So last night was a big night!  I gave it a go with the beans that I had ordered.  The roasting, cracking, and winnowing went very well.  I was nervous that I was going to lose a lot of good material during the winnowing as the roasted beans broke up into very small nibs.  Surprisingly, I don’t think I lost that much.

Where the failure came in was with the grinding.  I ran the nibs through the Breville juicer we have. I ran it through about 4 times when the filter/basket broke.  It was a loud popping sound. I almost thought that we motor blew up.  It was a bit funny afterwards as I stood there in the kitchen thinking I had turned off the juicer but in fact it was still spinning.  The damage is minimal (a replacement filter/basket is about $30).

I’ll add pictures later, but for the time being, here’s a teaser of what came out.  You can tell that after 5 times, the oils are starting to come out and juice is starting to form.  I need to find a better way to grind the nibs without resorting to spending $500 on a machine.

The sign of chocolate liquor, this gives me hope!