The invention relates to a method for lowering the viscosity of a fat
based mixture comprising solids and fat that have been previously refined
to a powdery mass characterized in that the powdery mass is submitted to
elongational flow effective as such to provide breaking up of the
agglomerates and intimate interactions of the solids with the fat thereby
resulting in the production of a pasty mass with coating of the solids
with the fat. The method enables to replace conching in a traditional
conche or at least reduce conching time or increase the subsequent
loading and throughput of the fat based mass in traditional conches.