I co-hosted my first class in making chocolate in the home in December 2006 in conjunction with Jeff Pzena, New York Metro Discover Chocolate Meetup member and co-owner of the Cotton Tree Lodge (http://www.cottontreelodge.com) in the Toledo district of southern Belize. To a large extent, John Nanci, publisher of the web site chocolatealchemy.com has been leading the way in finding equipment that can be used to make chocolate at home. One thing that was missing was a winnower, so I started searching for plans for one on the Internet ...

I eventually found plans for a winnower made from PVC pipe and a fan that had been put in the public domain that looked like it would do what I wanted to do. I figured I could find all the parts for the prototype from a local big-box home improvement center, which turned out to be true except for two of them—the fan and a speed control. One thing missing from the plans I found was drawings for how to build a stand to hold the winnower up at the required angle, ten degrees off the vertical.

One reason I liked this winnower was that I figured it would be possible for someone looking at it to adapt it using scrounged parts. In many countries where cacao is grown the PVC parts could probably be scavenged from building demolition sites or even fabricated from bamboo and wood. I know that the fan and speed control I used (total cost about US$80) were probably out of the reach of many cacao farmers but I know that there is a lot of ability to fabricate what’s needed when the benefit is easily seen. One thing I do plan to test is replacing the big fan with a fan and power supply salvaged from an old computer I no longer need. My guess is that this is something that can easily be done in most situations.

Here is the finished prototype in my back yard. The frame is built from a single eight-foot 2x4 cut into lengths. The nearly vertical member has an angle cut on it of ten degrees and is held into place by a hinge. At the other end of the base piece is a cross piece (also held in place with a hinge) to provide stability. Why hinges? Because the pins are removable and the entire thing can fold down into parts for easy transport or storage. While transportability may not be important in many cases where the winnower might be used every day, for the intrepid home chocolate maker, being able to break things down into parts for easy storage in a closet or the garage is important.

The longest section of pipe is held into place with a four-inch lag bolt bolted through holes drilled in the 2x4 and in the PVC pipe. The black band around the bottom section is a hook-and-loop adjustable strap that makes assembly and disassembly easy. The triangular wedge under the fan is made from scrap 2x4 and is there to hold the weight of the fan and to make the entire thing steadier. There is a bumper screwed into the base plate to hold the wedge in place.

The fan is attached to the PVC pipe assembly using two pieces of scavenged plastic. Using the outline of the PVC pipe flange and the fan housing, I scribed lines into the plastic and then used a saw to cut the pieces out. I used a large hole bit on my electric drill to cut out the holes for the airflow from the fan and to bolt the fan to the flange.

When Jeff and I made our first attempt to use this, my hope was that the variable speed control on the fan would make it possible to winnow pieces of very different sizes (and therefore weights). While we were able to get to about 90% clean on four or five pounds of beans faster than the alternative methods (which use a hair dryer) there was no real way, even being able to control the fan speed, to get to the 99.9% clean necessary to bypass an initial grind stage (using a Champion or similar juicer) and throw the nibs directly into a wet mill that would grind the nibs as well as refine/conche them.

My next construction process is a seed cleaner. This is a multi-layer box with screens of various sizes. The roasted bean cracker would sit on top of the cleaner and when all the beans were cracked the box would be shaken, sorting things into various sizes, and separating the nibs from the shell. Doing this will make the winnower more effective and efficient, cutting down overall winnowing time for a large-ish batch of roasted beans (five pounds) a couple of minutes at most.

On May 17th, 2007, I will be making a presentation at “The Chocolate Summit” held at The Cotton Tree Lodge during the first annual Toledo Cacao Festival. I plan to show how the winnower was constructed and how it works to everyone in attendance as well as members of the Toledo Cacao Growers Association and Sustainable Harvest International. Jeff Pzena plans to keep the winnower throughout the festival and when he brings it back I plan to continue experimenting with it until I get something that really works well.

When I reach that point, I intend to publish the plans for the completed winnower under a Creative Commons “attribution” license. This will mean that anyone is free to use the plans to make their own winnower at no charge and can modify and distribute the plans, including incorporating them into other publications, at no charge, as long as they indicate where they got the plans in the first place.

Eventually, my hope is that many hundreds of cacao farmers will make the winnower (and the other equipment that I hope to help develop) and find ways to improve the quality of their crop as well as what they earn to produce it.