Fig. 85b.
After defatting, the expressed cacao cakes are allowed to cool down, for which purpose they are transferred to flat trays or other suitable receptacles, and pulverising and sifting the powder thus obtained commenced.
3. Pulverising and Sifting the Defatted Cacao.
There are several methods of proceeding with these operations, such as treating the expressed cacao in the melangeur already described in an earlier part of this book (cf. 30-32 figs.) or passing it through the centrifugal sifting machine (cf. 84b and 88 figs.) with which we are now acquainted. At a time when the melangeur was to a certain extent the universal machine of the manufacturer, it was almost exclusively utilised for pulverisation, that up-to-date division of labour whereby this machine is limited to mixing (and very properly so limited, as its name implies) and the preparation of cacao powders on the contrary assigned to more efficient constructions having then not as yet been adopted. We annex a description of one or two specially constructed arrangements for the pulverisation and sifting of cacao, as manufactured by J. M. Lehmann and already repeatedly tested.
Fig. 86.
First there is the cacao cake crusher (figs. 85a and 85b), which reduces the pressed cake into rather large pieces about the size of a walnut, previous to its being pulverised either in the melangeur, centrifugal sifting machine or some similar apparatus. It has been furnished with one (fig. 85a) and in some cases even with two (fig. 85b) pair of toothed or cogged rollers, and the cacao in this latter type of construction is crushed as small as a pea, which reduction, although it is by no means essential, considerably relieves the strain on the pulverising machine and is also in some sort a protection against unnecessary waste of material.
Fig. 87.