Paging cacao nib, coconut, and vanilla bean experts

[superiorsat]

To make toasting easier for you I'll explain how I do it. I get the largest rectangle baking sheet I have and cover it with tinfoil. Leave excess off each of the sides for sealing later. Evenly spread coconut and toast in the oven at 325 or less ( less is easier to keep an eye on it with out it getting away on you if can't just sit there the whole time an watch it. ). Keep an eye to stir once the top layer is toasted to about medium then stir up as much white coconut as possible and repeat until about 90% is toasted. By now the original top layer is getting pretty heavily toasted so I stop. I take it out and more or less pinch the tin foil together on the top and fold over which makes a big tube off tin foil and fold the ends over I usually set back in for a minute or two to sanitize anything that might have slipped in during my folding process. Take out and let cool will brewing. When you are done brewing I take a bag that has been boiled along with the weights and drop it into starsan to cool it quick. I spray the tinfoil tube with starsan and take the bag and fill it by dumping the tube in and tie it off an put in fermenter. That baking sheet and tinfoil trick works for many additions for example dry peanut butter tubed up at 170 degrees for an hour makes me feel better about adding it to the fermenter ( I also put this in from the start of fermentation ). The cocoa nibs we do the same way at the coconut. We oven bake them at 250 degrees for 10 minutes, turn off the oven and take out wrap and put back in for 15 minutes and the take out and cool. My wife and I did a a few small sample test runs on the nibs and found at this time and temperature gave us the best dark chocolate flavor so I've stuck with it ever since.

 

[RyPA]

I did the oven method as well, on a large baking sheet with a bed of paper towels under the coconut, and I then dabbed the top layer every 5-10 minutes when I did a flip/shuffle of the coconut to allow all coconut to get some toast. This process was pretty slow and I ended up finding a much faster way of doing this using my toaster oven, which gave approximately 1 ft by 8 inch surface area. I set it to broil and I can literally watch it brown in real time, pull out and shuffle the coconut, and put it back in, rinse and repeat. The next time around I will do this approach, except toast much darker. I will likely also use a muslin bag the next time around, instead of commando, as this was a mess.