De-fatting cocoa nibs?

[Jayjay1976]

I'm making a chocolate extract from cocoa nibs for a chocolate pretzel beer, 20 grams of toasted and crushed nibs soaking in 4 oz. of 70% ethanol. After a few days it has clouded with the fats coming out of the nibs, so I heated it up briefly to ~120f which caused the fats to dissolve completely. When it cooled down again the layer of fat was sitting on top of the ground nibs. I'm not really all that worried about head retention, but I would like to try removing as much of the fat as I can without resorting to violence. How would I go about that?

 

[Jayjay1976]

So for the first step I re-heated the macerating nibs, shook it up and poured all of it into a funnel lined with a coffee filter. When it stops dripping I will dump the ground nibs back into the jar along with a splash of neutral spirit.

At this point I used a stick blender to liquefy the crushed nibs, then dumped the slurry into another coffee filter, waited until it stopped dripping then gently wrapped up the filter into a ball, gripped it in my strong hand and slowly squeezed the ever-loving f@&k out of it. My hand smells like a chocolate easter bunny and the powdered cocoa nibs have a very dry, crumbly powder texture. I was about to dump them in the trash when my wife said she wanted to try making a batch of brownies with it.

I believe the extract at this point has some fats in solution, so my next step will be to put it in the freezer overnight to pull as much out of solution as I can, expecting a layer to form on top of the extract. I'll pour that again through a coffee filter.

At that point diluting the alcohol down would probably cause more fats to precipitate out, but at that point only the lighter oils will remain and stripping them out might take much of the chocolate flavor with it so I'll skip that step.

 

[bracconiere]

maybe for the future, use a car jack to press the nibs first? (says person with no clue, that just googled how cocoa butter is made)

 

[shetc]

Listened to the latest episode of Brew Strong the other day. Jamil Z said chocolate powder was basically fat free and easier to deal with than nibs.

 

[day_trippr]

I use both Low-fat cocoa powder at flame-out, and nibs marinated in dark rum with a couple of smushed 'nilla beans added post-primary...

Cheers!

 

[Jayjay1976]

It's been a bit of a project so far, but compared to cocoa powder the aroma of the nibs is incredible.

 

[camonick]

FWIW, I got advice from the head brewer at a craft brewery here in Colorado and they use high quality chocolate extract for their flavoring. He says nibs are a PITA and the flavor is never very good. I tried a chocolate porter with a nib/ vodka extract once and all I could taste was the vodka and no chocolate. If I recall, I used half a pound of nibs for 5 gallons. I don’t recall there being very much fat.

 

[Jayjay1976]

FWIW, I got advice from the head brewer at a craft brewery here in Colorado and they use high quality chocolate extract for their flavoring. He says nibs are a PITA and the flavor is never very good. I tried a chocolate porter with a nib/ vodka extract once and all I could taste was the vodka and no chocolate. If I recall, I used half a pound of nibs for 5 gallons. I don’t recall there being very much fat.

Vodka is ~40% abv, I used 70% neutral spirit and there was a lot of fat after a week of soaking. At this ABV the fat sinks and forms a layer on top of the nibs. I used 2oz nibs, the aroma is pretty strong though I haven't tasted it yet.

 

[jb_souvestre]

Hi,

I'm doing a little bit of digging here, but by any chance do you remember how freezing your extract worked out ? Did you manage to remove some fat ? How did it taste? How was the beer ?
I'm working in a brewery and we're looking to make a chocolate porter next year, we have a pretty bad memory of using cocoa powder that had 20% fat. The beer had fatty bubbles in the bottles headspace. It tasted really nice, lots of cocoa aroma, but the look was horrible.

Anyway, cheers !

Best regards,

JB.

 

[day_trippr]

20%? That's crazy! I use Hershey's Special Dark (at end of boil) which is only 1% fat...

Cheers!