Building a machine is very much like cooking. You are taking simple things putting them together in such a way that the result is greater than the sum of its parts.
Next, Next Video: I awaken my ancient bloodline of the divine creators of our mortal plane and use my newfound unlimited power to create cocoa beans without husks
I use an old farmer blower (used to blow husks from wheat and other types of farm products) to remove that. Tho, that's cause i already own one, blow drier on a sieve with decently large eyes should work too, i s'pose.
I have a dust cyclone in my woodshop ..it's a smaller one that attaches to my shop vacc....it looks almost exactly like part of that apparatus he showed....(and the bag on the "end" .look like it was attached to one of the smaller capacity dust extractors...
I winnow my coffee beans on a piece of window screen set on top of a box fan that's resting on two lawn chair. If I have to do it inside, I use a second fan to blow the chaff out the window. Seems like it should work for cocoa beans.
It works but is ungodly messy. When using a fan, I do it outside and it looks like I got hit by a cocoa husk hurricane. Doing it inside like he is attempting to do is a recipe for disaster without a proper winnower.
Alex, I'd recommend searching "seed cleaner" as a basis for your contraption. Basically screened trays at a slight downward angle that you can shake back and forth so the heavy nibs slowly slide down, while a fan blows the husks up and out. I'd imagine a tote bin with a hole and an adjustable fan blowing in the bottom corner, and a vacuum in the opposite top corner. Multiple passes are expected and normal. I grew up on a farm watching my dad and grandpa adjusting the fans and speed of the sieves of combine harvesters for wheat, barley, soy, etc. and the concept is identical
Seed cleaners are in fact the basis for most small scale cocoa winnowers. Instead of using a fan though, the most common technique is actually to use only a vacuum (shop vac) and pull the air through the husk/nibs as it is falling. The lighter husk gets pulled off into the vacuum leaving the nib to fall. Having the mixture bounce off obstacles on the down path helps to separate it out too. The key to the system is being able to adjust the amount of vacuum applied to the falling nib/husk mix.
There is a pretty cheap and efficient solution to winnowing, a lot of bird people do it. You see, parrots eat the seeds but leave the husks in the feeder, so a lot of the uneaten seeds go to waste when you replace their food. So people came up with a box that has two tunnels and a fan that blows the husks away in the second compartment but lightweight seeds drop to the first one. Simple but it works. You would need some plywood a computer cooler and a few nails. Try Goodling "bird seed separator machine"
Alex~I'm deeply impressed! Video posted 3 minutes ago. 302 views and 55 likes! You are indeed a lucky man (the hard work paying off kind of "lucky") and we, your fans are so grateful for you. Your hard work and dedication is recognized and revered. Thank you. Jenn 💖 a huge fan in Canada 🍁
The simplest method I have found for separating out two materials is putting an inlet and outlet on the lid of a bucket and putting it in line with a vacuum. The light particles continue on, but the heavy particles fall to the bottom. I have also used a thein baffle which works well when both parts are on the lighter side (sawdust for example), and they are much easier to make than a cyclone. Always fun to see what you are trying out.
Hi Alex! Although it's a little late for this advice - we do something like this in India a lot when trying to separate the peanut husk/skin from the peanuts themselves. What works in households is that you can place this in a big tray and kind of jerk it upwards in order to get all the particles to rise in the air. While this is happening, blow on it. It works perfectly!
Hi Alex I was recently rewatching some of your old videos and stumbled upon the " 5 courses 10$ menu ! Trader Joe's challenge " In this video u use a technique to separate squash seeds from the pulp which might be a solution to your problem: putting the whole thing in water The nibs , being more dense and heavy, will sink to the bottom and the husk will float on the suface
It won't work on these type of material Cocoa, like coffee bean and tea leaf Will release some of their property to water What's the point of buying super premium beans if you going to dilute it at the end
You could use dry panning techniques for extracting the husks, the same technique used to separate gold from sand and dirt, u could build a machine for doing that
It's easy.. first you have to measure the resistance of the husks and nibs. Then you divide those values by their weight in relation to the humidity. Then you put everything in a stainless steel bowl and connect it to a flux capacitor, that you configurated with the calculated values. It's just a bit hard to get the plutonium for the flux capacitor.. the rest should be easy-peasy
I have a recommendation. You know how cereal tends to separate when you shake it? How about putting the beans it all in a large container and attaching a motor with an unbalanced counterweight (aka your drill) and running it for a while (the vibration will shake the container and separate the denser parts from the lighter parts). Greetings from Germany!
If they have different densities you could separate them in a water bath. Preferably, a cold water bath so you don't extract any flavors from the nibs. I don't know a thing about chocolate making, just giving ideas.
NO!! Water is the absolute enemy when it comes to chocolate making. The nib WILL absorb water almost instantly and require an additional step to dry at a minimum. You will still end up with a tea though as some flavors will be extracted no matter what. Problem is I am pretty sure the nib floats too.
For the separation, I did something similar for a summer job in a crop research lab with an air separator. You need a clear plastic pipe, maybe around 4 inches in diameter and 4 feet long, a fabric bag, some wood for supports, a source of air like a shopvac, and some random other bits. Cut off three sections of pipe, maybe around 3-4 inches long each. Take one and add a screen with epoxy to the bottom and add a handle to the side, we will call this the cup. Take another section and attach a thin metal disk on a pivot to act as a valve. Stack them together so you have the section with the valve at the bottom, then the unmodified section (you want the metal valve to be between the two pipes, not at the very bottom of the stack), then the cup and the rest of the pipe. Attach all except the cup to a piece of wood so that you can stand it up vertically and slide the cup in and out of it's slot. Cut a slot into the wood to allow the valve to open, or put the pivot on the front with a handle to operate it. Attach the output of a shopvac to the bottom and some sort of catch bag on the top that will stop the shells but let the air out. Take your mix of nibs and shells and filter out the dust just to make the process cleaner. Take the cup from the pipe and put some of the mix into it. The exact amount will depend on the setup but you will figure out what works best fairly quickly. Too much and it will clog the pipe and everything will blow out the top, too little and it will take you forever. Close the valve and slide the cup with the mix to the opening to complete the pipe. Turn on the shopvac and slowly open the valve to control the amount of air passing through the pipe. You want enough air going through that the shells get blown out the top but the nibs stay inside. This is why the pipe is clear, so that you can see it happening. When it is as clean as you can get it, close the valve, wait for the nibs to settle down, and take out the cup. Dump the cup into a bowl and repeat until everything is cleaned.
You can get those cyclone dust collection/separator funnels from hardware stores. They are usually mounted over a trash bin and you attach a vacuum cleaner hose and machine up to them. All the heavy stuff falls into the trash bin instead of going up the vacuum cleaner. They are good because you don't have to change vacuum cleaner bags as often when cleaning up a big mess of mostly larger wood chips etc in the workshop. Only the small dirt makes it to the vacuum bag.
This Old Tony could likely build something that would do this. And it would be another very interesting collaboration. But you would have to do the initial design, of course. Great stuff, Alex, and thumbs up!
Hey Alex! Try to use a metal pan ( "comal" in México ) to "almost" burn the shell of the beans, that way you can pull it out with your fingers, later you can bake the cocoa in the oven! I used this method to make traditional chocolate in México.
Use gravity+wind resistance to shoot nibs+husks across row of buckets. Central buckets are pass-through, nearer buckets should be nibs (higher mass/wind resistance), further blown pieces should be husks. The pass-through could contain a further light chopping before re-processing. Or... Use a kids popcorn maker without the heat on! ☺️
Alex, use a filter and pass the cocoa nibs and husk mixture through. Then as they fall, use a hair dryer to blow out the lighted husk pieces. Rinse and repeat. It maybe more time consuming but it could help it you don't have the industrial equipment.
Alex look at how they separate gold flakes from sand. The nibs may be heavier than the husk and fall the the bottom through a series of movements or air dusplacements. Or perhaps even water :)
ok so, Dyson vacuums use a series of cones to separate particle sizes (they got the idea from the filtration methods that have been used for decades in mines). Perhaps something like that could work for winnowing? Either that or the principles for chromatography, where you basically send particles around a curve, and the heavier bits fly to the outside of the curve. Either way lol, I'm really enjoying this chocolate series, and I can't wait to see what you come up with! For me, I was intrigued by the wet grinding of the chocolate, so I would like to see the difference between wet ground raw chocolate and wet ground roasted chocolate.
Helpful tip for making the text like the "subtitles" around the 1:50 mark is to have white text with a black outline. that contrast makes it so it can be read over ANY background.
Alex, just use a hand han or a piece of paper to fan the top of the nib/husk mixture. Shake the pan and the lighter husks will rise to the top and get blown off by the fan.
There is a youtube channel by Aaron Sylvester in Grenada where they go through the chocolate making process from growing beans to making chocolate. They have an elaborate DIY winnowing machine made of pvc pipe and a vacuum but the video shows the principles of how the machine functions.
How about pvc pipe with hopper that shakes the mixture slowly toward the downward chute and vacuum line from above? The vacuum catches the husks, catch tray below for nibs
6 inch wide pipe, shopvac attached at the top. Cut a hole in the side of the pipe and attach a hopper for your cocoa, mount the pipe vertically somehow, leave the bottom completely open, place a collecting tray down there to catch the nibs. For more control, get a valve normally used for DIY central vac installations that use a shop vac as the power source (Can find those at your hardware store, ask an employee) so that you can adjust the amount of air the vacuum pulls through the apparatus. More airflow = heavier bits sucked into the shop vac More tube height = better ability to separate things that weigh very similar amounts More tube width = more capacity, but you will require exponentially more airflow as you go wider. I think a 6 inch pipe should be able to handle all the air a shop vac can move at a flow rate that won't suck up your nibs.
Well, since I am from the middle east I used to see ppl doing the "Winnoing" to the BULGUR🌾🌾 in the first steps of its making. By holding the crushed bulgur in a big bowl at their head's level then slowly let the grains drop from it (almost like you did with your hands), the air flow will help the separation and a fan would help alot with this too. But yeah as you said you have to do it outside because it is messy Good luck!
I always thought the best way to seperate chaff by hand was to have a broad bowl with the seed and husk, and to toss it gently in the air and catch it again. The moment where it is suspended above the bowl allows the wind to seperate chaff while maintaining control of the nibs.
@@addledhead Wow, that reminded me of my grandma😬. She did it this way. So yeah there are two methods, but yours is a bit hard for someone who never did it before. Take care (:
I spent some of my youth on a "living history" farm....there was a platform, (often doubling as a dance floor, and occasionally as a shearing floor)...that was always called "The Winnowing floor"...it was about 30'-40' across. freshly harvested wheat, was spread out to dry a bit, then threshed with a flail or wooden roller ....swept back up into a pile on corner closest to the windward, we would take a wide coal shovel full, and "loft" it into the air...the breeze would catch the chaff (the husks) and carry them further downwind than the heavier, denser grains. if you did it right, the two would have a pretty well defined separation.... one of the tasks I got tapped to do, was sweeping the chaff up and disposing of it, and pushing the grain back to the main pile so it could be "run again"....
Sounds like you're making a fluidized bed! Check the falling velocity of the husk and the nib, that is, the velocity of upward air needed for the particle to be suspended in the air chute. Control the air such that it can blow the husks up and out, but the heavier nibs remain. Good luck and much love to you!!!
This reminds me of how I take the husk off my peanuts, crush them up in a bag, pour into bottle with some vent flaps in the bottom for air flow and to move the nuts around, then put a vacuum on the top off the bottle and watch all the light flakes vanish
Alex! Look up the Brazil Nut effect. If you have a mixture of particals of differing size's when vibrated the larger particals float to the top... Just as a quick experiment you could fill a tall glass with the husk nib mixture abd place it on top of your sander!
A suggestion: Put a double handful of the "grind" in a kitchen strainer. Hold a vacuum cleaner above the strainer and agitate up and down also side to side. Vacuum up the dust from above holding the strainer over a tray or large bowl to catch small pieces of the roasted chocolate.
The tangy notes you are getting in the raw beans is vinegar. The bacteria responsible for the fermentation of the cacao beans creates vinegar as a by-product. Your crumbling of the bean when trying to peel the beans is largely because you aren't being very delicate. We can peel ours as a whole bean about 80-90% of the time. It is however VERY slow. Hand peeling takes hours to get a reasonable amount ready to process. A winnower is definitely the way to go. Chocolate Alchemy has some good DIY plans for building a winnower. Using the airflow to blow out the husk is effective but yes it is VERY messy!
Alex there's a cyclone dust collector that hooks up to a shop vac. Us woodworkers use it to separate the light sawdust from the heavier wood chips. I would bet that it could work to winnow your cocao beans. The one I saw was oneida cyclones I think
Different solutions I saw in the comments: 1) Use the static electricity from a balloon 2) Pan it like gold 3) use a low suck vacuum 4) put the nibs and husks in water- the husks should float. 5) put the nibs and husks in a tumbler of sorts. The lighter husks should come out on top
Hi Alex, a quick tip is that white text with a black outline is visible on ANY background and would really help with your subtitles! Otherwise this chocolate series is second only to your ramen series!
You own a vacuum cleaner, so you could easily use that to create airflow across a box, thereby cleaning the husk mess and winnowing at the same time. Using a cylinder and an offset suction could create a vortex which should help.
A centrifugal cyclone separator like those used in some shop vacs might be able to separate the heavy beans from the light husk, but I would try a simple fan or a leaf blower first first.
I think you could build simple cyclone and connect it to the Y shape tube, where through long side you will throw (i do not know proper word) mix, and throuh the branch you must connect cyclone with vacuum. Light parts should fall down, while light will be sucked in cyclone. I use this method for separating cranberry and blueberry from the leaves
Lots of folks have already recommended looking at cyclone dust separators, as you have in the short clip at the end. You consulted This Old Tony, now you need to get back the the original build it yourself guy UA-cam jockey, Matthias Wandel. His cyclone separators are great. I built one for my shop and it works perfect. I didn't make the blower though. His and Marius Hornberger's are great builds.
Perhaps a tube with a funnel at the top with another tube connected to a vacuum cleaner coming in at an angle could be used to separate the husks. We have such contraptions for separating leaves from blueberries here in Sweden.
here in Venezuela our cocoa beans are very famous and the tecnique of the rural areas is to let it dry on the floor by the sun. that should make a diference
I tried to build a winnowing machine out of a 5 gallon bucket and a bunch of PVC. Ended up purchasing a pre-fabricated winnower that I didn't have the tools to recreate. Before that, I was blowing the husks off my 2nd story apartment balcony and onto the sidewalk in Oakland. The sidewalk would stay crunchy for weeks.
make a box with a mesh bottom to allow air flow, pour in nibs/husk, put your box on a powerful fan shake the box with the fan on. Simple solution to an annoying problem. If you want to collect the husks so they don't make a mess just put a garbage bag on top of the box with some small holes to allow air flow but still collect the husk particles
Hey Alex just wondering why can't you straighten it with water the heavier more dense seeds will just float to the bottom and the husk will stay on top then just scoop the husk with a spoon or small strainer
Salut Alex! If you need something with a little more airflow for that contraption that you are about to build, consider (If you haven't yet) using the hoover. If it's the same Kärcher as mine you can switch the hose to the back and make it blow air instead ...
The way that machine is layed out, there's no way it isn't using a cyclone. There's a stainless looking cone on the left of the machine that makes me think of the DIY cyclones you can buy on Amazon, which would be a pretty straightforward solution if it worked. EDIT: Alternatively, you could build one using a food grade 5 gallon bucket. I've done this for woodworking and there are many slight variations and tutorials people have come up with.
Just heard your interview on Milk Street radio NPR. I heard him introduce a French guy named Alex, and had a feeling it was you, always a welcome voice.
You're becoming the modern day Willy Wonka. You just need a sweet tophat. Whoever figured how to do this with chocolate deserves a Nobel prize. It's more complicated than I ever imagined
if the nib bits sink in water but the husk floats, you might be able to separate them that way. It would be easy to test as well, if you are willing to possibly sacrifice a handful of your nib/husk mix by dropping it in a pan of water (with enough depth that you can skim off whichever floats)
I'm thinking a hoover that uses a nozzle like the Henry hoovers and create a dyi end piece that widens like a reverse hopper, this should lower the suction power so it pulls up the husks and leaves the nibs, clean and quick, if you can work out the size you would need. a cloth might be worth adding to the end so it sucks up the husks and gets stuck on the cloth so you know you wont accidentally pull up any of the nibs
So with differences in density before you empty the bag you should be able to shake it and get a majority of the husk to rise to the surface. it's like how lucky charms never has any marshmallows at the bottom so you need to flip the bag upside down before opening it. this will help you separate out like 50% and most of the big pieces then use a hair drier as the source of wind and control the amount by the distance from the end of the tube or a blast gate that drops down like in dust collectors, you can also try making multiple passes in the machine because you are going to be using such a low volume of beans.
Cyclonic separation is great but getting the setup right to discriminate slightly different densities from air would be a long job. Maybe try something cruder like a sieve with a handful of crushed beans and a funnel snugly inserted on top. The vacuum cleaner could be attached to the funnel to create airflow as long as some air bleed holes were made on the depression side to fine tune the flow through the sieve.
Maybe buy a fan and on a low setting slowly drop the mix in front of the fan. That might work. Maybe put some sort of screen up to catch the husks. That would be pretty cheap.
As I was watching, I thought, how about a cyclone separator? Mattias Wandel has made them with 5 gallon buckets and has some great videos on the topic. And then I saw the last shot of you watching someone using a cyclone separator. I guess we know where this is going then.
I love these French conversations. I travel back 10 years in time to when I was still at university and suddenly I speak French again, lol. Or... well, understand it, at least.
Great video. Looking forward to your efforts at winnowing. I love trying new things and sometimes my efforts are a bust. It's good to see that others try/fail. Keep up the good work.
Normally if it's not got anything to do with food-related items, using fluids would be a good way to separate things that are heavier or lighter than other things. Since separation can only be done by finding differing properties of two or more items, focusing on what makes those two items different is where you'll find your solution. Blowing horizontally on a vertical field of beans is an idea, but you can't really control the power or speed of the vertically flowing beans, making the process less accurate. I'd suggest you have a horizontal surface that lets you blow air in from below it with a diagonal roof above it that catches the lighter particles and forces them away and out of the equation. Easy to refill and test, just make sure you get the air power right. With the density of the beans and the lightness of the husks however, it shouldn't be too difficult to achieve.
i would put it in a jar and gently shake the jar the husk and the nib should organize by density overtime. then you can scoop the husk off the top. its not perfect but it should work decently
Try using a hot air popcorn popping machine with the heating element removed. It is designed to separate particles by the difference in surface area/density which I think is what you have here.
Maybe you could try decanting? It’s used in chemistry. If you do some research it’s very simple. You basically use water to separate the two, since the husk are less dense than the nibs, the husk will probably float and the mobs will sink.
How about a low quality vacuum?? Certainly if it’s a Dyson, everything will be sucked up. But, a low quality vacuum will suck up the husks. Otherwise, have you considered reversing the suction on a vacuum? Blowing away the husks onto a canvas or tarp will stop the creation of a mess. Merci pour tout Alex!!
In Indonesia we have a traditional way to separate the rice from its skin by doing “tampi beras”. Basically you put the rice on a big round tray, start throwing the rice in the air and rotate it once after a few times of throwing, letting the lighter parts (rice skin) to fall out of the tray and leaving the heavier parts (rice) on the tray.. may be this trick would work.. 😁😁
How about something simple... like a device similar to an air popcorn popper? Blow air upwards through the mixture, and based on the length of the vertical pipe and velocity of the airflow, you should be able to separate out the husks from the nibs.
While it's fun to build a machine to winnow things (looking forward to the next episode), it's not THAT hard to manually separate the husks from the cocoa nibs. If you gently press the roasted beans, they can come up almost unbroken or may be broken into 2-3 pieces which you can easily separate by hand. Agreed this method will take a little longer and doesn't involve power tools, it's totally doable.
"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the Universe" - Carl Sagan *video cuts* "What's up guys, it's Alex and today we're going to make our own miniature universe to truly make... Our own... EVERYTHING!" *video cuts and editing showing some spoilers* "Waaaaaaaah!?" "Ouiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii" "Oh no. No no no..." *jump cut* "... They were not supposed to nuke each other..."
So... What about putting cheese cloth or other cloth over the end of your shop vac. Then lightly going over it sucking the husk into the cloth. Separate any nibs that come in and repeat.
It's not glamorous, but a box fan on low works well for winnowing tricky grains. I've separated amaranth in a few passes using a such a fan, desire the grain and chaff landing only a few inches apart over a drop of 20 inches.
Alex just looks for opportunities to build some sort of machine. ♥️
Building a machine is very much like cooking. You are taking simple things putting them together in such a way that the result is greater than the sum of its parts.
Next video: I move to Ecuador and grow my own kakao
Next, Next Video: I awaken my ancient bloodline of the divine creators of our mortal plane and use my newfound unlimited power to create cocoa beans without husks
@@infamoussky22 I think he would have to be in a XianXia novel for that.
and the next video: I build an army and overthrow the government, become President for six terms and establish a chocolate republic.
@@infamoussky22 lnmtl
Best cacao in the world 🌍🇪🇨
So he told you to use a rolling pin to crush the husks, but not how to separate. 10/10 advice.
Step 1: Put the roasted beans in a bag.
Step 2: Crush the roasted beans with a rolling pin.
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit!
I use an old farmer blower (used to blow husks from wheat and other types of farm products) to remove that. Tho, that's cause i already own one, blow drier on a sieve with decently large eyes should work too, i s'pose.
toss it it behind a large fan
If Alex has to be told everything, he wouldn't have the joy of discovery. There where would the channel be?
Oh no he did ! In fact the second method comes from him 😃
Look at cyclones of woodworkers. That might help separae light matrial fom heavy ones. And it can be contained.
Actually, this was what I was thinking too when I saw the UA-cam video Alex was watching.
I have a dust cyclone in my woodshop ..it's a smaller one that attaches to my shop vacc....it looks almost exactly like part of that apparatus he showed....(and the bag on the "end" .look like it was attached to one of the smaller capacity dust extractors...
Ha, you beat me to it...same thought.
A cyclone is also utilised in coffee roasting to help remove chaff/husk from the roasted bean 👌🏼
@@andrewkroussoratsky7737 That only happens if the husk wasn't removed in processing the green beans.
I need to be told to "spread it like butter." What happened to your catch phrase? Great videos, as always!! Cheers.
It faded away with his name.
Very true - WHERE IS IT? WE'RE ALL WAITING FOR THE HOLLY SENTENCE! ;)
*hides bag under the jacket*
*walks suspiciously *
SO I'VE GOT THE BEANS
I winnow my coffee beans on a piece of window screen set on top of a box fan that's resting on two lawn chair. If I have to do it inside, I use a second fan to blow the chaff out the window. Seems like it should work for cocoa beans.
It works but is ungodly messy. When using a fan, I do it outside and it looks like I got hit by a cocoa husk hurricane. Doing it inside like he is attempting to do is a recipe for disaster without a proper winnower.
You should measure the real temperature of your oven. You will see huge jumps due to the incredibly primitive hysteresis regulation.
My oven at home is Horrible with this.
Alex, I'd recommend searching "seed cleaner" as a basis for your contraption. Basically screened trays at a slight downward angle that you can shake back and forth so the heavy nibs slowly slide down, while a fan blows the husks up and out. I'd imagine a tote bin with a hole and an adjustable fan blowing in the bottom corner, and a vacuum in the opposite top corner. Multiple passes are expected and normal.
I grew up on a farm watching my dad and grandpa adjusting the fans and speed of the sieves of combine harvesters for wheat, barley, soy, etc. and the concept is identical
Seed cleaners are in fact the basis for most small scale cocoa winnowers. Instead of using a fan though, the most common technique is actually to use only a vacuum (shop vac) and pull the air through the husk/nibs as it is falling. The lighter husk gets pulled off into the vacuum leaving the nib to fall. Having the mixture bounce off obstacles on the down path helps to separate it out too. The key to the system is being able to adjust the amount of vacuum applied to the falling nib/husk mix.
With your subtitles could you put a black stroke around the text? White text on a light reflective table is hard to read.
fluffy i Second that! Subtitles need to improve
@@HappyFluegel Alternatively, black text with a white border also works well
@@spinafire I'm an animal, I just go for yellow or green. you can drag youtube links into km player and change the subtitle style.
Ignores alarm to wake up. Gets notification for a Alex video. Je suis réveillé! Je suis debout!
There is a pretty cheap and efficient solution to winnowing, a lot of bird people do it. You see, parrots eat the seeds but leave the husks in the feeder, so a lot of the uneaten seeds go to waste when you replace their food. So people came up with a box that has two tunnels and a fan that blows the husks away in the second compartment but lightweight seeds drop to the first one. Simple but it works. You would need some plywood a computer cooler and a few nails. Try Goodling "bird seed separator machine"
Alex~I'm deeply impressed!
Video posted 3 minutes ago. 302 views and 55 likes!
You are indeed a lucky man (the hard work paying off kind of "lucky") and we, your fans are so grateful for you. Your hard work and dedication is recognized and revered. Thank you.
Jenn 💖 a huge fan in Canada 🍁
The simplest method I have found for separating out two materials is putting an inlet and outlet on the lid of a bucket and putting it in line with a vacuum. The light particles continue on, but the heavy particles fall to the bottom. I have also used a thein baffle which works well when both parts are on the lighter side (sawdust for example), and they are much easier to make than a cyclone.
Always fun to see what you are trying out.
Hi Alex! Although it's a little late for this advice - we do something like this in India a lot when trying to separate the peanut husk/skin from the peanuts themselves. What works in households is that you can place this in a big tray and kind of jerk it upwards in order to get all the particles to rise in the air. While this is happening, blow on it. It works perfectly!
Hi Alex
I was recently rewatching some of your old videos and stumbled upon the " 5 courses 10$ menu ! Trader Joe's challenge "
In this video u use a technique to separate squash seeds from the pulp which might be a solution to your problem: putting the whole thing in water
The nibs , being more dense and heavy, will sink to the bottom and the husk will float on the suface
It won't work on these type of material
Cocoa, like coffee bean and tea leaf
Will release some of their property to water
What's the point of buying super premium beans if you going to dilute it at the end
You could use dry panning techniques for extracting the husks, the same technique used to separate gold from sand and dirt, u could build a machine for doing that
How about instead of wind using static electricity? Instead of pushing away you'd be pulling the husks. Less mess.
Daniel F. Lol, good idea. Dunno how efficient that would be (?)
It's easy.. first you have to measure the resistance of the husks and nibs. Then you divide those values by their weight in relation to the humidity. Then you put everything in a stainless steel bowl and connect it to a flux capacitor, that you configurated with the calculated values. It's just a bit hard to get the plutonium for the flux capacitor.. the rest should be easy-peasy
Or just but some chocolate seems the easiest option
I have a recommendation. You know how cereal tends to separate when you shake it?
How about putting the beans it all in a large container and attaching a motor with an unbalanced counterweight (aka your drill) and running it for a while (the vibration will shake the container and separate the denser parts from the lighter parts).
Greetings from Germany!
If they have different densities you could separate them in a water bath. Preferably, a cold water bath so you don't extract any flavors from the nibs.
I don't know a thing about chocolate making, just giving ideas.
NO!! Water is the absolute enemy when it comes to chocolate making. The nib WILL absorb water almost instantly and require an additional step to dry at a minimum. You will still end up with a tea though as some flavors will be extracted no matter what. Problem is I am pretty sure the nib floats too.
For the separation, I did something similar for a summer job in a crop research lab with an air separator. You need a clear plastic pipe, maybe around 4 inches in diameter and 4 feet long, a fabric bag, some wood for supports, a source of air like a shopvac, and some random other bits.
Cut off three sections of pipe, maybe around 3-4 inches long each. Take one and add a screen with epoxy to the bottom and add a handle to the side, we will call this the cup. Take another section and attach a thin metal disk on a pivot to act as a valve. Stack them together so you have the section with the valve at the bottom, then the unmodified section (you want the metal valve to be between the two pipes, not at the very bottom of the stack), then the cup and the rest of the pipe. Attach all except the cup to a piece of wood so that you can stand it up vertically and slide the cup in and out of it's slot. Cut a slot into the wood to allow the valve to open, or put the pivot on the front with a handle to operate it. Attach the output of a shopvac to the bottom and some sort of catch bag on the top that will stop the shells but let the air out.
Take your mix of nibs and shells and filter out the dust just to make the process cleaner. Take the cup from the pipe and put some of the mix into it. The exact amount will depend on the setup but you will figure out what works best fairly quickly. Too much and it will clog the pipe and everything will blow out the top, too little and it will take you forever. Close the valve and slide the cup with the mix to the opening to complete the pipe. Turn on the shopvac and slowly open the valve to control the amount of air passing through the pipe. You want enough air going through that the shells get blown out the top but the nibs stay inside. This is why the pipe is clear, so that you can see it happening. When it is as clean as you can get it, close the valve, wait for the nibs to settle down, and take out the cup. Dump the cup into a bowl and repeat until everything is cleaned.
I swear, this channel is half culinary, half MacGyvered engineering, and all French.
I love it.
Get one of those air popcorn machines, disable the heating element, then use it to blow out the husks into a bowl.
Some air coffee roasters can blow air without heat.
You can get those cyclone dust collection/separator funnels from hardware stores. They are usually mounted over a trash bin and you attach a vacuum cleaner hose and machine up to them. All the heavy stuff falls into the trash bin instead of going up the vacuum cleaner. They are good because you don't have to change vacuum cleaner bags as often when cleaning up a big mess of mostly larger wood chips etc in the workshop. Only the small dirt makes it to the vacuum bag.
This Old Tony could likely build something that would do this. And it would be another very interesting collaboration. But you would have to do the initial design, of course. Great stuff, Alex, and thumbs up!
I've never done it with chocolate, but if you fill a jar or a bucket with everything and give it a subtle shake, the husk should rise to the top
Hey Alex! Try to use a metal pan ( "comal" in México ) to "almost" burn the shell of the beans, that way you can pull it out with your fingers, later you can bake the cocoa in the oven!
I used this method to make traditional chocolate in México.
Use gravity+wind resistance to shoot nibs+husks across row of buckets. Central buckets are pass-through, nearer buckets should be nibs (higher mass/wind resistance), further blown pieces should be husks. The pass-through could contain a further light chopping before re-processing. Or... Use a kids popcorn maker without the heat on! ☺️
Alex, use a filter and pass the cocoa nibs and husk mixture through. Then as they fall, use a hair dryer to blow out the lighted husk pieces. Rinse and repeat. It maybe more time consuming but it could help it you don't have the industrial equipment.
I love that you share the adventure involved in the process of making food. Thank you for being so entertaining and informative.
Alex look at how they separate gold flakes from sand. The nibs may be heavier than the husk and fall the the bottom through a series of movements or air dusplacements. Or perhaps even water :)
ok so, Dyson vacuums use a series of cones to separate particle sizes (they got the idea from the filtration methods that have been used for decades in mines). Perhaps something like that could work for winnowing? Either that or the principles for chromatography, where you basically send particles around a curve, and the heavier bits fly to the outside of the curve.
Either way lol, I'm really enjoying this chocolate series, and I can't wait to see what you come up with! For me, I was intrigued by the wet grinding of the chocolate, so I would like to see the difference between wet ground raw chocolate and wet ground roasted chocolate.
Very interesting thought 👍
Helpful tip for making the text like the "subtitles" around the 1:50 mark is to have white text with a black outline. that contrast makes it so it can be read over ANY background.
Alex, just use a hand han or a piece of paper to fan the top of the nib/husk mixture. Shake the pan and the lighter husks will rise to the top and get blown off by the fan.
Thanks for the link 🙂
Really looking forward to seeing your winnowing contraption in the future 😄
There is a youtube channel by Aaron Sylvester in Grenada where they go through the chocolate making process from growing beans to making chocolate. They have an elaborate DIY winnowing machine made of pvc pipe and a vacuum but the video shows the principles of how the machine functions.
How about pvc pipe with hopper that shakes the mixture slowly toward the downward chute and vacuum line from above? The vacuum catches the husks, catch tray below for nibs
6 inch wide pipe, shopvac attached at the top. Cut a hole in the side of the pipe and attach a hopper for your cocoa, mount the pipe vertically somehow, leave the bottom completely open, place a collecting tray down there to catch the nibs. For more control, get a valve normally used for DIY central vac installations that use a shop vac as the power source (Can find those at your hardware store, ask an employee) so that you can adjust the amount of air the vacuum pulls through the apparatus.
More airflow = heavier bits sucked into the shop vac
More tube height = better ability to separate things that weigh very similar amounts
More tube width = more capacity, but you will require exponentially more airflow as you go wider. I think a 6 inch pipe should be able to handle all the air a shop vac can move at a flow rate that won't suck up your nibs.
Well, since I am from the middle east I used to see ppl doing the "Winnoing" to the BULGUR🌾🌾 in the first steps of its making. By holding the crushed bulgur in a big bowl at their head's level then slowly let the grains drop from it (almost like you did with your hands), the air flow will help the separation and a fan would help alot with this too. But yeah as you said you have to do it outside because it is messy
Good luck!
I always thought the best way to seperate chaff by hand was to have a broad bowl with the seed and husk, and to toss it gently in the air and catch it again. The moment where it is suspended above the bowl allows the wind to seperate chaff while maintaining control of the nibs.
@@addledhead
Wow, that reminded me of my grandma😬. She did it this way. So yeah there are two methods, but yours is a bit hard for someone who never did it before.
Take care (:
I spent some of my youth on a "living history" farm....there was a platform, (often doubling as a dance floor, and occasionally as a shearing floor)...that was always called "The Winnowing floor"...it was about 30'-40' across. freshly harvested wheat, was spread out to dry a bit, then threshed with a flail or wooden roller ....swept back up into a pile on corner closest to the windward, we would take a wide coal shovel full, and "loft" it into the air...the breeze would catch the chaff (the husks) and carry them further downwind than the heavier, denser grains. if you did it right, the two would have a pretty well defined separation.... one of the tasks I got tapped to do, was sweeping the chaff up and disposing of it, and pushing the grain back to the main pile so it could be "run again"....
Sounds like you're making a fluidized bed! Check the falling velocity of the husk and the nib, that is, the velocity of upward air needed for the particle to be suspended in the air chute. Control the air such that it can blow the husks up and out, but the heavier nibs remain. Good luck and much love to you!!!
I actually love your UA-cam channel
This reminds me of how I take the husk off my peanuts, crush them up in a bag, pour into bottle with some vent flaps in the bottom for air flow and to move the nuts around, then put a vacuum on the top off the bottle and watch all the light flakes vanish
Alex! Look up the Brazil Nut effect.
If you have a mixture of particals of differing size's when vibrated the larger particals float to the top... Just as a quick experiment you could fill a tall glass with the husk nib mixture abd place it on top of your sander!
A suggestion:
Put a double handful of the "grind" in a kitchen strainer. Hold a vacuum cleaner above the strainer and agitate up and down also side to side. Vacuum up the dust from above holding the strainer over a tray or large bowl to catch small pieces of the roasted chocolate.
The tangy notes you are getting in the raw beans is vinegar. The bacteria responsible for the fermentation of the cacao beans creates vinegar as a by-product. Your crumbling of the bean when trying to peel the beans is largely because you aren't being very delicate. We can peel ours as a whole bean about 80-90% of the time. It is however VERY slow. Hand peeling takes hours to get a reasonable amount ready to process. A winnower is definitely the way to go. Chocolate Alchemy has some good DIY plans for building a winnower. Using the airflow to blow out the husk is effective but yes it is VERY messy!
If the next episode was a movie, I would title it:
"Cocoa Nibs: The Winnowing"
"This time it's -personal- automated"
I would've tried to put them in a tall and narrow glass/container/jar and vibrante it.
Just like with cereals/nuts they should separate.
Alex there's a cyclone dust collector that hooks up to a shop vac. Us woodworkers use it to separate the light sawdust from the heavier wood chips. I would bet that it could work to winnow your cocao beans. The one I saw was oneida cyclones I think
Different solutions I saw in the comments:
1) Use the static electricity from a balloon
2) Pan it like gold
3) use a low suck vacuum
4) put the nibs and husks in water- the husks should float.
5) put the nibs and husks in a tumbler of sorts. The lighter husks should come out on top
Hi Alex, a quick tip is that white text with a black outline is visible on ANY background and would really help with your subtitles! Otherwise this chocolate series is second only to your ramen series!
You own a vacuum cleaner, so you could easily use that to create airflow across a box, thereby cleaning the husk mess and winnowing at the same time. Using a cylinder and an offset suction could create a vortex which should help.
A centrifugal cyclone separator like those used in some shop vacs might be able to separate the heavy beans from the light husk, but I would try a simple fan or a leaf blower first first.
I think you could build simple cyclone and connect it to the Y shape tube, where through long side you will throw (i do not know proper word) mix, and throuh the branch you must connect cyclone with vacuum. Light parts should fall down, while light will be sucked in cyclone. I use this method for separating cranberry and blueberry from the leaves
Lots of folks have already recommended looking at cyclone dust separators, as you have in the short clip at the end. You consulted This Old Tony, now you need to get back the the original build it yourself guy UA-cam jockey, Matthias Wandel. His cyclone separators are great. I built one for my shop and it works perfect. I didn't make the blower though. His and Marius Hornberger's are great builds.
Perhaps a tube with a funnel at the top with another tube connected to a vacuum cleaner coming in at an angle could be used to separate the husks. We have such contraptions for separating leaves from blueberries here in Sweden.
here in Venezuela our cocoa beans are very famous and the tecnique of the rural areas is to let it dry on the floor by the sun. that should make a diference
I tried to build a winnowing machine out of a 5 gallon bucket and a bunch of PVC. Ended up purchasing a pre-fabricated winnower that I didn't have the tools to recreate.
Before that, I was blowing the husks off my 2nd story apartment balcony and onto the sidewalk in Oakland. The sidewalk would stay crunchy for weeks.
make a box with a mesh bottom to allow air flow, pour in nibs/husk, put your box on a powerful fan shake the box with the fan on. Simple solution to an annoying problem. If you want to collect the husks so they don't make a mess just put a garbage bag on top of the box with some small holes to allow air flow but still collect the husk particles
Alex Don't get rid of the husks. Break a little cinnamon in and it turns in to the best tea.
Hey Alex just wondering why can't you straighten it with water the heavier more dense seeds will just float to the bottom and the husk will stay on top then just scoop the husk with a spoon or small strainer
Salut Alex! If you need something with a little more airflow for that contraption that you are about to build, consider (If you haven't yet) using the hoover. If it's the same Kärcher as mine you can switch the hose to the back and make it blow air instead ...
The way that machine is layed out, there's no way it isn't using a cyclone. There's a stainless looking cone on the left of the machine that makes me think of the DIY cyclones you can buy on Amazon, which would be a pretty straightforward solution if it worked.
EDIT: Alternatively, you could build one using a food grade 5 gallon bucket. I've done this for woodworking and there are many slight variations and tutorials people have come up with.
2:04 "Got the beans."
Just heard your interview on Milk Street radio NPR. I heard him introduce a French guy named Alex, and had a feeling it was you, always a welcome voice.
Alex bro when you saw that guy with the machine separating nibs you said hmhmhmm i laughed so much. You knew you were screwed for a second.
You're becoming the modern day Willy Wonka. You just need a sweet tophat. Whoever figured how to do this with chocolate deserves a Nobel prize. It's more complicated than I ever imagined
if the nib bits sink in water but the husk floats, you might be able to separate them that way. It would be easy to test as well, if you are willing to possibly sacrifice a handful of your nib/husk mix by dropping it in a pan of water (with enough depth that you can skim off whichever floats)
I'm thinking a hoover that uses a nozzle like the Henry hoovers and create a dyi end piece that widens like a reverse hopper, this should lower the suction power so it pulls up the husks and leaves the nibs, clean and quick, if you can work out the size you would need. a cloth might be worth adding to the end so it sucks up the husks and gets stuck on the cloth so you know you wont accidentally pull up any of the nibs
1:50 close your eyes. Just hear this weird mixtures of sound coming to you 😂
Isnt it easier to lightly crush each bean and remove the comple husk? Leaving the bean intact. Thats what i always do
You should make a second channel specifically for engineering, I would watch.
So with differences in density before you empty the bag you should be able to shake it and get a majority of the husk to rise to the surface. it's like how lucky charms never has any marshmallows at the bottom so you need to flip the bag upside down before opening it. this will help you separate out like 50% and most of the big pieces then use a hair drier as the source of wind and control the amount by the distance from the end of the tube or a blast gate that drops down like in dust collectors, you can also try making multiple passes in the machine because you are going to be using such a low volume of beans.
'To create chocolate from scratch, one must first create the universe'
Cyclonic separation is great but getting the setup right to discriminate slightly different densities from air would be a long job. Maybe try something cruder like a sieve with a handful of crushed beans and a funnel snugly inserted on top. The vacuum cleaner could be attached to the funnel to create airflow as long as some air bleed holes were made on the depression side to fine tune the flow through the sieve.
Maybe buy a fan and on a low setting slowly drop the mix in front of the fan. That might work. Maybe put some sort of screen up to catch the husks. That would be pretty cheap.
As I was watching, I thought, how about a cyclone separator? Mattias Wandel has made them with 5 gallon buckets and has some great videos on the topic. And then I saw the last shot of you watching someone using a cyclone separator. I guess we know where this is going then.
I love these French conversations. I travel back 10 years in time to when I was still at university and suddenly I speak French again, lol. Or... well, understand it, at least.
love how much gear you will end up having for chocolate production.
6:55 oh my gosh I laughed so hard. Did NOT expect that!!
Great video. Looking forward to your efforts at winnowing. I love trying new things and sometimes my efforts are a bust. It's good to see that others try/fail. Keep up the good work.
Normally if it's not got anything to do with food-related items, using fluids would be a good way to separate things that are heavier or lighter than other things. Since separation can only be done by finding differing properties of two or more items, focusing on what makes those two items different is where you'll find your solution.
Blowing horizontally on a vertical field of beans is an idea, but you can't really control the power or speed of the vertically flowing beans, making the process less accurate. I'd suggest you have a horizontal surface that lets you blow air in from below it with a diagonal roof above it that catches the lighter particles and forces them away and out of the equation. Easy to refill and test, just make sure you get the air power right. With the density of the beans and the lightness of the husks however, it shouldn't be too difficult to achieve.
i would put it in a jar and gently shake the jar the husk and the nib should organize by density overtime. then you can scoop the husk off the top. its not perfect but it should work decently
Try using a hot air popcorn popping machine with the heating element removed. It is designed to separate particles by the difference in surface area/density which I think is what you have here.
Alex, you can try to use more of a gold panning method since the nibs are much dencer then the husks.
What about using a popcorn popper? That is what I use for roasting coffee at home. Helps sort the bean from the chaff.
Maybe you could try decanting? It’s used in chemistry. If you do some research it’s very simple. You basically use water to separate the two, since the husk are less dense than the nibs, the husk will probably float and the mobs will sink.
How about a low quality vacuum?? Certainly if it’s a Dyson, everything will be sucked up. But, a low quality vacuum will suck up the husks. Otherwise, have you considered reversing the suction on a vacuum? Blowing away the husks onto a canvas or tarp will stop the creation of a mess. Merci pour tout Alex!!
In Indonesia we have a traditional way to separate the rice from its skin by doing “tampi beras”. Basically you put the rice on a big round tray, start throwing the rice in the air and rotate it once after a few times of throwing, letting the lighter parts (rice skin) to fall out of the tray and leaving the heavier parts (rice) on the tray.. may be this trick would work.. 😁😁
How about something simple... like a device similar to an air popcorn popper? Blow air upwards through the mixture, and based on the length of the vertical pipe and velocity of the airflow, you should be able to separate out the husks from the nibs.
While it's fun to build a machine to winnow things (looking forward to the next episode), it's not THAT hard to manually separate the husks from the cocoa nibs. If you gently press the roasted beans, they can come up almost unbroken or may be broken into 2-3 pieces which you can easily separate by hand. Agreed this method will take a little longer and doesn't involve power tools, it's totally doable.
Look up a zig-zag seed separator. Easy to build and is exactly what you're looking for
One of these days Alex will try to make something and it will not eventually involve the construction of a giant Rube Goldberg machine.
"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the Universe" - Carl Sagan
*video cuts*
"What's up guys, it's Alex and today we're going to make our own miniature universe to truly make... Our own... EVERYTHING!"
*video cuts and editing showing some spoilers*
"Waaaaaaaah!?"
"Ouiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii"
"Oh no. No no no..." *jump cut* "... They were not supposed to nuke each other..."
Love all the series, but id love a cooking video once in a while, maybe some classic french recipes :)
Great series, can't wait for the next video.
Hello MAN, try blowing air throughs a rotating cylinder(with the grains in it), hopefully you will get a good and quick separation
So... What about putting cheese cloth or other cloth over the end of your shop vac. Then lightly going over it sucking the husk into the cloth. Separate any nibs that come in and repeat.
6000+ views already.Ahhh. To be so loved! Love U 2! Bonnie
It's not glamorous, but a box fan on low works well for winnowing tricky grains. I've separated amaranth in a few passes using a such a fan, desire the grain and chaff landing only a few inches apart over a drop of 20 inches.
Hi Alex, thanks for your video. I really enjoying all. Let me know when you have time to come to Bali. To find the chocolate pod. 👍😁