Is espresso hot chocolate impossible?

June 6, 2009 7:26 PM

Chocolate espresso - impossible? I want to make espresso hot chocolate, but after reading up it seems as though it's not doable. At all. Am I right?

I want to make hot chocolate using my espresso machine. Initially I searched for insoluble chocolate thinking I could just run it through the machine as I would coffee, but such a thing doesn't seem to exist, and after doing some reading it looks like cacao beans need to be heavily processed before resembling chocolate.

I've read up on home-roasting cacao beans, but apparently that still wouldn't get me what I want as cacao beans are extremely bitter before processing, and need milk proteins and sugar to taste anything like chocolate (which doesn't actually make sense to me, as good dark chocolate doesn't contain any milk proteins, but that's what I read). Could I add milk and sugar after making the espresso to get the same effect?

I'm going to buy some cacao beans and experiment, but thought the hive mind could help as my chemistry and chocolate understandings are pretty basic overall! To summarise;
- will I totally be wasting money and time buying and roasting cacao beans in order to try to make espresso chocolate?
- if I make espresso chocolate, using an espresso machine and some ground, roasted cacao beans, will it be totally disgusting?
- will it be disgusting even if I add milk and sugar afterward? Or should I think about how to add milk and sugar to the ground beans before running it through the espresso machine?

I have an electric bench-top machine and a stovetop mokka pot I can use, if that makes a difference.

Thanks for your help!

posted by goo to food & drink (23 comments total)

Is the shot of espresso in regular hot chocolate not hitting what you're looking for? I'm not sure that the trouble would be worth it, otherwise.
posted by messylissa at 7:33 PM on June 6

If I am understanding the question correctly and you just want hot chocolate (brewed with the espresso machine but not actually including any espresso), yes- it will be disgusting even with milk and sugar.

Cacao beans really need fat (cocoa butter and/or milkfat) and sugar and you won't be able to add enough post-brew to make it palatable.

I am guessing you'll taste burnt, bitter fruit if you go the home-roast method, but hey- it won't be a terribly expensive experiment.
I think you'd do slightly better to start with nibs than whole beans.
It'll still probably be pretty nasty though, and more like nib tea instead of a nice thick hot chocolate that you might be used to.

Please post a follow-up and let us know how it goes!
posted by rmless at 7:46 PM on June 6

Thans for your answer messylissa, but I'm thinking about espresso-proccess hot chocolate, without coffee, so no.
posted by goo at 7:48 PM on June 6

Thanks rmless - I've seen the nibs available and think I'll experiment with both. I'll definitely let you know how it goes!
posted by goo at 7:50 PM on June 6

I don't think this would work. Cocoa beans need to be processed before they can be used in food. Dark chocolate is actually quite a refined food - most importantly, it will have sugar and cocoa butter added (most brands actually do include some milk as well). Chocolate without any of the above is an acquired taste, to put it mildly.

If you want a strong hot chocolate just use some good quality powdered cocoa, add sugar to your liking, then add hot water and milk.
posted by fearthehat at 7:51 PM on June 6

Can you describe, as vividly as possible, what you want the end result to taste like?
My sense is that the chemistry doesn't work for running cacao beans thru the espresso process, but once we know what you want it to taste like, maybe the right combo of espresso variety and cacao percentage. I've seen dark choc go as high as 86% commercially available. It's great- it practically puckers my mouth.... or baker's chocolate?
posted by SaharaRose at 7:52 PM on June 6

I had something like what you might be going for, if I understand your question correctly, at Kakawa Chocolates in Santa Fe, NM. They're a specialty, artisinal chocolatier that specializes in Mesoamerican-style chocolate drinks. They are very intense; servings are small for a good reason. Poke around on their site and read their product descriptions - based on what I tasted, they're accurate.
posted by rtha at 8:00 PM on June 6

Cacao with no sugar, no fat, and no vanilla added does not taste anything like any chocolate you have ever had. It does not taste particularly good.

You can buy powdered pure cacao, it is used to dust on top of chocolate deserts to add a bitter counterpoint to the sweetness, and I imagine you could tamp that into your machine and run hot water through it. And I imagine you could drink what came out. But it would not be anything recognizable as hot chocolate, either by the normal definitions of that drink, or as chocolate itself.
posted by paisley henosis at 8:01 PM on June 6

I think what everyone seems to be getting at is that what we experience as "chocolate" is very far from the taste of the bean or nib because of the large amount of fat added in the processing and the crushing and smoothing down to insanely small particles that creates the soft, melting mouthfeel of good chocolate.

If you like the taste of nibs alone (I personally don't but some do), then you might like what you are about to create, but it won't taste at all like "chocolate." Nibs are very tart and bitter, and sometimes a little earthy, but they don't really taste much like chocolate.

By just running the water through, you'll get at some of the flavor of the beans/nibs, but you won't get any of the fat (not water soluble) in the beans/nibs or any of the additional fat that is normally added during processing that helps carry and extend the flavors. You might have a tiny bit more luck if you brewed the cacao with full-fat milk instead of water, to try to get at some of the fat-soluble flavors that you might miss with water only, but still you'd be extracting the flavor of cacao and not the flavor of "chocolate."
posted by rmless at 8:04 PM on June 6

If possible, please film the results of you giving your resulting "hot chocolate" to an adorable and unsuspecting child and then post a link.
posted by rmless at 8:05 PM on June 6 [1 favorite]

Fortunately for you, a couple of years ago while at a training camp some idiot friends of mine actually ran roasted cacao beans through my burr grinder (luckily it was my cheap take-on-holiday one, not my nice expensive one).

Setting aside my displeasure, the results were far from satisfactory anyway. Cacao beans are very fatty (that's half the point of chocolate) and so they didn't grind properly and choked up the works.

In any event I certainly would not let you try pulling a shot in my beautiful espresso machine, because cleaning old coffee oil off it is bad enough -- I can't imagine what cocoa butter would do to it.

If you are experimenting with beans, I would pound them to sticky dust in a mortar, which I believe is the original central American technique, and then whisk them into hot water.

Incidentally I make kick-arse hot chocolate by melting some squares of Whittakers 72% Dark Ghana chocolate with the steam wand and then steaming with milk.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 8:09 PM on June 6 [1 favorite]

I make kick-arse hot chocolate by melting some squares of Whittakers 72% Dark Ghana chocolate with the steam wand and then steaming with milk.

This is by far the best idea so far. I've also made hot chocolate using the steam arm on my espresso maker - and it is yummy.
posted by torquemaniac at 8:28 PM on June 6

As people have mentioned, there are several problems with this plan:

1) "Chocolate" is a delicious substance made with cacao as an ingredient. Chocolate is not just refined cacao beans with sugar--even deep, dark chocolate. You absolutely need the fats (either cocoa butter or milk) in order to make it taste good. I've had unadulterated (but roasted and fermented) cacao... it tastes bloody awful. I literally gagged; and I love dark chocolate.

2) Unlike coffee, the tasty bits of cacao are largely insoluble in water. This means that the espresso process, which is based in hot water extraction, will not grab the desired flavors. I suspect you'll wind up with all of the (bitter) alkaloids and very few of the other flavors.

If you want a richer, more concentrated chocolate beverage, I'd suggest drinking chocolate. My personal recipe, which has nothing to do with the one I linked, is roughly as follows:

I heat a cup or two of whole milk, plus a couple ounces of heavy whipping cream, in a small sauce pan. Don't scald it, keep it strictly under boiling--I generally use a thermometer and keep it around 150°F. Then, whisking the whole time, I begin adding chunks of the very best chocolate I have on hand--the darker the better. I add the chocolate, tasting as I go, until I've reached a point of saturation where additional chocolate doesn't affect the flavor--for one cup milk, this will generally be 4 to 8 ounces. I then add enough sugar to make the drink palatable--this is entirely personal taste.

The result is a thick, syrupy, beverage that tastes so deeply and strongly of chocolate that most people to whom I serve it can't finish a cup. Even when I sweeten it heavily, most people can't take much.

I also make hot chocolate the same way, but I use a Hershey's bar, don't add as much chocolate, and omit the extra sugar.
posted by Netzapper at 8:57 PM on June 6 [1 favorite]

Standard hot chocolate is more akin to Turkish coffee than espresso. The grounds are part of it, not something to be separated out and avoided.
posted by flabdablet at 9:36 PM on June 6

This discussion makes me wonder if you could use oil instead of water in an espresso-like process in order to extract the cocoa fats. (It would probably fail, leaving you with bitter flavored oil and/or massive burns all over your body from the exploding espresso machine, but I too have wondered how to make espresso-like chocolate.)

When I am rich and leisured I intend to spend some time investigating the culinary uses of supercritical carbon dioxide, though.
posted by hattifattener at 10:45 PM on June 6

I tried to use my espresso machine to see if I could use roasted barley (the kind they sell as a coffee substitute) and it didn't work. The holes in the filter are made to work with coffee only. The barley did a weird thing where it plugged the holes and formed a rubbery layer. Another thing is that the espresso doesn't just flow one way. As the pressure builds, it backs up into the machine. The water screen keeps the larger particles out but the coffee fluid goes right inside.

It might muck up your machine in an unanticipated way.
posted by bonobothegreat at 11:38 PM on June 6

I'm afraid you won't be able to get anything out of that. Cacao seeds are extremely rich in fat, much like peanuts. In fact, if you grind roasted cacao seeds the way you'd do with coffee, you'd get something pretty much similar to cocoa mass (which is, roughly, molten chocolate minus the sugar).
posted by _dario at 2:11 AM on June 7

I repair espresso machines for a living. You didn't say whether you have a super-automatic (grinds and tamps for you) or a semi-auto (you grind and tamp and attach the portafilter), but in either case running anything other than coffee through it is a bad idea. I had one customer who thought he could put a chocolate bar into the grinder of his super-automatic and get hot chocolate; that was a $200 mistake (deep cleaning, replacing entire brew group). A semi-auto has fewer works to gum up, but you could still back-flush a mixture into the hoses and boiler that they aren't designed to handle and that normal cleaners won't get out. This is not a good idea unless you need an excuse to upgrade your machine.
posted by bizwank at 2:53 AM on June 7 [1 favorite]

Try putting some dutch process cocoa in the espresso scoop thing and see what happens.
posted by gjc at 6:57 AM on June 7

Hi there. This is just my idea, but what about using raw cocoa nibs and not roasting them. They taste complex and chocolatey and not bitter. You could grind and add. Maybe raw cocoa butter if you want it to be fatcreamy.
posted by Not Supplied at 12:07 PM on June 7

Hmmm, I think I need to experiment! I'm not after anything in particular, the thought was "I love espresso coffee and I love good hot chocolate - hey! Can I make espresso chocolate?".

Perhaps a tamped patty-type-thing of ground cacao (beans or nibs, probably nibs), cocoa butter and sugar could be a possibility - I'll try it and let you know!
posted by goo at 6:11 PM on June 7

I tried the patty idea above (with caco nibs, cocoa butter and sugar) and it was terrible - the cocoa butter melted and dripped through the machine and the result was gross and oily. I really ahould have foreseen this and feel a bit stupid for not! I'll keep trying, now I have some nibs.
posted by goo at 7:51 PM on July 2

Goo (I'll spare the eponysterical bit), here's what I'd do.
You have nibs. You have to go precolombian, and my hunch is that there's no espresso machine in there, sorry.
Do you have a blender/spice/coffee grinder (blade, no burr)?
Whizz the nibs (they should of course be roasted and hulled).

The heat from the whizzing will melt the fat in the nibs. Keep going (and perhaps add a little butter) until you have an omogeneus, fluid, warm (about 100F?) mass. Add fine sugar until it tastes like molten chocolate (it *is*, roughly, molten chocolate actually, it's called "cocoa liquor"). If you feel like experimenting a bit, you can add as a flavor a hint of vanilla, or cinnamon, or allspice, or even powdered hot chilies.

Meanwhile, boil some water (or milk, but I'd go with water first to taste the cocoa) and mix it well in the cocoa liquor. It won't mix very well, you don't have emulsifiers in there (unless you feel like mixing to the water -say- 1/4 of a teaspoon of powdered soy lecithin per cup), but you can whizz it a little more with a mixer. There might be froth. Top with whipped cream, drink your very own hot chocolate!

Froth the milk with the steam from your espresso machine (I knew it would have been useful at some time), top chocolatey goodness with that - Gooppuccino!

Making (solid) chocolate requires a bit of tools and know-how uncommon to the average household, but it's doable.

God, I love chocolate.
posted by _dario at 9:18 PM on July 3