Well, I guess I should have mentioned my budget, huh? lol. My total I have for this project is $2,260. I've been doing molded chocolates and truffles, and our chuch's retired pastor is completely in love with them. lol. I had mentioned my desire to make chocolate from scratch to him, and a week later I was in his living room outlining my budget to him as he cut me a check for what I needed. Deal is him and his wife get a pound of chocolates a month for the rest of their lives! It won't be an insanely long time as he's 86 and she's 92! lol.
Anyways, I figured that between what I have listed, and $200 for 20 lbs of beans (I estimated that, since the average price I"m finding is between $8.50 and $9.50 an lb), $365 for 55 lbs of cocoa butter, $120 for 50 lbs of milk powder and $125 for 50 lbs of Sucanat (all natural, organic, f/t, unprocessed), That brings the total up to $2230.
Now, I've got a better source than I had originally quoted him for my beans. Got a guy in Costa Rico that charges $4 a kilo, plus shipping. Once I get things going (and I know how to NOT ruin my chocolate), I'll make a 100 kilo order which comes out to be about $900 including shipping.
So, I guess I'm asking if I should just skip getting the champion and the roaster and get the 100kg order of beans to start with? If I don't get those two and add the $200 for beans to that, I've got $750, so I'd need another bill fifty from somewhere to get the entire order...
Also, how long can I keep the un-roasted beans for? Do they spoil after a certain amount of time? The commercial kitchen we're putting in the church (that's where we're gonna do our baking and my chocolates, since we're outgrowing the co-op we currently work with) won't be done for AT LEAST two months, and even then it's gonna take a while for me to figure out the proper techniques for roasting and whatnot. I want to order things soon, but I don't want almost a grand worth of beans to go rancid before I even get the chance to make them into chocolates.
Another thought I have is that I have been assuming that the roast really determines the flavor of the chocolate about as much as the individual beans themselves do (somewhat like coffee. If it's shit beans, the taste is shit no matter how well it's roasted, and if it's roasted improperly, it's shit no matter how high the bean quality is). Is that correct, or am I way off base there? And where can I find more information on how to roast properly? I haven't been able to find much of anything for that answer...