Crunchy Nibs After Refining in DCM Melanger

By The Archivist | 4 years ago | 1 min read

I’ve recently gotten started making 1-2kg batches of chocolate at home, using a DCM Premier Melanger. Ive consistently found that after stopping the machine when the primary chocolate flow is sufficiently smooth, there are crunchy nibs remaining on the walls of the drum and on the deflectors in the machine (understandable) but also UNDER the stone roller module, a shell of nibs around the center pillar of the drum. Is there a solution to this issue?

Archived Comments

Comment by: Joweke

Posted on: Aug 01, 2020

Thank you for the replies! I will start straining my chocolate after it is conched, smart thinking. I scrape while the chocolate is refining, but my small batches and the fact I don’t pre-refine seem to cause many nibs to remain intact at the end.

Comment by: DiscoverChoc

Posted on: Jul 30, 2020

@Joweke – Ben is right that care needs to be taken to scrape the bowl down completely. It’s also true that because the machines are small tiny differences in the manufacturing tolerances mean every machine will be slightly different in the way the chocolate flows in the bowl so some machines may require more scraping than others. Other factors that will have an impact on this are how/when the nibs are added into the bowl and the fat content of the beans and if cocoa butter is added.

Comment by: potomacchocolate

Posted on: Jul 29, 2020

I’ve always just scraped the places where nibs collect with a rubber spatula several times during the refining process. Even so, there are always a few nibs left, so I strain the chocolate through a fine sieve.