Roasting Cacao at Home- An Overview and Demo

[@jgranahan]

You guys are great! Love your videos and green coffee! Thank you!

[@guitarjoel717]

This is a really cool idea; the similarities AND differences are intriguing!

[@davidpoole9442]

Thanks for providing the opportunity for some exploration of cacao, to accompany your wonderful coffees. I can't wait to munch a bean straight out of our behmor. Should make for some awesome Holiday treats for the kids!

[@ehhnikola93]

chocolate doesnt get the recognition it deserves, specialty chocolate is so fun and exciting and i think it goes hand in hand with coffee. i would love to get more involved with it and this offering youre doing with the two is so awesome! i dont know when but at some point in my future i will explore chocolate to my hearts content. super exciting man

[@carolinepitts1169]

WOW! I just got my first batch of raw cacao to roast and drink as my body now complains about most coffees. I can have a little coffee and have bought the preroasted cacao but decided to play with it for myself. So I'm going to roast and blend on my own. Your video is absolutely great! It told me so much about what I need to do and expect! Thanks so much for this.

[@devenpatel3044]

If I could suggest for people who only have an air roaster, crush up the unroasted cacao into 0.1-0.2g bits (nibs), sift out fines with a metal sieve and then roast. Could also work great to blow out the husk so you get winnowing while roasting. Just a suggestion

[@ThompsonOwen]

Do you roast this way? My concern is that it’s really fast roast for cacao. But seems safer to roast nibs than beans…

[@devenpatel3044]

@@ThompsonOwen yup! It has been a while since I’ve roasted cacao, but I lowered my temps. My roaster is limited to 12min roasts so I still tried to roast batches in 8-10min, with small batch sizes and small nib sizes it worked out fine. I basically followed the same principle of translating roast concepts/myths for from coffee to cocoa. When roasters used to think that 19-30min roasts were the best. Now 9-12min roasts etc. The beans are different, softer and more oil, but very roast able this way. I’m not sure if it would translate well to a French roast or Kaffelogic, but lower temps for sure.

[@devenpatel3044]

@@ThompsonOwen I forgot to mention, it’s not a perfect solution because it’s basically impossible to break up the cacao evenly, but was doable. I didn’t have the popper at the time, so I’m not sure if the popper would do well above 50g batches, given the fan speed.

[@diggindiggenit6540]

Yeah I jumped on the special offering and just opened the package the Cacao is quite interesting to view first time, the packing was well above par and the shipping was extremely fast, Thanks for the helpful information and tips, I was just going to try the stove top SS popper with medium high heat and wing it but now I think I will opt for the conventional oven like in your video, I have mixed several things with coffee as experiments like pure butter, sea salt, different spices and wanted to try the Cacao tea mixed with black coffee:) nothing wrong with experimenting, have fun

[@joefinegold]

Would a high quality burr hand grinder (e.g., HG-1) be appropriate if it is turned slowly?

[@SweetMariasCoffee]

Good question. That should work. Just set it to a coarse setting and give it a good cleaning before grinding coffee. Let us know how it goes

[@nvalley]

I wish a melanger wasn't such a limited use tool because I would love to have one

[@pdmoerma]

that looks potentially addictive, kidding, but not entirely! lol. gonna check out your combos and look for advantages one country's cacao vs another, if any. thanks tom!