Overview on Chocolate mass and current and alternative processing technologies
It has been years since the first refiner conches were built to make chocolate. At that particular stage, in the same chocolate machine, all necessary processing steps were performed, which took approximately a week to get the final product. To provide readers an overview of what is currently available on the market; it aims to introduce the different systems for chocolate mass production offered by various companies.
From fat or fat-containing ingredients, chocolate mass is prepared and they are usually sugar, cocoa butter and liquor, sometimes milk fat and particles, cocoa solids, and sometimes dry milk products. Very frequently there was the use of emulsifiers in chocolate production machine so that it can improve the flow of hygroscopic particles within the continuous fat phase. Several incidents take place during production:
- During cocoa fermentation removal of undesired volatile off-flavors contained mainly in cocoa particles
- Development in flavor
- By grinding there was a reduction of large particle sizes
- To reduce particle interaction during flow each individual is covered by a fat/emulsifier
The first two points can be combined as they are difficult to distinguish.
All this happened simultaneously when we look back at the old refiner conches and it used to become very hard to control, but a maximum of later technologies performed the grinding step separately. Chocolate preparations are handled by only a few mill types, as it is initially a very sticky mass, which during milling can transform to a sticky powder when the specific surface of particles increases. Plain roller mills (refiners) and stirred ball mills are the most frequently used devices.
Within a long-term kneading process called conching, other operations were also frequently performed. However, the devices require high capital investment still long conching times are recommended as they are associated with good quality. In the last 30 years, one of the major progress established by chocolate machine manufacturer was moving cocoa flavor treatment out of the conch into the upstream cocoa processing. To remove undesired volatiles and water thin-film evaporators were developed; if it is not performed anywhere else then those devices are also able to debacterise cocoa liquor.
