Bean to bar - the process

 

Beans arrive!

 

The first thing we do is get our beans, we get them from Silva Cacao, and we check that everything is in order and looking good!

 

Sort the beans

 

Then we start the chocolate making process by sorting the beans, discarding any small, broken or flat beans. These beans aren’t fit for making amazing chocolate. But there’s not many of them in each batch!

 

Roast the beans

 

The beans then get roasted at a low temperate and in turn causes the Maillard reaction to occur. “The Maillard reaction is a chemical reaction between amino acids and reducing sugars that gives browned food its distinctive flavour.”

 

This is where the beans start to take on their chocolatey flavour. If we didn’t roasted them the final chocolate would be quite bitter and wouldn’t taste like the iconic chocolate flavour we all love!

 

Crack the beans

 

Once the beans are roasted and cooled we have to crack them. Which beans breaking them apart to into the cocoa nibs, the part we turn into chocolate, from the cocoa husk, the out shell of the cocoa bean.

 

Winnow the beans

 

Now we have a mix of cocoa nibs and husks which we need to separate. We winnow them using a vacuum and chamber to the heavier coca nibs fall down and the lighter husks are blown up and into a different container.

 

Grind

 

This is where chocolate starts to become what you know and love! We add the ingredients into a stone grinder to combine everything into a smooth, uniform emulsion. For example our dark chocolate is cocoa nibs, sugar and cocoa butter. Which is ground for up to 48 hours and leaves us with a beautifully smooth and rich tasting liquid form of chocolate.

 

Temper the chocolate 

 

Tempering is where we heat and cool the chocolate to specific temperates to stabilise  the cocoa butter. We temper chocolate for a few different reasons. Mainly to give it the best texture and melting point for eating. When tempered correctly chocolate has snap, shine and melts at body temperature.

 

If we didn’t temper chocolate it would be crumbly, dull and not give you the full, wonderful chocolate experience.

 

Pack the finished bars

 

And finally we hand pack each chocolate bar in compostable bags and our beautiful card boxes ready to be sent off to you to enjoy!