Ultimate selection guide of all the popular chocoalte grinding equipment for a beginner.
What is chocolate grinding machine?
Chocolate is the most popular confectionery for all ages, its main content comes from the cacao beans, with milk powder, sugar, and many other formulas to create thousands of unique taste and flavors.
Chocolate grinding machine is particularly used for breaking those rough particles inside raw chocolate mixtuer into microns level smooth paste, a good chocolate grinding and refining process gives final chocolate products unparalleled silky texture.
The most common chocolate grinding equipment you could find from Market is as following:
1- Universal chocolate conche refiner machine;
2- Chocolate ball miller machine;
3- Stone chocolate grinder / Chocolate melanger;
4- Three-roll refiner or Five-roll refiner
Universal chocolate conche refiner.
Chocolate conching refiner machine is the most popular grinding equipment at present.
It could be built with 20L, 50L, 500L, 1000L, 2000L, or even bigger capacity, which covers all needs including handmade chocolate production and industrial chocolate making.
The machine is mainly built with –
An umbrella shaped blades system which is the main part for continuously blending, grinding and refining chocolate raw mixtures, as well as auto or manual blades tensioning system.
A jacketed barrel allows cold or warm water flows through the jackete, and with hundreds of lining bars attached on its inner wall.
An intelligent temperature auto controlling system to maintain chocolate at desired temperature
20kg conche
50KG conche
500KG conche
1000kg conche
2000KG conche
3000KG conche
Chocolate ball mill machine
The most selected equipment for rapid grinding chocolate in the bulk chocolate making industry.
Its capacity could be designed at 20L, 100L, 200L, 500L, 1000L per batch.
Ball millers are mostly built with jacketed ball milling chamber and loaded with high wear-resistant balls. The irregular continuously high speed frictions among the balls fast break the particles into pieces.
20L Ball mill
200L Ball mill
500L ball mill
Chocolate melanger / Stone cacao grinder
Stone grinding is the most vintage way for refining chocolate, and it is the only way for fine grinding chocolate in the very beginning, as its core part – the two round stones could be easily found and replaced at the old times.
It is composed of the stones for grinding and a rotate barrel for storing chocolate.
Most of bean to bar chocolate makers are big fans of stone grinder, as it could maximum keep the original chocolate flavors and nutritions.
7kg melanger
25kg melanger
grinding stones
Three-roll and Five-roll refiners
There are a lot of real chocolate makers love to use the three roll and five roll refiners as they do believe this equipment could proceed gently and effective, and some of the three-roll refiner lovers enjoy the operation very much, they could observe the chocolate grinding process in real time and feeling glad to get involved during the entire process.
It is mainly built with different size steel or ceramic rollers running in different rotation speed, unique roller pressing system and cold water flowing system.
Pros and Cons of each chocolate grinding device.
Universal chocolate conche
Pros:
- Lowest prices among them
- Low A.C power and water consumption
- Flexiable capacities to suit small/medium/large scale production demand
- Diverse add-ons for selection
- Easy for operation
Cons:
- Metal content may easily exceeds sanitary and safety standards.
- Inappropriate blades tensioning operation may cause irreversible damage to the machine.
- Any hard object falls inside the grinding chamber will cause irreversible damage to the machine.
- Extremely difficult maintenance for beginners or anyone without mechanical capability once the blades or linging bars need to be replaced.
- Chocolate leakage happens to all of the chocolate conches sooner or later.
- Water leaking through the inner wall will ruin chocolate completely and hard to locate the leaking point as the inner wall is covered with hundreds of lining bars.
- A certain amount of chocolate could not be completely cleaned out.
Chocolate ball mill machine
Pros:
- Extremely easy for operation, cleaning and maintenance
- Affordable prices
- Flexiable capacities and customized size is available
- Extremely fast grinding speed with the shortest duration among them
- Balls could be purchased locally if necessary
Cons:
- Metal content may easily exceeds sanitary and safety standards
- Chocolate may get polluted due to lubricating oil leakge from the top-mounted motor and gear box if they are poored installed
- Fast speed ball mills require extra cold water source
- Some low speed ball mills require to attach extra chocolate circulating pump or cooperate with chocolate conche
Chocolate melanger
Pros:
- No metal content exceeds standard
- Maximum saving the unique chocolate flavors and nutrition
- Easy for operation
- Low noise
- Low power consumption
- No running water required
Cons:
- Broken stone particles can not be found easily
- Higher prices
- Extremely long grinding duration
Three -roll refiner
Pros:
- High yield operation
- Easy for cleaning
- Wide processing ranges for different products
Cons:
- Extremely difficult for adjusting position of the rollers
- High cold water consumption
- Higher prices
