Daintree Estates - Australia gets another bean-to-bar chocolate maker

Very exciting news! Australia now has four bean to bar chocolate makers (I think I am counting correctly). Haigh's, Nui, Zokoko and now Daintree Estates ( www.daintreeestates.com ). Check out their comprehensive website for more info, the shop is not up and running yet but soon I am told.

I have had the good fortune to have worked with some of the cocoa from Mango Park run by Don and the chocolate I have made from itis amazing! The flavour notes are very unusual, I get liquorice and pineapple very strongly in this chocolate.

Well done guys!!

updated by @tom: 04/18/15 06:26:46AM

Hey Tom don't forget the other Australianbean to bar producer"Cicada Chocolate".

Well i would like not to forget but i think i did, i am pretty sure i have come across the name before but couldnt access your website, and forgot with no other means of contact, it was a difficult followup. I am trying to access right now and cant. Just found your facebook and therefore your email but there aint much else there. So what do you do, where do you sell?

Actually Daintree Estates is not just a bean to bar chocolate maker, but the only pod to plate chocolate maker in Australia. ;^)

Our full size blocks are not far away now. Product launch is expected in September or early October.

I have, still no love, have used Safari and Explorer on several machines. I will try at work when i get there.

Hi Tim good to see you on here.

Ok got in, took a million years to load the site and i still got the message that it couldnt open the page? Dont know what is going on there, Ill have a look around.

Well ill have to order some bars then, look forward to reading more as the blog continues!

Thanks Tom for your continuing interest in the Australian cocoa growing project over the past few years. At long last (much to our grower's delight) we're just about there!!!

Just received a sample the other day. Excellent work guys, the flavour notes unique to the Australian bean are very well showcased. I just heard that the 80g bars were coming off the line on Monday. I look forward to seeing the packaging.

Thanks Tom - yes, our 80g blocks are being packaged now and we should have them available for online ordering within 2-3 weeks. We're all nervously excited!!!

Keep us posted Tim - I'm keen to try them

We had the fortune to try both the 70% and 45% milk chocolate today. Must say I'm *very* impressed with both. The balance of sugar and mouth feel are excellent. Did you do the roasting profiles and formulation Tom?

I have a cold today so taste is impaired but from what I could taste I liked. From what understand the price point will be $8-$10 / 80g bar?

One thing is intriguing me from the ingredients list on both the 70% and 45% mini bar labels is the inclusion separately of both Cocao Nibs & Cocao Butter. Is the butter from Daintree too? Is there then consequently left over Cacao powder? Are the nibs produced by a separate company? If your in control of the entire processing (bean-to-bar) "Cacao Beans" would be the obvious ingredient?

I also hate the "Made in Australia from local and imported ingredients." statement knowing the way juice manufactures abuse such labelling. i.e. the only "local ingredient" being water in some juices ...

Cocoa butter is not presently made anywhere in Australia, and not using Australian grown cocoa. Consequently our chocolate uses imported cocoa butter. In the future we plan to produce our own butter and powders, but this is unlikely within the next 12 months. We are obligated by law to disclose that the product is made from local and imported ingredients, but can assure you it is predominantly from Australian ingredients. All nibs are from 100% Australian grown cocoa. The sugar is from cane grown in the same region of Far North Queensland.

I was hoping you were producing powder. I've seen pretty simple setups for that i.e. basically a massive hydralic ram and somewhere for the butter to go.

Don't know if you have tried, it but Daintree Vanilla & Spice is maybe worth trying to up the local Ozzie appeal.

Best milk chocolate I've tasted in 10+years maybe 20.I love milk chocolate.

I didn't work with Daintree Estates per se, Iworked with Don Murday and just before thatRick Raya bit on how theirpost harvest processes related to the finished chocolate, this started back in 2009. I worked for beans; Don kindlysent beans and I sent back chocolate. As well as trying different roasts over that time I optimised formulations (dark, dark milk and milk choc)to display the unusual flavour notes and did some 'product developement' too so to speak but never official. Don did show (let taste) some of the many shipments I sent over the years to some of the execs of the operation, so perhaps that had some influence. I had a great deal of fun and gained a lot of experience and importantly got to eat a lot of very nice chocolate. The finest beans I have worked with. Post harvest processing was so good I did a copy of Pralus' chocolate coated cocoa beans and they were sensational with dark milk chocolate. I had never felt game enough to try this on any other originI have worked with because the shell is left on in this delicacyand quite honestly who knows where cacao has been and the shell needs to be nice and thin, free ofplacenta, sticks, bugs, rocks, dirt andfermentation extremely consistent.

Hey, thanks for the tip off Ice Blocks, I didn't know they existed, I seem to remember searching for Aussie vanilla at one stage, don't know how I missed them. I have just ordered some beans and will try them in a batch of Aussie chocolate and compare with other vanilla, see if I can detect a difference. I also quite like making a version of the el rusticoAskinosie bar which has chuncks of vanilla bean in the chocolate - should taste a difference there!

It's very different , you will not be dissapointed.

Damn I'm jealous. Is the dark milk the 45%?

I think I was talking to the right person in the right place at the right time.

The dark milk that I make with the Aussie beans is a 55% but that is 40% beans, I like my cacao content quite high in a dark milk, this formulation I found best to my liking, just the right amount of milk to balance with the fruit. The Daintree Estates formulation I am not sure of but suspect it is more like a 45% like you have guessed (when I see the nutritional info on the bigger bars I will be able to work it out). This bean works well at a number of different formulations below the 55% I settled on, the flavour of the bean still comes through even down to a 25% cacao bean content. I found it more challenging to formulate it at this level because I wanted to maintain the origin flavour but at that level of milk you face a lot more challengeswith the physical properties of the chocolate rather than getting the flavour you want. I got it pretty damn right in the end for the milk chocolate though, I was really quite proud of that one (with nibs in it it was killer!!!).

updated by @tom: 09/07/15 10:42:50PM

Ooooo I can't wait, hopefully it gets here for a weekend run!

Looks like the Daintree bars are packaged, this pic is off the website

Yep! Just waiting on a few more things to be packaged and we'll soon have sales via the website. Only weeks away now. Sneek previews attached. Shhh...

Loved it Tom that's the way milk chocolate should be.

Oh, you got that right! Dark milk chocolate is a seriously under-represented catagory in Australia and the funny thing is it would probably be the most popular (my experience over many years of giving samples to people). I love it, you can still taste the origin but it has the lovely milk to mellow just slightly the bitterness. There are a few bars out there but they don't really say DARK MILK CHOCOLATE like the Lindt 50% which is what my wife and daughter go for when they have eaten everything I have made......which happens a lot, have a safe box with a very stern note in it, which some how doesn't seem to make one ounce of difference!!?#$%#@. Well, if I was serious I would get a small safe!

Oh, I finally got my Daintree Vanilla and wow! You weren't kidding just the smell alone is sodelicious and potent, not as harsh and 'green' (if that can be used as an aroma descriptor) as the Tahitian stuff you can buy in supermarkets now. I need to get some of the Queen planifolia for comparison, but wow, if that is how it smells I can't wait to put it in some chocolate this weekend. Mmmm mmmm!

Press release: http://www.cairns.com.au/article/2011/10/25/187725_local-news.html

Looks like the online store is up and running!

Sure is. First orders have just been received by the customers and tasting feedback is starting to filter through.

Display photo from the launch at the Sheraton Mirage Resort at Port Douglas earlier this month. Looks amazing I think you will agree

Further update, i don't know if anyone caught the Jetstar inflight magazine article well this is even better exposure for Daintree Estates chocolate. They had the tv show Landline do a story on them, go to http://www.abc.net.au/landline/archives/landline_201206.htm and follow the chocolate!

I love following the chocolate!