Nib roasting
Winnowing before roasting rather than after. More even heat, finer control, and a harder winnow.
Conventional practice roasts whole beans and then cracks and winnows them, because roasting loosens the shell. Nib roasting inverts that: the beans are cracked and winnowed raw, and only the nib is roasted.
The advantage is heat transfer. A nib is smaller and more uniform than a whole bean, so it roasts evenly and responds faster to profile changes, which gives finer control. The cost is that winnowing an unroasted bean is harder — the shell adheres more tightly — so yields are lower.
What it does
Roasts winnowed nib rather than whole bean, giving more even heat transfer and finer profile control.
Why it matters
It is one of the ways a maker gains precision over a roast, and it trades that precision against winnowing yield.
- Typical temperature
- 100–130°C
- Why the range is wide
- Nib roasts run cooler and shorter than whole-bean roasts, because there is no shell insulating the material.
- Optional?
- An alternative ordering rather than an additional step.
When it goes wrong
Scorching, which happens faster than with whole beans because there is no shell buffering the heat.
Related
Covered in
- Roasting explainedRoasting after winnowing rather than before, and what it changes about control.
Compared in
- Nib roasting vs whole bean roastingSet against Whole bean roasting, with the practical consequence of each difference.
Sources
- ChocolateHQ editorial synthesis — ChocolateHQ(citation identity confirmed; passage not re-read)
- The Science of Chocolate — Royal Society of Chemistry(citation identity confirmed; passage not re-read)