How Long to Roast Cacao Beans — Time and Temperature

What to do instead of following a recipe

Pick a target bean temperature and a target time, then learn what applied heat gets you there on your equipment. That is a roast profile, and unlike a recipe it travels — you can hand it to someone with a different machine and they can reproduce your roast.

The practical sequence is on our roast profiles and calibration roast page. In outline:

1. Start with a small charge so a mistake costs you little.
2. Note the temperature you charged at.
3. Watch for the moisture plateau — the bean temperature climbs, flattens near the boiling point of water while the moisture leaves, then begins climbing again. That inflection is the one landmark cacao does give you, if you can see it.
4. Steer the steepness of the climb after the plateau, not the end number.
5. Finish on a bean temperature, not on the clock.
6. Cool fast, and write down what you would change.

Three or four batches and you will have your own numbers — which are worth more than ours, because they are true on your equipment.

You cannot do any of this without bean temperature

Everything above assumes you can see what the beans are doing. Coffee roasters get that for free from first and second crack. Cacao gives you no comparable landmark, so the temperature has to come from a probe in the bean mass.

On an RK Drum the RoastPilot controller puts a thermocouple in the rotisserie handle and sends live bean temperature to your phone, holds your target by working the gas automatically, and saves the curve so you can run it again. That last part is what turns a good batch into a repeatable one.

More on why the number matters: bean temperature in cacao roasting.

Common questions

How long does it take to roast cacao beans?

Most published cacao roasts run 15 to 25 minutes, with a legitimate long-and-low school taking 45 to 60 minutes. Time is an outcome rather than a target, though — you finish on a bean temperature, and how long that takes depends on moisture content, batch size, bean size, how much heat you can apply and the weather.

What temperature should I roast cacao beans at?

Published practice finishes the beans roughly 50 to 60°F above the boiling point of water — the 260–270°F region — and cacao roasts far cooler than coffee, commonly quoted as about 100°F cooler. Critically, that is a BEAN temperature. Most numbers you find online are oven or air settings, which are not related to bean temperature by any fixed offset.

Why do cacao roasting temperatures vary so much between sources?

Mostly because sources are quoting different things without saying so. An oven setting, a roast-chamber air temperature and an actual bean temperature can differ by a hundred degrees, and the gap between air and bean changes during the roast and with batch size. When you read a roasting temperature, always establish whether it refers to the air or the beans.

Does batch size change cacao roasting time?

Yes, significantly. More mass takes longer to heat, and batch size also changes how the beans tumble in the drum. A profile dialled in at two pounds will need re-calibrating at eight — which is why you calibrate on your own equipment at your own working batch size rather than copying a time from elsewhere.