Cocoa Nibs

Recovering the nib is a separation problem. Beans are cleaned, then roasted — the step that converts the flavour precursors created during farm fermentation into actual chocolate aroma — and cracked into fragments. The cracked mixture is then winnowed: air currents carry away the light shell fragments while the denser nib pieces fall out, exploiting the density difference between kernel and shell.

Order varies. Some processes roast the whole bean before cracking; others crack first and roast the nib, which gives more even heat penetration and cleaner shell removal. Either way the sequence is roast, crack, winnow, and the quality of the winnow is measured by how little shell remains in the nib — because shell in the nib carries through into the chocolate as gritty, flavourless dilution.

Grinding the nib produces cocoa mass — also called cocoa liquor, though it contains no alcohol — a thick paste that is liquid when warm because the cocoa butter in the kernel melts. Pressing the mass separates it into cocoa butter, the fat, and press cake, which is milled into cocoa powder. Chocolate is made by recombining these fractions with sugar and, for milk chocolate, milk solids, in proportions that define the product.

Cocoa mass

Ground nib, containing both the cocoa solids and the cocoa butter in their natural proportions. The base of all chocolate.

Cocoa butter

The fat pressed out of cocoa mass, valued for its melting behaviour and used in chocolate, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals.

Cocoa powder

The milled press cake left after the butter has been extracted, used in beverages, bakery, and confectionery.

Nibs are specified on residual shell content, moisture, fat content, particle size, and flavour, and they inherit the bean's fermentation profile, origin character, and any defects it carried. Shell content is the attribute the winnower is judged on and is regulated in some jurisdictions, since it is the most direct measure of processing quality and the most direct route to adulteration.

The nib is fat-rich and picks up odours readily, so it is stored and handled away from taint and moisture, and its fat can go rancid over long holding. Nibs are also sold directly to consumers and to bakers as an ingredient in their own right — roasted, crunchy, unsweetened, and intensely bitter — a small but growing outlet for what is otherwise an industrial intermediate.

Almost all nibs are ground onward into cocoa mass and thence into chocolate, confectionery, and cocoa powder for beverage and bakery use. Cocoa butter pressed from the mass supports a substantial cosmetic and pharmaceutical demand alongside its chocolate use. A smaller share of nibs is sold whole as a food ingredient and snack.

• Food — ground into cocoa mass for chocolate and confectionery manufacture
• Beverage — via cocoa powder for drinking chocolate and flavouring
• Industrial — via cocoa butter for cosmetic and pharmaceutical use
• Food — whole roasted nibs as a bakery and snack ingredient