Tempering the first batch of chocolate made in our new melanger. We’ve dabbled with bean-to-bar chocolate making in the past, but this year we’re going all out: bigger equipment, wilder cacao beans.
Catongo Farmgate is an unusually white-bean cacao from Brazil. This batch is 72; the flavor is complex, with a natural bright sweetness over the tongue and dark licorice acidity in the cheeks. Hints of apricot come in late, and the aromatics linger for quite a long time.
10kg Melanger 
Cracker & Winnower
Watch for the Limited Edition Bars…
Making chocolate’s a complex process with a many complex steps, packed with potential pitfalls: one misstep and you’ve produced some very expensive and time consuming bad chocolate.
- Source high-quality fine flavor cacao beans.
- Roast the beans to bring out flavors and nuances.
- Crack and winnow, or shell the beans. (Loud!)
- Grind the beans into chocolate.
- Temper and mold bars and bonbons.
We of course, only want to bring you fantastic chocolate, so I’m taking a very careful scientific approach to sourcing and production. We source our cacao directly from small and heirloom farms that grow the highest quality fine flavor beans. We spend time on the farms.
Once we have the cacao in house, we inspect it carefully, then develop a roast profile to highlight its most interesting flavor characteristics. The beans then rest overnight before being broken up in the cracker, and then shelled to nibs in the winnower.
Finally, the nibs, or broken beans, are ground with sugar and cocoa butter until they form the smooth paste known as chocolate. My staff and I make it into bars and bonbons that you eventually get to enjoy!
The chocolate I tempered at the beginning of this column eventually became the sculpture you see below.