Bean-to-Bar Basics for Home Makers

Introduction

Bean-to-bar is chocolate with the curtain pulled back. You don’t just taste cacao and sugar—you taste the choices: how fermentation reads (fruit? funk? acidity?), what the roast does to nutty or floral notes, how cleanly you separated nibs from husk, and whether you refined long enough for texture to disappear.

The good news is you don’t need factory equipment to learn the craft. A micro-batch at home can teach you the logic of the process and the levers that actually move flavor, snap, gloss, and melt. The goal of this guide is simple: help you make your first deliberate bar, then give you a repeatable way to improve each batch.

A Clear Map of the Bean-to-Bar Process

At a high level, bean-to-bar is a chain of transformations:

• Sort and roast to develop aroma and reduce harshness.
• Crack and winnow to turn whole beans into clean nibs.
• Grind, refine, and conch to create smooth chocolate and shape the finish.
• Temper and mold to lock in snap and shine.

If you get lost, come back to that list. Each step has one main job, and most mistakes are simply a step not doing its job fully.

What You’ll Learn (And What You Won’t)

You’ll learn how to choose beans you can trust, how to roast for flavor development without roasting away origin character, and how cracking and winnowing change the “clarity” of a finished bar. You’ll also learn what refining and conching are actually doing, how to decide when you’ve done enough, and how to temper in a way that produces a bar you’re proud to unmold.

You won’t learn a single “universal” roast profile that works for every origin, because that doesn’t exist. Instead, you’ll learn how to build a reasonable starting point, taste your way forward, and keep notes so the next batch improves on purpose.

Equipment Tiers (Start Where You Are)

Home makers tend to stall out because they assume there’s a single correct tool. There isn’t. There are tiers.

Starter Tier (Learn the Process)

• Oven or toaster oven
• Baking sheet + parchment
• Scale
• Rolling pin or improvised cracker
• Fine sieve/colander for sorting nibs
• Hair dryer (cool) or small fan for improvised winnowing
• Blender (to learn the “liquor” stage)

This tier can produce interesting flavor learning, but you will usually hit a texture ceiling.

Intermediate Tier (Get Repeatability)

• Convection roasting setup or small drum roaster
• Simple DIY winnowing setup (bucket + fan, or shop vac method)
• Melanger (stone grinder)
• Thermometer (and ideally an IR thermometer for quick checks)

This is where “I can make a real bar” becomes true. A melanger is the most meaningful single upgrade because it moves you from gritty to smooth.

Serious Tier (Get Precision)

• Drum roaster with logging
• Dedicated winnower
• Melanger paired with a refiner
• Tempering machine

This tier shifts your time from improvisation to refinement: dialing roast curves, consistency, and production cadence.

Ingredient Basics (So Your Batch Behaves)

Most home dark chocolate is built from three things:

• Cacao nibs (or liquor): flavor and structure
• Sugar: sweetness and balance
• Cocoa butter: viscosity, melt, and molding behavior

A common starting formula is 70% cacao / 30% sugar. If you want a bar that molds easily and feels “silky” at home scale, consider adding 2–8% cocoa butter (adjust down the cacao percentage accordingly). More cocoa butter can make tempering and molding less stressful, especially if your refining setup runs warm or your molds are finicky.

Food Safety and Bean Quality (Unsexy, Non-Negotiable)

Cacao is an agricultural product. Treat it like one.

• Sort aggressively. Discard beans that are visibly moldy, smell musty, show insect damage, or are unusually light/flat.
• Roasting is not a magic reset. It helps, but it doesn’t turn low-quality beans into a great bar.
• Keep the process dry. Water is a texture and temper enemy (and can create thickening or seizing-like behavior).

If your beans smell like damp basement, compost them. If they smell like vinegar and fruit, that can be normal post-fermentation character.

Getting Started: The Five Core Steps

Step 1: Source and Sort Beans

Look for single-origin cacao with transparent post-harvest notes (especially fermentation and drying). If a seller can tell you the origin but not the post-harvest handling, treat it as a risk.

When sorting, you’re looking for three categories of problems:

• Defects (mold, insect damage, stones/debris)
• Size mismatch (very small beans roast faster than large beans)
• Aromas (musty, chemical, “wet”)

Sorting feels tedious, but it’s one of the highest-leverage habits in small batches because you don’t have volume to average defects away.

Step 2: Roast for Flavor Development (Not for Darkness)

Think of roasting as two jobs:

1. Drive off harshness and “raw” notes.
2. Develop aroma without tipping into smoke or ash.

As a starting point, roast in a drum or convection roaster at 250–280°F (120–138°C) for 20–35 minutes, depending on bean size and moisture. Agitate for even heat.

Pay attention to how the aroma changes:

• sharp vinegar → warm brownie → nutty/toasty

Stop when the inside of the bean is cooked through and the sharpness has softened—before the roast turns smoky or acrid.

Oven Roasting Tips (If That’s Your Setup)

• Preheat fully and use a thermometer if your oven runs hot/cold.
• Spread beans in a single layer.
• Stir every 5 minutes.
• Let beans rest uncovered after roasting so steam doesn’t re-wet them.

Step 3: Crack and Winnow (Clarity Comes From Clean Nibs)

Cracking breaks the roasted bean so you can separate husk from nib. Winnowing is the separation step, and it’s more important than many beginners expect: husk adds bitterness, dust, and “paper” notes, and it can make texture feel dull.

At home scale, use a hand cracker or rolling pin to break shells, then winnow with a small shop vac or hair dryer on cool to separate husks from nibs. Your target isn’t perfection—it’s consistency.

Quick Winnowing Reality Check

• If you see lots of papery bits, your crack is too gentle (larger shell pieces are easier to separate than dust).
• If you lose a lot of nib, your airflow is too strong.
• If your chocolate tastes harsh and woody, you likely left too much husk behind.

Step 4: Refine and Conch (Texture and Finish)

Refining and conching are often described as the same thing, but it’s helpful to separate them:

• Refining is texture work: reducing particle size so the chocolate stops feeling gritty.
• Conching is flavor/finish work: driving off volatiles, rounding edges, and integrating sweetness.

At home scale, a melanger does both.

Start by warming your cocoa butter enough that it’s fluid (not hot), then add nibs (or liquor) and let them break down. Add sugar gradually so the grinder can incorporate it without turning the batch into dry paste. Run 12–24 hours until the grit falls below ~20 microns and the sharp edges mellow.

Taste periodically. The goal isn’t “as long as possible,” it’s coherence: smooth texture, integrated sweetness, and a finish that feels clean.

Formulation Tips That Save Batches

• If your batch becomes too thick, you may need more cocoa butter (or your grinder may be running cool). Add a small amount and give it time.
• If the chocolate tastes thin or overly sweet, reduce cocoa butter next time and/or increase cacao percentage.
• If the chocolate feels waxy, you may have pushed cocoa butter too high for your palate.

Step 5: Temper and Mold (Snap, Shine, and Stability)

Tempering is controlled crystallization. You’re guiding cocoa butter into a stable form so the bar sets quickly, releases cleanly, and resists bloom.

For dark chocolate, a useful working target is 88–90°F (31–32°C), aiming for stable beta crystals. Mold promptly and tap out bubbles.

If you’re new to tempering, keep your process simple:

• Keep water away from the chocolate.
• Stir more than you think you need to.
• Don’t guess: use a thermometer.

A Typical Micro-Batch Timeline (Weekend Rhythm)

Micro-batches fit nicely into a weekend cadence:

• Day 1 (morning): Sort and roast. Rest beans so moisture leaves.
• Day 1 (afternoon): Crack and winnow. Store nibs sealed.
• Day 1 (evening): Start the melanger. Add sugar gradually.
• Overnight: Refine and conch. Taste in the morning.
• Day 2: Temper, mold, and clean up. Let bars set fully.

Then evaluate on day two (or day three if you can wait). Snap, shine, and mouthfeel will tell you what to adjust next time—your roast curve, your winnowing efficiency, your conch time, or your cocoa butter percentage.

Tips & Tricks

Additional high-payoff habits:

• Taste nibs before grinding. If they taste dull or acrid, refining won’t fix that.
• Keep a simple batch sheet. Origin, roast parameters, formulation, melanger time, and temper method are enough.
• Change one variable at a time. If you change roast and formulation and tempering method, you won’t know what helped.

Troubleshooting: The Problems You’ll Actually See

“My chocolate is gritty.”

Grittiness usually means particles are still too large.

• Refine/conch longer.
• Add sugar gradually so the melanger can break it down evenly.
• Verify you didn’t introduce moisture (water can create thickening and texture problems).

“My chocolate is too thick to mold.”

Common causes are low cocoa butter, too much sugar relative to fat, or a cool/worn grinder.

• Add a small amount of cocoa butter and let it fully incorporate.
• Warm the batch gently (not hot) and stir.
• Consider a slightly lower cacao percentage next batch.

“It tastes sour, sharp, or vinegary.”

That character often comes from fermentation acids.

• Roast slightly longer or a little warmer next time.
• Conch longer; some sharpness can mellow with time.
• Check your bean source; extreme acidity may be a post-harvest issue.

“It tastes smoky or ashy.”

This is usually roast overdevelopment.

• Lower roast temperature or shorten roast time next batch.
• Make sure your roasting setup isn’t creating hot spots.

“My bars bloom or streak.”

Most bloom is temper or cooling related.

• Ensure you truly hit (and held) a stable working temperature.
• Avoid very warm rooms when molding.
• Cool molds steadily; avoid rapid fridge temperature swings that cause condensation.

Conclusion

Home-scale bean-to-bar production rewards patience, cleanliness, and note-taking. Once you can make a bar that sets cleanly and tastes intentional, you’ve built a foundation you can iterate forever: roast curves, winnowing efficiency, conching time, and formulation tweaks.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long can nibs store before refining?

Up to 6 months in an airtight, odor-free container at 60–70°F (15–21°C). Keep them away from strong odors; nibs are porous and will pick up smells.

What if my temper streaks?

Re-melt to 115°F (46°C), cool to 82°F (28°C), and reheat to working temperature while stirring gently.

Why is my chocolate gritty?

Grittiness usually means sugar (or cocoa solids) are still too large. Conch/refine longer, add sugar gradually, and confirm the batch stayed dry.

Can I make bean-to-bar without a melanger?

You can learn the process without one, but texture will usually remain coarse. If smooth mouthfeel is the goal, a melanger (or equivalent refining approach) is the most direct path.