Can I make chocolate at home?

Making chocolate at home can be rewarding, but be prepared to spend a little money and a lot of time. The money goes to equipment and cocoa beans. For equipment, you will need a melanger (about $600)  to grind the beans and a tempering machine (about $400) to make the finished product. You will also need a silicone mat (about $20) and a hair dryer (about $30). But let's start at the beginning.

Buy between two and six pounds of fermented raw cocoa beans. There are a variety of retail importers you can find on the web. Choose a single variety or a blend that appeals to your taste in chocolate.

Sort the beans, removing broken beans, badly misshapen beans, and whatever foreign bodies may be present.

Roast the beans, two pounds at a time, at 350F for between 20 and 30 minutes, depending on your experience with the beans or by how they smell. They will smell like fresh brownies. Don't scorch them!

Let the beans cool.

Peel the beans. You can do this by hand - which I find produces a superior product - but be warned that this can take up to 6 hours per pound. Alternatively, you can purchase a winnower and use the hair dryer to blow out the skins. This approach is much faster, but leaves more skin and loses more bean fragments. Either way, weigh your final bean yield.

Get you melanger going. Use the hair dryer to get the grinding surfaces up to at least 120F. Add the beans a handful at a time. Help the melanger along if it gets stuck. Make sure the melanger is going steadily before leaving it unattended. When it gets going, it will flow well.

Run the melanger for 24 to 72 hours, again depending on your experience with the beans and your tastes. If trying a mix of beans, add the more robustly flavored beans early in the process and the more delicately flavored beans later. Give even the most delicate beans at least 8 hours. Add sugar to taste. The percentage of sugar by weight can vary from a few percent up to 30 percent. You may also add dried whole fat milk at this point, and other flavorings, like an inch or so of vanilla bean. Melange the sugar and other additives at least 8 more hours. The goal is to decrease the particle size below what can be detected by the  tongue. When done, decant into a silicone mat line baking pan. This is your untempered chocolate. it melts easily and tends to get crumbly as it ages. Which is why you will want to temper it.

Finally, follow the directions on your tempering machine, adding chunks of untempered chocolate as indicated. The liquid tempered chocolate can be used for fruit dipping or can be poured into molds for bars or shaped candies. Other additives can be included at this stage - nuts, nougat etc. Cool the results at room temperature for several hours before serving. Enjoy the results of your labor.