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Conventional dark chocolate production methods that are applied in the industry consist of several steps, which require equipment with big investment costs. There are however few cost-effective alternatives suggested for small-scale production. Meanwhile, knowledge on these alternative equipment/techniques are insufficient to promote miniature production of high quality chocolates, either for research purposes in an industrial context, or for producers in developing countries, where the cost of investing in conventional equipment seems to be an impediment. The aim of this study was two-fold; first, to assess the feasibility of utilizing the ECGC-12SLTA CocoaTown melanger as an alternative to the conventional 3-roll refiner at different settings and fat content. Thereafter, one optimal setting was selected for each equipment for further investigation on the impact of the refining on some quality attributes of the final dark chocolate (70% cocoa). Secondly, the Stephan mixer; being used to mimick a conching-like process, was assessed with respect to two processing factors; the dry conching temperature (60 °C, 80 °C) and the duration of vacuum pump connection (0, 30, 60 min). The latter was to facilitate adequate moisture removal. The melanger proved to be a suitable alternative to the 3-roll refiner, provided that refining was carried out at moderate/high (ca. 40%) fat content, as is often the case for “high-percentage-cocoa” chocolates. Refining for 180 min with the mini drum at 40% resulted in D (v,0.9) significantly (p