molding

Bean Cleaner: $2000

http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/cocoa-bean-cleaning-machine.html

Roaster: $200

http://shop.chocolatealchemy.com/products/behmor-1600-roaster

Cracker: $1000 http://www.cocoatown.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=71&Itemid=77

Winnower: $800 http://www.thechocolatelife.com/group/homechocolatemakers/forum/topics/1978963:Topic:12336?commentId=1978963%3AComment%3A13785&groupId=1978963%3AGroup%3A8115

Nib grinder: 150$ http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/472430642/Self_automatic_bean_grinder.html

Two-roll refiner: $2000 http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/534536412/Two_roll_type_rubber_refiner.html

Five-roll refiner: $5000

Conch machine: $1000 http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/339891701/SMJ500_Chocolate_conche.html

(cheaper alternative to two-roll & conch): refiner/conching: 500$ Santha Wet Grinder

Tempering machine: $1000

http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/508281763/2012_Very_Hot_Chocolate_Tempering_Machine.html

- mixer: $ 2000

http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/432429310/Chocolate_Mixer.html

- molds: 60$ per (supports 20 spoons).

Thank you kindly!
Regards,
Daniel

Aloha Chocolate Life family,

I am a new member on this forum but have been making and exploring chocolate for a good while now and it is a continually exciting journey for me. I have only recently scaled up and started retail sales of my bars. One of the most valuable parts of taking a passion into the business world is feedback from customers. I have found that, amongst the connoisseur types, the recent "chocolate as health food" types, the purists, the niche groups like diabetic/sugar-free dieters, and the generic customers who just like chocolate whether it's Hershey's or Bonnat, there is also a wide range of preference for sweeteners.

Personally, I feel great about providing bars that are made with 100% organic ingredients only, keeping it natural and using no fillers or flavor substitutes. Using artificial or heavily refined sweeteners or flavorings is out of the question for me. I wonder if others have done much experimenting with different (natural) sweeteners other than cane sugar, specifically for bars, and how things turned out? Not just for you, but for customers as well. Does anyone have a preference for a sweetener for chocolate bars that is not cane sugar?

I have found that maple sugar is extremely complimentary to chocolate, and people LOVE it. It is probably 20X as expensive as what most chocolate makers use however.

Hi Matthew

You can visit our web page www.coffeenutsroasters.com I think Antonino Allegra fro Cocoa Fair gave some idea about our roasters you can roast cocoa in our roasters too

Clay,

I spoke to my roaster manufacturer about the aforementioned modifications. He told me that to have a speed controller on the motor would not be possible, as the motors come standard. However, he said that to change the drum rotation speed, the length of the pulley would have to be changed. In the existing design that he has, the rpm for the drum is 32. Should I take the one he has on stock, or should I ask him to reduce the speed somewhere in the range of 25-28?

PS: My roaster is a 25 kg capacity.

Thanks for your time Clay. I greatly appreciate it!

Luvin

Luvin:

Put a speed controller on your motor and tune it to the speed you need - based on the diameter of the drum you're using and how you're roasting (time/temp). Smaller drums can run faster as the beans are not subject to as much banging around as a larger drum.

Airflow control, conceptually, means having a fan that enables you to blow air through the drum. Ideally, you'd control the speed and temperature of the airflow.

Thanks Ben & Dan for your much appreciated insight.

- Is there an absolute number (in RPM) as to what the drum rotation speed should be?

- Im getting the roaster made in mild steel with the drum contact parts in stainless steel. Should I be going for a complete mild steel body, according to what you are suggesting?

- Can you please let me know more about what you mean when you say 'airflow control'. I'll be able to get this across to my manufacturer, better.

Thank you for your help. I greatly appreciate it!

Luvin

Convection ovens are versatile beasts to be true and I recommend a lot of them into situations where there is no budget for a more conventional roaster.

I would like to add that cooking is also about CONTROLLING heat and airflow.One thing very few convection ovens have is any sort of even the most basic control over the airflow.

Also, not all convection ovens heat evenly from top to bottom, left to right, back to front. One very easy way to see how even your oven is is to put yellow or white cake batter into a sheet pan on every rack in the oven and bake it. Light areas in the top crust indicate places where the oven is cooler, dark brown areas indicate places where the oven is hotter.

Hi Luvin,

We, Coffee-Tech Engineering, have several customers around the world using our roasters for cocoa roasting - on our small capacity roasters and on our commercial roasters.

What Ben writes is true - you'll want to have control over drum speed and thermal behavior. I would also add that drum material is an important factor (we suggest perforated mild steel drums for cocoa) and airflow control is also something that will only benefit you.

- Dan

Hi Luvin,

See Colin's post earlier in this thread. I think the only modifications would be related to drum speed and the ability to roast at lower temperatures. If you can control those two things adequately, a coffee roaster should work fine.

-Ben

Convection Oven.

It roasts 35lbs at a time (260lbs in 8 hours), and does a fine job, provided you place the beans on screens or use perforated sheet pans.

On a smaller scale (Under $30k), there simply is no better solution. On top of that, you can roast your dinner, and cupcakes, and brownies, and coffee, and anything else you like.

Cooking ANYTHING is about heat and airflow. It's that simple. A convection oven has both.

Cheers.

Brad

Hi guys,

I am on the lookout of purchasing a coffee roaster myself. I spoke to the manufacturer about the modifications, and he told me to be more specific and give him technicalities, as to what modifications do I need for cocoa.

Can you'll please suggest the modifications that I am going to have to get integrated on my roaster?

Thank you!

Luvin

www.sevvalmakine.com

[Note from moderator: Rifat appears to work for Sevval, which is located in Turkey. In addition to making coffee roasters they make nut roasters and other machines. This link is to the home page, which is in Turksish. Here is a direct link to the coffee roasters (in English): http://www.sevvalmakine.com/?/en/urunler.html#Coffee Roaster

This is great, thank you for the info. I'll reach out to Erkan and possibly Coffe-tech as well.

All the best.

M

here we go, extract from an email i sent to a The Chocolate Life memebr.:

Absolutely. - In fact, I prefer when people share this kind of stuff publicly on the site rather than privately via e-mail. That way, every member can benefit, including people who didn't know they wanted to know this stuff.

Hi Clay,

i have pics and info about the Roaster, is it ok to post it?

Hi. Just wanted to add a bit from my experience. I'm working at Coffee-Tech Engineering.

We're manufacturers of coffee roasters and we have several customers roasting cacao with our roasters, some with our 2 Kg shop roasters and some with our 15 Kg commercial roaster.

Drum speed and other configurations were set, in advance, to meet the needs of the customers.

I might also add that our shop roasters embed restricted fluid bed roasting and that on our manual roaster all these can be set by the end-users themselves.

Anyway, if somebody wants more information, you're welcome to contact me or just look us up.

Hope I didn't break any ethical rules with this post

Can you post it please so we can all get the info? Thank you.

Great infocan you send me the information on where you got your roaster.

I've looked into coffee roasters too, and the one issue was drum speed. The people I contacted indicated that they could slow down the drum rotation of any size of coffee roaster they sold, but there would be an extra cost.

It sounds to me like Antonino has it dialed in (no pun intended) with the digital drum speed control. Sounds Interesting!

Cheers

Brad

Sorry, continued:

and unless you mess around with the setting you should have quite a even, consistent product.

we roast 15 kg beans at time and breakage is minimal (anyway, you need to winnow!!) with few tricks we manage to extract certain notes that we wish to have.. just a small change on the flame change the taste from hazelnutty to roast almond.

of course there is no limit to perfection and no limit to theoretical roasting and cost involved, but you are also in business to make money..

Hi Matthew, Colin,

we didn't modify the machine.

our roaster is equipped with digital drum speed control, an electronic/digital thermostat, and 3 point of gas/fire adjustment + ventilation valve that we can adjust as well.

we can accurately roast at temp of 120 or 140C quite accurately and unless you mess around with the settings.

Matthew,

You'll find that most coffee roasting drums rotate too rapidly and tend to chew up cacao. I've tried in a Dietrich and a Joper and both produced significant levels of breakage. Also, these machines aren't engineered for the process of roasting cacao, which has different heat transfer characteristics and temperature profiles than coffee, so you'll find it's very difficult to dial back the heaters to achieve accurate temperature profiling without scorching. There's nothing better out there right now than a properly configured convection oven for roasting at that volume unless you have 200k, in my opinion. You can get used gas convection ovens for next to nothing. A spouting fluid bed coffee roaster would be my second bet, but fluidizing cacao requires much higher airflow than coffee, so you're batch volumes would be smaller than rated and you'll still have issues with erratic agitation and breakage. Good luck!

Hi Antonino-

Thanks for the information, did you have to do any modifications to the equipment?

-M

Hi Yes you can, we do roast in a coffee roaster and we do 1 ton a month if not more.

DO NOT BUY AMBEX!!! we have been victim of a fraud directly from them and lost about $5000!!! unfortunately we are in South Africa and is very difficult to fight them. if you want i give you the contact details of the factory in Turkey that build the ambex roasters and get it for a 5th of the price...

the roaster is based on a italian made drum and system and the rest is build in Turkey. decent machine and with a 19kg gas bottle we roast at least 15 bags of beans.

I wanted to see if any chocolate producers have used coffee roasters to roast cacao. I'm looking for a mid-size capacity roaster that doesn't look like a toaster oven and doesn't cost $30K. There are a good number of coffee roasters that are significantly less expensive and are much more attractive.

Thanks for your response. I am now thinking I want a Savage bros (or similar) auto temperer (that doesn't require seed) and a melanger/concher? I am using cacao powder and butter at the moment and coconut sugar, but want to source paste instead of powder. I am not sure if a melanger is necessary to mix the sugar in, I am thinking it will help my texture though. I am currently using a vita mix to powder the sugar, and I am tempering using a double boiler. I also wondered what is the difference between a temperer and a moulding machine? I saw a Preformac moulding machine on one of these sites, haven't investigated that company yet.

Beth:

There are a lot of resources here on TheChocolateLife to point you in the right direction. It helps to know what you're looking for. I'd point you in one direction if you were looking for machinery to produce 10MT of chocolate from the bean than I would for a tempering machine or similar.

Make sense?

:: Clay

I've always had very good luck with the Classifieds at the Retail Confectioners' Association website.

You might want to try www.unionmachinery.com . Jim Greenberg and his brother buy and sell a LOT of chocolate equipment for many different volumes of production.

does anyone have any good links for searching used chocolate machinery?

Good news, I got a quote! Thanks everyone =)

Thanks Brad! I will contact them.

Olivier's Chocolate & Candy here in Calgary has a prodution facility with moulding machines and cooling tunnels to address your needs. They can even source out a well priced chocolate for you.

info@oliviers.ca. Chocolate Factory: Bay C 2828 54 Ave SE, Calgary, AB (403) 266-6028

Cheers.

Brad

I apologize, I did not read your post correctly. I thought you would be making the spoons yourself. If you are looking to contract out the work, I have no idea.

I do not know much about chocolate, so I only specified dark chocolate. Assume it is "standard" dark chocolate and not very expensive.

The outsourcing is to take place in Ste Hyacinthe Quebec, approximately 60 km from the "company warehouse" in Montreal, Quebec.

Each batch of 2500kg of chocolate spoons is to be completed every month. Assume delivery is handled by us, not the outsourcer.

We estimate each spoon will be sold for $0.75 at retail.

Assume the molds will be provided by us.

Is there anything else I should add? Our business plan is not supposed to go into minute details so I do not have much more than this, unfortunately. A reasonable estimation is all I need!

Thanks again,
Daniel

Hi Brian,

Unfortunately it is a school project (i cannot say if we will undertake this in the future).

Hi Daniel, are you seeking quotes to potentially actually do this, or just to get numbers for a school project? I can ask at a factory here in Peru that does that kind of small chocolate run, but i can't waste their time on a purely theoretical problem.

saludos,

brian