Journal heliocentric's Journal: Home-Brew Chocolate? (ask a subset of Slashdot) 12
This is something I have been pondering for some time. I thought about submitting it as an actual "Ask Slashdot," but the stuff I need to write up is a tad lengthy, and any answer to my "questions" would be so esoteric at best it would be useless.
Question: Why don't people "home-brew" their own chocolate?
People brew beer through an interesting process of carbonation, timing, flavoring, boiling, bottling, sterilizing, and other 'ings I wouldn't care to mention (well, drinking being a good one, too). To me this seems like an enjoyable process that is a labor of love.
Well, why don't we make our own chocolate?
Now, let me be open here. I did work for a chocolate company, but no, I wasn't an Umpa lumpa. Things were made on a LARGE scale, but it was not rocket science.
If you go to Hershey Park in Hershey, PA you can take the Chocolate World tour where you are told how chocolate is made. This sure seems a lot easier than making oh say, semiconductors and a whole wafer-fab thing. I'm certainly not going to start doing that in my basement anytime soon.
First, one would need beans. Beans, beans, magic beans! Cacao beans. But even major chocolate makers don't start with just the beans themselves. They get them already fermented and dried. Sure, us home-Umpas could do that, but for the sake of discussion let us pretend there is a usable dried bean market already. This is very much like coffee beans - they are sold easily on the trading market. Maybe not available at your local mega-mart, but then most beer brewers things aren't either.
So, we get our beans. We need to clean them up and roast them. This takes from 30 minutes to two hours. Sounds like something I can do at home, but I would suspect that much like coffee beans we can find ready roasted. Especially if this becomes as popular as home-brewing.
A lot of the flavor of the chocolate (like coffee) is decided in the bean selection, and chocolate companies take great pride in their mixes of different beans. A lot of this pride is for making a consistent chocolate product (for the larger companies) but we can concern ourselves with varried flavors and new experiences over the consistent products on the shelves.
Then we break the beans and take the nib, discarding the rest. Sounds doable. Maybe painstaking until we get the knack, but using big sieves and such should help the process. This might also become a product, just nibs.
Now we enter into possible dark territory. We need to crush the nibs ever so gently. The big companies do this by large granite rollers. This process also takes a long time. I don't know of such a tool available to the home consumer, nor do I know how such a thing would work so as to not make the neighbors think we took up the hobby of rolling bowling balls down the steps. But we're nerds, I'm sure we can think up something. [This is the ask Slashdot part of the story]
A mortar and pestle would work for small batches, but home-brew beer makes get to make carboys at a time. I want to make a few pounds at a time of chocolate.
Ok, once we are all ground up we can press our mush (this mush is actually called chocolate liquor). This releases the cocoa butter. This cocoa butter has tons of uses. My ex liked it as some sort of fancy skin cream. It is also what you need if you are going to make that simulated chocolate by-product-like substance called "White Chocolate." The dry stuff left over from your pressing would be cocoa powder. This is useful for things that the name implies already - cooking, baking, and making drinks. Remember, this is the pure stuff, not the Quik mix you find in the store, so I don't think we can just skip to this step from the beginning. But oh what savory chocolate cakes we could make! However, we could use some extra cocoa butter for the next step.
Take some chocolate liquor and mix in some condensed milk, sugar, and some of your extra cocoa butter. Combine well until you have what is called "crumb." You must then crush this (granite rollers again) to as fine as is humanly possible. The finer the crumb the smoother the chocolate in the end. Again, if we can solve our earlier crushing problem we can just use the same technique here.
Once crushed we sort of need to knead the chocolate. This is going to be the biggest obstacle to the home-Umpa. This process, called "conching," takes forever. 6-8 days for just your average $ershey's bar.
The big companies have huge conching rooms with large machines that go back and forth with granite rollers on granite slabs rolling the chocolate and folding it on itself. A very impressive sight. But, home-brewers get to let their beasts ferment for a while, we can conch. However, when we conch we have to have an active appliance running... this will take some thought.
Also, Hershey, PA smells of chocolate. Your house and, depending on the scale of your production, your neighborhood will also smell of chocolate for a long time.
You can tell when chocolate is done being conched. It just looks like liquid chocolate at this point. I don't know how to describe it, it just looks... well... "done" I guess I have to say.
The next step would be to temper the chocolate. We don't want maltempered candies, do we? To accomplish this we slowly heat and cool the chocolate several times. Sounds like something I can do on my stove with a simple double boiler. No worries here.
After it is tempered to our content (tempering gives it a shine and helps keep it stable at room temperature) we can just pour it from our double boiler into molds or dip strawberries or even body parts in it. I've found you can even dip Swedish fish and gummy bears in for a truly sugary combination.
For some reason this doesn't sound too daunting to me as compared to home-brewing. Sure, I would need some specialized tools, some unusual ingredients, and I know I'm not going to make Godiva-rival on the first batch. Yes, there are some instrument problems. But maybe we can find a solution.
Yum (Score:2)
Only problem I see, as you pointed out, is conching. That would certainly try my patience; on the other hand, it might teach me patience.
Sounds good to me. I would probably like to make homemade chocolate before making homebrew beer or wine.
some project tips. (Score:2)
Tempering chocolate is EASY after you've done it a couple of times to get the hang of it. You can do it on a double boiler, definitely. Best advice
Re:some project tips. (Score:2)
What about a ... (Score:1)
chip fab (Score:2)
Chip fab isn't really that bad. Sure, there are some clean room issues, but ask GMHowell about beer making: he says its all in the cleaning.
Chip design isn't really that bad either. Just don't forget to make a contact point for your bulk/body! (semi-con transistor joke)
been a while since I rode Chocolate world.. (Score:2)
if a rolling motion would work, and it doesn't need to remain heated, perhaps a modified rock polisher would work. these are designed to run for days and days, like a miniture cement truck, rolling stones around in a water/polish mixture...
Re:been a while since I rode Chocolate world.. (Score:1)
The big companies use a back and forth rolling action. The idea is a mixing action and a compressing action.
does the chocolate need to remain heated while this is occuring?
Yes. Not boiling or anything, but warmer than body temperature.
if a rolling motion would work, and it doesn't need to remain heated, perhaps a modified rock polisher would work. these are designed to run for days and days, like a miniture cement truck, rolling stones around in a water/
Re:been a while since I rode Chocolate world.. (Score:2)
You were close to the correct answer (Score:1)
How well does it work? The one at the store, you can load 15 lbs. of grain with no problem. AFAIK, it is only limited by the size of your hopper. Hand cranking can be a p
Re:You were close to the correct answer (Score:1)
Well I was describing how it is done by the big companies. There we are talking box car loads of beans, not 15 pounds at time. My reason for posting this JE was to find exactly the sort of thing like you linked to. I know how to make chocolate, I just don't know how to feasbily make 5 pounds of it here at home.
Thank you for the great link, I think we may have a good product to reccomend. I may gather all the info I can an
Re:You were close to the correct answer (Score:1)
Hrm (Score:2)
My Dad was an avid homebrewer - after all, he worked in the brewery industry for about 15 years (and could tell you stories that'd make your wossnames turn, especially about the drink-driving habits of some of the bosses of the commercial brewers). I have ther