Chocolate Making: Bean-to-Nib Stage
One necessary requirement for making chocolate the way that I do, is patience. This is a trait that most would not associate with me. I’m all about efficient use of time, do it right and do it fast. Artisan chocolate can not be done that way. It has taught me to slow down in a sense. Although there are brief moments of chaos that do require that quick and efficient use of time, for the most part, you do what the chocolate tells you to. In this post, I will break down what I call the bean-to-nib stage, which consists of a cut test, hand sorting, roasting, and finally winnowing the roasted cocoa beans.
As I prepare to make a batch of chocolate, the first thing I do is take a sample from the bag of beans that I’ll be roasting and perform a cut test. This tool slices the cocoa beans in half for viewing and from this I can gauge the quality of fermentation, check for any mold or insect damage, and get an idea on how best to roast this batch. After my analysis, I proceed to hand sorting the beans for roasting.
Now that I have selected the best beans to go in to your chocolate, I prepare the roaster and load them in. Roasting the cocoa beans is the first step in my process that develops the resulting flavor of the chocolate, good or bad. It’s a step that can not be done by a set of rules or strict guidelines. They are simply ready when they are. After many attempts you begin to get a feel for it that is guided more by your senses than your notebook. They generally roast for 20 to 30 minutes at around 300-350 F. Once they are done, they are dumped from the roaster to quickly cool in the tray, and then the chaos begins.
Roasted cocoa beans do go stale so that is why I say “the chaos begins”. I move quickly from this point to get the beans to the conche for grinding. However, first their shells must be removed. That is done through a process called “winnowing”. In short, the beans are broken into pieces called “nibs”, they are then screened by size and the lighter shells are vacuumed away leaving just the nibs. I’ve included a short video here to show the winnower in action.
The winnowing process can take close to an hour from start to finish, but the resulting nibs are still bursting with chocolate aroma and flavor as I quickly whisk them away to the refiner/conche. It is in this machine that they will be heated and ground to a chocolate paste. After that….well, that’s for another post.