Development and evaluation of a laboratory scale conch for chocolate production

In this study a laboratory scale conch was developed with the purpose of testing new formulations using small amounts of chocolate mass. The equipment was built with working parts of others machines and the chocolate manufactured with the conch was evaluated in relation to the viscosity, moisture, acidity and polyphenol concentration. The resulting chocolate was tempered and then evaluated by a sensory panel. The results were always compared with an industrial conching process. The material used in the assays was dark chocolate (40% cocoa). Data were submitted to variance analysis (anova) and when there was significant difference among the averages, the Tukey's test was applied. It was verified that the reduction of moisture and viscosity of the mass in the laboratory scale was similar to industrial scale. The parameters acidity and polyphenols showed no significant alterations when comparing both process scales. However, in the sensory analysis a flavour difference between the processing scales was perceptible.