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Good chocolate can improve one's mood even on the rainiest of days. However, before the final product is ready, the cocoa beans have to undergo multiple processing stages. The technological process consists of several phases, but the result is definitely worth it.

Initially, after the cocoa beans have been inspected and weighed, they undergo a cleaning process. The cleaned beans are then sorted and, if necessary, treated. This step involves an alkaline bath, filtration, fermentation, and drying. Whether or not the beans require treatment, the next step is to roast and cool the sorted beans. The roasted beans are then processed in a winnower to extract the nibs from the shells, which are subsequently ground into a cake using rollers or grinders. This grinding results in the first semi-finished product necessary for making chocolate, the liquid cocoa liquor.

Three roller mill Nagema

To obtain the second component, part of the liquor is transferred to hydraulic presses to extract the cocoa fat. This second semi-finished product will be used later to make our chocolate products. After the pressing process, a dry fraction of the liquor remains – the cocoa powder.

Returning to the process of producing chocolate products, the next step is to mix the remaining part of the cocoa liquor (not pressed) with the fat and powdered sugar in kneaders/grinders. It may seem surprising, as we mentioned earlier, to separate the fat from the cake in the previous step, but it is a necessary process. In its original form, the cocoa liquor has too low a fat content, which, after mixing with powdered sugar, may result in the consistency at moulding temperature not being fluid enough. Hence, the proportions of fat in the final chocolate mass are improved. Having obtained such a mixed semi-finished product, it is then ground one or several times on roller mills, which significantly reduces the size of the particles in the mass and causes any excess water to evaporate.

Grinder EE6 for mixing cocoa liquor and fat

One of the final stages of chocolate mass production is conching, a process that involves hours of mixing the mass at high temperatures. This process makes the product perfectly smooth and ready for further processing or packaging.

The final product creation process starts with tempering the chocolate mixture, which is then poured into the appropriate moulds and cooled. The solidified products are then removed from the moulds and transferred to packaging and storage.

You can also find the described process in the following diagram:

Diagram 1: Steps in processing chocolate mixture - from bean to finished product [1]

The complexity of this process can lead to mistakes, which can cause the chocolate to lose its divine taste or appearance. The quality of the produced chocolate is most affected by:

• the size, quality, and purity of the beans,
• bean refining,
• the roasting temperature and subsequent cooling and storage of the roasted beans,
• the proper conching and tempering process,
• correct moulding and packaging.

The most common problems that can arise from an improper execution of the chocolate production process are:

• Fat bloom - white deposits (spots or on the entire product surface) caused by the growth of cocoa fat on the surface of the product,
• Sugar bloom - grey, shiny spots of crystallised sugar,
• Lack of shine/dullness of the product,
• Incorrect tablet break,
• Other problems related to the taste of chocolate.

In the next post, we will delve into the details of how to effectively prevent the above effects at each stage of chocolate production.