Forum Activity for @Clay

In the simple view, Barry-Callebaut is a "bean-to-bar" maker because they do make chocolate bars. Huge ones that are mostly only used by remelters. Small from-the-bean makers who wish to differentiate themselves from industrial producers would have a problem calling B-C a "bean-to-bar" chocolate maker though they are in a literal sense. They make chocolate from cocoa beans and they mold chocolate bars.

From-the-bean clearly differentiates a remelter, who would be properly labeled "from-couverture."

By throwing the retail bar in their own label requirement in, you can say that a "bean-to-bar" chocolate maker starts with cocoa beans and ends up producing finished bars for retail sale. This disqualifies Barry-Callebaut (and, unfortunately Felchlin as well - which produces very fine bars for many companies under private-label contracts), but it means that companies like Guittard, Valrhona, and Cluizel, and many others who are also industrial-scale producers can be considered bean-to-bar.

The question is ... where do you want to draw the line? Purists will say that a "true" bean-to-bar chocolate maker must own all of the equipment and do all of the work in-house. I am less demanding because I can see a lot of value of roasting and liquor-making at origin. But to be considered bean-to-bar the chocolate maker would have to personally supervise every single roast and grind. If they just phoned it in, then they'd from a from-liquor chocolate maker.

Some companies, like Pralus and Scharffen Berger in the early days, only produce some of their bars. When I visited the Pralus factory I could only see wrapping machines for their 100gr bars, not the smaller tasting squares. Those were (at the time, I don't know the situation now), wrapped by someone else with special machinery.

Answers to questions about where to draw lines become even fuzzier if we want to start talking about the definitions of craft, or artisan, or micro-batch. In the end I think that these are nuances that are important to only small, but passionate, segments of the producer and consumer markets.

[Edited on Jan 5, 2016 for typos and grammar.]

By Simran Sethi and Clay Gordon

The Mast Brothers were in the right place at the right time with the right product and the right image. Clay made  this observation  back in 2012; they captured the cultural zeitgeist perfectly, guiding and riding the wave they expertly caught. But change any one aspect of that picture and the Bros may have had less success. Take away Williamsburg, the flannel and, yes, the beards they claim were  grown on a bet  about the amount of chocolate they sold. What you have is chocolate built upon the work of others, heralded by journalists and cool hunters hungry to rave about a hot new thing—some of whom are now indulging in gleeful  schadenfreude  about the takedown.

There are many reasons to be disappointed in the Mast Brothers. They were willfully dishonest about which, if any, of their chocolates were bean-to-bar (as chronicled in exquisite detail by Scott Craig in his  four-part series ). This is an affront to any chocolate maker dedicated to the painstaking process of sourcing beans from various origins, paying for shipping (a much greater expense for smaller makers who do not have economies of scale) and then working through the laborious process of transforming the seeds of the cacao pod into chocolate.

It takes about 400 beans, or approximately 11 pods, to make 1 pound of chocolate. The seeds we call beans are roasted, cracked to release the cocoa nib, and then shelled (winnowed) to remove the papery husk. Next, the nibs are ground into a paste known as cocoa liquor, which can be directly processed into chocolate or pressed to separate the fat (cocoa butter) from the non-fat solids. The resulting “presscake” is processed into cocoa powder which can later be recombined with cocoa butter to make chocolate or with vegetable oils, like palm oil, rendering a much lower-quality product (that cannot be called chocolate in the U.S.)

The cocoa bean contains between 47 and 54 percent fat—a stable fat with a long shelf life, one that’s solid at room temperature but starts to melt in our mouths or under our touch. Its stability means it’s coveted not only in chocolate but also as an ingredient in medical and beauty products. The butter can have a mild to very present cocoa flavor, depending on the way it’s processed, and is the only part of the bean used to make “white” chocolate.

Butter separated out from the powder is often added back during the chocolate-making process because fat—glorious fat—makes the chocolate creamier and, as the carrier of cocoa’s aroma compounds, more flavorful. (Interestingly, some craft chocolate makers do not add any cocoa butter to their recipes, thinking that added butter detracts from the “true nature” of the cocoa bean.)

The resulting mass (with any added ingredients—sugar and, perhaps, vanilla) is now the texture of coarse mud. As it’s refined, the size of the cocoa and sugar particles get progressively smaller. Conching (most often a separate step from refining) improves texture and tames harshness by evaporating off unwanted volatiles and fostering chemical reactions that can create delicate aromas and flavors.

A chocolate with particles over 30 microns will register on our tongues as gritty. Through refining, a cocoa liquor that starts out with particles in the 100 to 150 micron range is, ideally, reduced down to between 18 and 22, resulting in a smooth texture. That sensation influences the entire experience of flavor. “The whole process of making chocolate is to break down particle size and expose flavor,” explains Trinidadian chocolate maker Matthew Escalante. “Every step of processing changes the possibilities.”

The next step is tempering: forcing the fat crystals in the cocoa butter to line up in a specific shape through a controlled combination of heating and cooling. This increases the chocolate’s sheen and intensifies its snap. Tempering is tricky; if the chocolate isn’t tempered properly, it has a greater chance of getting fat bloom, the whitish coating or splotches caused by cocoa butter separating out of the chocolate. After tempering comes the sublime moment when the tempered liquid chocolate is poured into molds, cooled and—finally—packaged for consumption.

You can see why chocolate makers would be frustrated by anyone melting down pre-made  couverture chocolate and claiming they’d had a hand in the entire process. This work is arduous.  Through unclear labeling, Mast Brothers allowed consumers to assume all bars were made from beans they had sourced. They were not; they fudged the truth. 

By 2006, about the time the Bros turned their attention to chocolate, the real pioneers of the American craft chocolate movement— Scharffen Berger  first of all; then John Nanci’s  Chocolate Alchemy  and his work with  Santha  and  Crankandstein.net  to solidify the first end-to-end micro-batch craft chocolate production pathway; and chocolate makers including  Steve DeVries ,  Art Pollard ,  Shawn Askinosie ,  Alan McClure , et al.; and even Clay’s own chocophile(.)com ( now TheChocolateLife.com )—had done all the necessary preparatory groundwork. Work that had, in turn, been built on the efforts of  Valrhona ,  Cluizel ,  Bonnat ,  Pralus ,  Bernachon ,  Domori ,  El Rey , and  Vintage Plantations  (the list stretches on), plus the community around Martin Christy’s  seventypercent.com .

In essence, the required foundation had already been laid for them, the path already paved, and the market proven—chocolate could pretty much be made by anyone. But chocolate is a product almost everyone loves, but few actually know anything about when it comes to sourcing or production. A product with none of the universally accepted sensory evaluation criteria that has been long established in wine and coffee.

Was it done out of wondrous fascination for the purity of what they made in the cloistered atmosphere of the apartment where they first started experimenting? Or was it with an awareness of a unique market opportunity? Probably a combination of the two:

• right place;
• right time;
• right product—with no established local competition; and
• right image—where the Masts really set themselves apart.

The beards were distinctive; they solidified the Iowa-farmboy-cum-Amish/Hipster personae that the brand gelled around. The tattoos didn’t hurt, nor did the puzzling (at least for Iowa farm boys) nautical references.

And then there was the wrapping on the chocolate. The paper gave a tangible aura of quality, gravitas, even  value  to the chocolate—a characteristic that their early attempts at chocolate making did not possess. (And, many would argue, the product still lacks.) There was and is something about opening up the wrapper of a Mast Brothers chocolate bar that lends credence to what’s inside, that says, “Take notice of me. I am important!”

Was the packaging any better (or more authentic?) than what Shawn Askinosie was doing at the time? Shawn was putting pictures of actual farmers on his labels, naming people and identifying the real communities from which his cacao was sourced, and closing the wrappers with threads from the jute bags in which the beans had been transported from origin to Missouri. His wrappers were (and are) physical artifacts—a tangible bridge between the farmer, the end product and the consumer.

We may never understand how and why the Masts thought it necessary to start gilding the lily—or perhaps, more appropriately, the paper—but at some point they did. The most cursory examination of the chronology shows that the equipment and methods needed to make craft chocolate from the bean had been created well before the brothers started experimenting in their apartment.

Did they invent the bean cracker they used? Nope. The barley mill for home beer makers they purchased from Crankandstein was modified at the request of John Nanci. Using a hair dryer to winnow? Also John Nanci. Using a Champion juicer as a pre-grinder? John Nanci again. Using Santhas as grinders? Guess who. The  CPS winnower  they bought? Not John Nanci, but the Masts had no hand in its design. The winnower  they claim to have built ? A modified Brooklyn Cacao Vortex Winnower.

In short, almost every claim they have made about their roles in equipment innovation and processes of craft chocolate making are, to put it politely, embellishments. Or, to put it plainly, misappropriation. They were creating a myth and they spun it of whole cloth because, for one reason or another, no one called them out on it publicly. There was no little boy pointing out that the emperor was not wearing any clothes. Chocolate makers were whispering this to themselves, but not one journalist turned the whispers to shouts  until earlier this year .

As a result, the unknowing and unsuspecting public continued to grow mesmerized by gossamer tales woven of sheer fabrication, regardless of what their own intuition or taste buds told them. Mast Brothers were the “it boys.” Surely if the New York Times and renowned chefs, such as Thomas Keller, thought so, it must be true. Our own sensory experience—at least the one that culminated in our own mouths—could not be trusted.

Simran  (a relative newcomer to the world of chocolate who cared less about expert opinion than she perhaps should have) explored this in May of 2015, when she started to tease apart taste in her book  Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love :  “Cacao from Papua New Guinea is often dried on beds heated by diesel or wood, both of which can impart hammy or oily tastes to the beans because fats absorb odor. These are defects, the kinds of things most chocolate makers, particularly those concerned about flavor,  don’t  want because they mask aromas inherent in the beans. Yet one maker—who has gotten a lot of media attention and puts its chocolate in the most beautiful of wrappers—has decided to turn this defect into an attribute, repackaging the off-flavor as a novelty by highlighting the smokiness of the bar. Many craft makers who work closely with farmers on improving drying techniques and eradicating those off- flavors question if this is something we should celebrate—if, by buying into the smoke, it’s making it harder for producers who are trying to improve the taste of their beans. This is a question only we, the eaters, can answer, but it’s important to recognize we’re vulnerable to external influences, including hype and packaging.”

A  2008 study  by neuroscientist Hilke Plassmann and her colleagues reaffirms our vulnerability: We tend to enjoy identical products more when they’re priced higher or highlight positive “expectations of ... pleasantness.” This doesn’t just happen in our mouths and noses but also in our brains.

This isn’t to say we shouldn’t try a wide range of chocolates, but if we’re going to expend time and money and take in calories, we should know what our investment is supporting. We should try to understand where the flavors come from—and what good farming and processing practices taste like in order to understand  why  we love what we love.

We understand people wanted to believe the story that two brothers, toiling away in their Brooklyn apartment, had discovered something new and pure, something that never before existed. It’s part of why many were so willing to overlook and excuse the discrepancies and write them off to youthful frat boy hijinks, an aberration long in their ancient past.

The Masts now claim they were open about melting Valrhona as part of their early experimental years, before moving into their first workshop. Once they settled into their brick-walled storefront on North 3rd Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, their refrain became, “Trust us, 100% bean-to-bar.”

Trust us …  now .

If a company positions itself as an “authentic” “bean-to-bar” chocolate maker obsessed with integrity, purity and every little detail (from how the cocoa is sourced right through to the wrapping), then  any  bar produced that strayed from that storyline should have been clearly identified. That is very different from being “open” about re-melting only if and when asked. The vast majority of people who purchased products in the early days were not knowledgeable enough about production to make those inquiries. They accepted the statements made about the product at face value—statements that were not honestly represented on the labels of at least some of the products.

To rebuild trust with chocolate makers and consumers, the brothers need to document their trips to origin. They claim they source directly from the best farms in the world, yet the names of specific farms and details on varietals are conspicuously absent from their wallpapered labels, their website or any other source that can be found.

Yes, Venezuela is an origin, but if you were sourcing Chuao, or an Ocumare, or Cuyagua, Carenero, Sur del Lago, or a Guasare why wouldn’t that be featured prominently? Perú does produce some terrific cocoa, but if the Masts were using some of the best—say Cacao Gran Blanco from Piura or Marañon—why isn’t that information prominently featured? Craft chocolate makers mention specific origin and varietals whenever they can because it’s what sets them apart and helps consumers ascertain value. Where are the proud photos of the bearded brothers at origin, working with “their” farmers? Or, as they proudly proclaim, sailing said beans from origin? It’s economically unsustainable to sail a small cargo of beans from Papua New Guinea, Madagascar or even the Dominican Republic on a regular basis to Brooklyn. What is also out of the economic reach of most makers is what Rick Mast boasted about claiming they once paid ten times the market price for beans. If they actually paid that price at the farm gate, we would be truly impressed. But if a significant portion of that cost is tied up in transportation and other costs, then it’s far less impressive.

So, why do we care? We are not makers. We have no professional axe to grind.

Our motivation is simply to clear up misconceptions: The Masts dished it out, and most of us gobbled it up.

But through their assertions, Mast Brothers make it much harder for chocolate makers who do actual good works to flourish. And it makes it harder for us to do the work we want to do in supporting quality chocolate and makers with integrity.

Too much #mastsplaining.

Take Shawn Askinosie. He profit shares with his farmers. He has created self-sustaining school lunch programs in communities from which he buys cocoa.  Or Gianluca Franzoni of Domori, who works with the Franceschi family to preserve endangered strains of cacao in Venezuela. Volker Lehmann’s work with cacao silvestre in Bolivia and Marañon in Peru. Ingemann in Nicaragua. Graig Sams, Gregor Hargrove and company well before anyone else had their eyes directed toward Belize. Or the efforts of the  Cocoa Research Centre  in Trinidad,  CATIE  in Costa Rica or the hundreds of other conservationists and farmers working to conserve the very best varieties of cacao.

The Mast Brothers consciously and deliberately set themselves apart from the rest of the craft chocolate community. When asked by journalist Megan Giller about critics, Rick Mast glibly replied,  “We are a dangerous company because we are outsiders to the chocolate industry, never leaning on industry norms.” 

Given the meticulousness that has gone into crafting every other aspect of the brand, it’s hard not to conclude that the adoption of this position is just another aspect of the brand. As self-proclaimed dangerous outsiders, the company justifies operating under a different set of principles—and different measures of accountability—than other craft chocolate makers. Rather than replying to the press storm with openness and transparency, they have r esponded  by turning inward and closing their doors tighter shut. Their response reinforces that what the Bros may be remembered for is their branding—the beards and the paper—not their chocolate.

Simran  Sethi is the author of Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love — a book about the rich history—and uncertain future—of what we eat. Sethi is also a former visiting scholar at Trinidad’s Cocoa Research Centre housing the largest collection of cacao in the world. 

American Rotary is a good source for phase converters. You can call (or email) one of their techs with the sizes of your motors and other elements and they can size the converter you need. Also - you may be able to get away with a static converter if there is no cooling compressor.

So here's a question to consider after re-reading this and editing it for typos:

For me, the questions are about which parts of the process truly matter in the final product. Roasting? Check. Grinding, refining, and conching? Check.

Molding and putting it into wrappers/boxes? Maybe not so much. I agree that tempering is an important art to learn, but actually doing it myself when a contract manufacturer could do it better might be worth it.

This is what Scharffen Berger did for several years before they got bought to Hershey, at least for the small tasting squares. It made no economic sense for them to buy the (expensive) machines to wrap the squares so they shipped the chocolate across the country to NJ to a company who did that work for them. Did that make them any less of a "from-the-bean" or "bean-to-bar" chocolate maker?

I think not. What think you?

ab -

That's a very good question, and one that's being asked in a lot of quarters these days. The answer in the end is that I think everyone will be better off as a result of the scrutiny and improving customer trust.

Brad -

PLEASE do not put words into my mouth. What I am asking - as I have been asking consistently for years - is that you respect my desires about how to comport yourself on TheChocolateLife. We have had many private discussions on this topic.

You can make exactlly the points you want to make. But you don't have to bluster. You may not care what other people think of you, but I can tell you from personal experience that people will pay more attention to what you have to say if you aren't so confrontational.

That's it.

Now I realize that you are frustrated about people in your market (and elsewhere) deliberately misrepresenting what they do. Saying they make 100% of their chocolate from the bean when they are buying couverture and remelting. And I realize that you are happy that someone is calling the Mast Bros out.

BUT one of the reasons people paid attention to the DallasFood-org articles is that they are written dispassionately. If they were written any other way they would probably have been dismissed out of hand. Now Scott has been having fun in social media tweaking the Brothers but the articles stand apart from that. Which is important to remember.

Please believe me when I say that I have every motivation to root out and expose deceptive practices in the craft chocolate world and elsewhere. Although I am not explicitly mentioned in many of the articles, I have been involved in several - and in some very important ways. There are huge media forces like the NY Times weighing in on this subject and they have the ability to shape the narrative in ways that are beyond our control.

I have been doing, and will continue to do, the best I can to see how we can use the firestorm that has been kicked up in positive ways.

If I were you, I'd write a reasoned op ed to the local papers and figure out how to make this a positive for your business.

Yes. I saw the image. Posting a ticket on it now.

Brad.

IMNSHO: Calgary is not Williamsburg, or even Manhattan.

It's not about you , so crowing about reflected sainthood is out of place and only reflects badly on you.

Why do I say this?

There are far larger issues at hand, especially with the media coverage on The Guardian and other outlets focusing on price and how $10 is too much to pay. Comparing Mast w/ Hershey and Green & Black's and not understanding why the comparison is ludicrous. One good question is whether or not this will have an impact on the sales of other craft chocolate makers. NYTimes even says that this could bring the whole Brooklyn craft food "movement" down. 

I know that the author of one of the follow-up articles is horrified at how the story has been twisted. Fact is, we are no longer in control of it and it may be impossible to put the genie back into the bottle. Will it destroy trust? Some chocolate makers think so.

I am not interested in starting a flame war here on TheChocolateLife. If you want to take up the issue in The Calgary Herald or The Calgary Sun, I think either or both are more appropriate outlets.

There are some very substantive issues at play here and I would really like the focus to stay on those issues. Here's just one of my takes .

:: Clay

iPhone 5 not 5S? What version of iOS? Safari, right? Does this also happen in any other browser? I can't test as I don't have an iPhone 5.

My response in a comment to an article posted on The Guardian about the Mast Bros: Mast Brothers: taste-testing $10 chocolate bars as controversy boils over .

What is a real shame about most of the media reporting that has occurred in reply to the series on  DallasFood.org  (including [the article on TheGuardian]) is that it has featured a sensationalized focus on price. And that is not what the series is about at all. It's about transparency and deliberate, systematic, misrepresentation, which can happen at any price level.

It is an indisputable fact that the overwhelming majority of chocolate—whether sold as solid bars, candy bars, or confections—is sold at a price that means that the cocoa farmer was not paid a living wage for their work.

One thing that most craft chocolate makers strive for is equitable relationships with the farmers they buy their cocoa from. And an aspect of that equitable relationship is that the farmer gets paid a fair price for their labor. A price that enables them to have pride in their work, feed and clothe and send their children to school, and all of the other things we strive for for ourselves, families, and communities.

We all have our taste preferences, but this is not about what's better - Cadbury, Ritter Sport, Lindt, et al. What it is about is knowing that, when you buy any chocolate where one factor in your purchase decision process is how cheap it is, is that one of the consequences of that decision is the perpetuation of a cycle of poverty of heart-breaking, gargantuan, proportions. The fact is, virtually all chocolate is too cheap, yet most people are unaware of the fact that their perceived "right" to enjoy inexpensive chocolate is a major driver behind children laboring in cocoa farms.

Having blind faith in certification schemes is not *the* answer. Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance, Utz, et al, can only do so much; you as a consumer and large companies use those labels to avoid having to truly confront the reality of the situation.

Small chocolate makers who go to great lengths to source their beans provide one key to solving the problem. They confront the reality and work very hard to address it within the context of their own businesses.

Because craft chocolate makers cannot afford to buy hundreds of tonnes of beans at a time and don't have expensive automated plants, the price they *willingly* pay for high–quality cocoa beans and their costs of production are much, much higher than those of industrial producers who use their size and buying power to get the cocoa they buy at the lowest possible prices - not caring about the impact on the farmer.

In this context, what's important is not the price of the chocolate bar, it's the price the farmer receives for the cocoa beans - called the farm gate price. The higher the price paid to the farmer, the more expensive the chocolate is going to be. If you're buying a mass-market bar, most of the profits go to the manufacturers and retailers as well as to advertising and promoting the products - many of which actually have very little cocoa in them because cocoa is the most expensive ingredient!

And this is where the small chocolate maker strives to make a difference. Source the beans as closely as possible to the farmer, reduce the number of intermediaries who handle the beans - which increases their already high cost, and then work very hard to craft a product that people will like and buy more than once. Most of these small chocolate makers are self-funded startups who barely break even, let alone generate a profit.

And that's the source, I think, of much of the indignation surrounding The Mast Brothers. Their claim to being one of this amazing group of makers is on very shaky ground as the  DallasFood.org  series reveals. Most of the press surrounding the Brothers is about their beards, or about the paper used to wrap the bars, or about the design of their shops. And that's messed up. We were being lied to. It's not about the prices, it's about what appears to be systematic deception. That's why the chocolate community is up in arms. It is not a good thing for craft chocolate.

We can agree or not on whether we like a chocolate the Mast Brothers makes. That's partly a discussion of value: is the money I paid worth it, to me? In the case of the Mast Brothers - for me - the case is usually no: I did not get good value for money, but then I am focused on what's inside the wrapper, knowing that the wrapper is a not-insignificant reason for the price being what it is.

You may think I am an idiot to pay $10 for a bar of chocolate - but I have willingly paid much more. And I will continue to do so. I will do so because I want to see smiles on the faces of cocoa farming families when I travel at origin. I will do so because I believe in supporting honest, dedicated, craftspeople who work extremely hard to produce products they believe in and that they hope customers will buy and like.

What I try to avoid is purchasing chocolate where I know the farmer was not paid well or where the marketing is less than genuine.

And that's what this story is really about . It's not about a tenner.
###

Ben -

Login may have been resolved. I set the expiration time for the login cookie too short. It's now much longer (20,000 minutes). Also, if you are in chrome there is an extension called "EditThisCookie" that can be used to "protect" a cooke and keep it from expiring. You can use this to make your login cookie permanent on your end.

Working on other improvements over the next weeks.

:: Clay

Ben -

I agree, the situation with Groups is messed up. I need to get professional help to make them work properly.

Also, I have noticed that the Forums are working well for what the Groups were trying to so - and people are using the forums for those purposes. So, I am working on fixing the sorting problems for archive retrieval purposes, but pushing people towards using the Forums.

As a part of the process I will be updating the home page - rearranging things - and I will add the last updated timestamp.

The login thing is probably a browser cookie issue, but I will ask the developers. I don't ever have an issue here, and I use Chrome, Safari, and Firefox on MacOS. Is it in more than one browser? What combination are you having problems with?

:: Clay

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse

ICCO’s Ad Hoc Panel on Fine or Flavour Cocoa met in London last week to update the list of countries where they consider fine or flavor cocoa grows – and the percentage of the crop that is considered fine or flavor. From the ICCO web site:

"The share of fine or flavor cocoa in the production of cocoa beans of individual countries has developed over time. Successive International Cocoa Agreements recognized producing countries exporting either exclusively or partially fine or flavor cocoa. The list of countries and their proportion of production of fine or flavor cocoa under the successive International Cocoa Agreements of 1972, 1975, 1980, 1986, 1993 and 2001 are reproduced in Annex C of each Agreement."

The last time the panel met was in 2010 and in the intervening five years the landscape of production has changed. Jamaica has been moved out of the 100% category down to 90%, and Peru’s fine or flavor production figure has been reduced from 90% at the meeting in 2010 to 75%. Ecuador held steady at 75% despite presenting documentation that more than 25% of exports are CCN-51.

Hondura and Guatemala (both at 50%) and Viet Nam (40%) were recognized by this year’s panel. Perhaps surprisingly to some (but not to me, who visited the country twice this summer), Nicaragua was added to the 100% list - the only such addition this year.

The final list as recommend by the panel according to the requirements of the International Cocoa Agreement of 2010 follows. This is the recommended list, as the recommendations still need to be ratified by the ICCO General Council at a meeting in Dominican Republic in May of 2016. The percentages listed are the percentages of that country’s EXPORTS that ICCO considers to be fine or flavor cocoa beans, not the percentage of total harvest:

100%

• Bolivia
• Costa Rica
• Dominica
• Grenada
• Madagascar
• Mexico
• Nicaragua
• Saint Lucia
• Trinidad

95%

• Colombia
• Jamaica
• Venezuela

90%

• Papa New Guinea

75%

• Ecuador
• Peru

50%

• Belize
• Guatemala
• Honduras
• Panama

40%

• Dominican Republic
• Vietnam

35%

• São Tome

1%

• Indonesia

The Panel also recommended that it met bi-annually to review the list and that a standardized grading scheme be developed. For more information about the history of the Panel, visit: http://www.icco.org/about-cocoa/fine-or-flavour-cocoa.html

I love, love, love, love the Timmy Bros, Water Makers parody. For those of you interested, here's the link to the Mast Bros video that's being parodied .

Russ -

Given the time of year I generally do not recommend that you try and put a brand new machine with a different technology into production right now. The time you spend to get it integrated into your work flow can lead to production interruptions. You are right to worry about being down at the busiest time of year, but that should not be an issue for a brand new/demo/refurbished machine. Going forward, good preventive maintenance is the issue to keeping the machines in production at the busiest times of the year - something that many people neglect to do.

The challenge I see (and that you neglected to mention in your post) is that your chocolates are sweetened by honey. It's a challenge to temper honey-sweetened chocolate. FBM does have customers who do, but in general it takes larger machines - with longer tempering pipes and greater cooling capacity - to handle this kind of specialty chocolate because of the moisture in the honey, which inhibits crystal formation and spread.

As you may know, I represent FBM, in part because I believe that they are technically superior machines to Selmis. I don't think I have a machine in the US that is kitted out to handle honey-sweetened chocolate reliably. It would require testing and I don't think we could get that done in time to get you into production before Christmas. Because of the way I know that Selmis are built internally, I think that would be no more effective than FBM. The same is true of Gami, Bakon, Pomati and every other company that uses the tempering screw approach.

I'd like to say it was easy, but it's not. If you were working with conventional couverture I have at least one small demo machine (a PRIMA) here in the US (220V, 3-phase power) that I could get to you in a week or so. However, I could not in good faith recommend it for honey-sweetened chocolate without extensive testing. 

I know of no measured depositors that attach to your Chocovision machines.

:: Clay

PS. Here's the link to the FBM web site where all of their chocolate machines are listed. The one being used for honey is the Maestria, outfitted with the craft chocolate upgrade and the pneumatic doser. The list price on that machine is about €31,000 which is a lot for 80kg/week of bar production.

Good luck on this, my quick research into this shows only one company - Real Food Source in the UK - offering something like this. I doubt they are making it themselves, though, so the challenge would be to find out who's making it for them. Also, the prices are in pounds - that's 50% higher than USD$ prices right off the bat.

Mack -

The uploading problem was probably not a filetype issue - but a matter of your profile not having full privileges. I have move you out of the "unassigned" user category to the "chocolate maker" category so you should now be able to upload.

GIF, JPG, and PNG are all supported.

Another fun substitution game. Substitute hipster for expert!

“Thousands of chocolate lovers make the journey to visit our factory every week,” says Mast. “These are our chocolate [experts|hipsters]. If it is the perspective of a(n) [expert|hipster] that you seek, I encourage you to become that [expert|hipster].”

For those ChocolateLife members and others who do not know ...

there is more than a little controversy surrounding the Mast Bros.

Quelle surprise!

Much of the backlash (from people who know what good chocolate actually is) stems from the astonishing hubris of the Bros marketing and PR apparatus. In an article in Vanity Fair , Rick Mast grabs hold of that hubris, pins it to the breast of his chef coat, and wears it as a badge of honor: 

“I can affirm that we make the best chocolate in the world.”

WTF? Says who? Not any acknowledged, reputable, chocolate experts, anyway.

In an  article on Slate.com the very next month, that: 

“We are a dangerous company because we are outsiders to the chocolate industry, never leaning on industry norms.”

Um, no. The Mast Bros are dangerous, IMO, but not because they ignore industry norms. The danger is when other chocolate makers copy them, thinking that if they make chocolate like the Mast Bros they too will be successful, as I point out in the Slate article. Rick jumps through the open door willingly to sum it up: 

“Thousands of chocolate lovers make the journey to visit our factory every week,” says Mast . “These are our chocolate experts. If it is the perspective of an expert that you seek, I encourage you to become that expert.”

I was reading Ethan Siegel on Medium this morning when I ran across this quote in an article on NASA's EM drive :

“No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master. ”  [Emphasis is mine.]
— Hunter S. Thompson

Freakin Hunter S. Thompson of all people just nailed it. On. The. Head. In the immortal worlds of Emeril - “BAM!”

I encourage everyone to read the entire article, substituting 'cocoa' and/or 'chocolate' for 'any word vaguely related to maths, science, history, and/or physics.' Here is an edited version  [text in brackets]  of Siegel's text to show you where this leads, if you are too busy in your workshop actually educating yourself about chocolate with an open mind and curious heart:

“We like to think, as human beings, if we can only keep an open mind, that anything is possible. That if we put our minds to it, buckle down and do our research and apply ourselves 100%, we can not only understand what’s going on as well as any expert, but that we ourselves can make valuable contributions to whatever field we’re interested in. We think this about ourselves when it comes to [energy|chocolate] , [the environment|chocolate] ,   [health and medicine|cocoa and chocolate] , and even   [physics and mathematics|cocoa and chocolate - refer to the title of the article that spawned this thread ] .

Yet simultaneously, we’re also aware of the years — if not decades — of study that’s typically required in order to become a legitimate expert [in any one of those fields|in chocolate] . We know it’s difficult, even for the smartest and most talented among us, to make groundbreaking discoveries in a field we’ve spent our entire lives working on.

But there’s this romantic notion we all hang onto, nonetheless, that if some talented maverick with a novel perspective comes along, even without the proper background, they (or possible we, ourselves) can change the course of  [history| chocolate] forever.

This is the story we tell ourselves about a genius like Albert Einstein, whose general theory of relativity turns 100 this year. It’s the story we tell ourselves about Tesla, Edison, Faraday, Newton and more [are the Mast Bros in this category?] . We all know the danger of following the crowd, of a herd mentality, and of accepting what’s presently known in science [chocolate] as absolute, indisputable truth. And that’s why, when it comes to the biggest lies and hoaxes of all, it’s often the [most intelligent|hippest]  among us who are the most gullible.”

Amirite? Or Amirite?

[Note: Edited to correct typos on 11/21/2015.]

It just keeps getting better - a gift the keeps on giving!

"Another step is tempering, where chocolate goes from its naturally bumpy texture to the smooth surface we are used to as consumers."

Chocolate has a naturally bumpy texture. Who knew? Wonder what branch of topology that belongs to? But is topology maths, not physics?

Pretty Stupid, Apparently.

In a June, 2014 article on the World Science Festival website entitled, The Mast Bros Unveil the Physics Behind Chocolate , some rather amazing claims are made, and not all of them about the physics of chocolate. To be fair, it's impossible to know if the quotes attributed to Rick Mast are accurate or whether the reporter took a liberal interpretation. Either way, the site, which encourages visitors to "rethink" science [sic], is presenting a revisionist version of chocolate  physics.

"... raw beans have a much higher acidity level so it’s a more botanic flavor,” Mast said. “Roasting brings out other flavors to balance out the acidity.” The bean’s sugar and protein molecules gain energy in the higher temperature, and that increased activity leads to new atoms coming together and new molecules being formed."

There is so much unnecessary obfuscation in the above paragraph I don't know where to begin. Sugar and protein molecules gain energy creating new atoms? Okay, the beans heat up and chemicals in the chocolate change. Why not give the compounds names? Pyrazines, furans, esters, and ketones are among the classes of compounds formed during roasting, Rick, via processes knows as the Maillard reaction, Strecker degredation, and pyrolysis/polymerization, among others. It's science, not sex education, you can be explicit - the more explicit the better - with chemical names and processes, they are not pornographic, are they? Are they too explicit for young scientists' ears?

Furthermore, the flavors created do NOT directly balance out the acidity. Which acid? Acetic or citric? Some of the acetic acid evaporates out [during roasting], but enough remains so that the Dutch had to invent alkalization to neutralize it  (oops, that's history, not physics) . Conching does reduce acidity among other things (and arguably, the Mast Bros do not conche properly if at all) - and conching effects acetic acid more than citric acid which is why some chocolates have bright fruity notes and others don't. Fruitiness is not a generally-recognized flavor trait of alkalized chocolate, however.

"... For that to happen, the particles have to be just a miniscule [sic] 20 microns across (for comparison, the width of a strand of hair is 50 microns) § . The grind “is still acidic until all the sugar crystals have slowly emulsified with the cocoa butter so it tastes like one thing" 

​I am sorry. Could. Not. Stop. Laughing. The chocolate is still acidic until the sugar has emulsified with the cocoa butter? No. That's not the way it works.  

First off, chocolate is not an emulsion. Chocolate is a suspension of particles in fat. Emulsifiers are used to reduce the surface tension of the fat molecules so the chocolate flows more easily. There is no physical process (and no chemical process) that I am aware of that reduces the acidity in chocolate by simple grinding, emulsification or no.  There is a reason why the chocolate is just so bad.

After eight years, Rick still appears to know very little about the real science - physics and chemistry - of chocolate. To give him some benefit of the doubt ... maybe he does know the science but chooses not to communicate it clearly. I don't know - but the end result is the same. 

§ - Or maybe not. According to Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_micrometres) the average width of a human hair is 100 microns. Footnoted as: ^According to The Physics Factbook, the diameter of human hair ranges from 17 to 181 µm. Ley, Brian (1999). But - maybe red beard hairs average 50 microns? Yeah. That has to be it.

[Note: edited to fix typos on 11/21/15.]

According to a recent press release,

Cargill’s acquisition of ADM’s global chocolate and compound business in August of this year included the deZaan-branded line of premium gourmet chocolate, but the acquisition did not include the deZaan trademark itself. As such, we have decided to discontinue selling these products in North America [beginning in November].

There is a link in the attached update that can be used to learn (a little bit) more about the decision.

DeZaan Gourmet Update.pdf - 121KB

Balpreet:

Wet grinders are just small melangeurs. However, melangeurs purpose-made for chocolate were designed and built to process cocoa beans. Small wet-mill grinders used in making chocolate were designed to handle much softer materials (think cooked lentils) and to run for short periods of time (think less than thirty minutes).

"Real" chocolate melangeurs use much harder granite and are designed to run for hours at a time. There are also some very specific differences with respect to axle design that separate the two – wet grinders have a single axle, for example.

One thing they do share in common is that they are not conches. And they never will be conches. Despite what the manufacturers claim. Despite what chocolate makers claim. They are not conches. They may deliver some of the benefits of conching, but very inefficiently.

Brad -

I reached out to a member of the Academy of Chocolate and shared my observation that the guidelines, as written, enabled pretty much everyone to qualify as "bean-to-bar" even if what they were doing was sourcing cocoa beans from a broker and shipping them for private label production.

The response I got was tepid, but my guess is that they will look at the issue more closely before the next competition. They will be holding their bi-annual meeting next October and I am going to suggest that this is a topic that gets discussed. In public. With everyone contributing.

Congratulations to all of the finalists!

CHOCOLATE

• Areté Fine Chocolate – Camino Verde 75% Dark Chocolate, California 
• Brasstown Chocolate – Ecuador 75% & Belize 70%, North Carolina 
• Charm School Chocolate – 70% Dark Belize, Maryland
• Creo Chocolate – Purely Dark, Oregon
• Dick Taylor Craft Chocolate – 70% Bolivia, Alto Beni, California
• Escazu Artisan Chocolates – 70% Piura Blanco, Peru, North Carolina
• Fruition Chocolate – Bolivian Wild Harvest 74% & Nacional Dark Milk 68%, New York
• Just Good Chocolate – Madagascar 70%, Michigan 
• Lonohana Estate Chocolate – Kanahiku 70% Dark, Hawaii 
• Nathan Miller Chocolate – Gingerbread Bar, Pennsylvania
• Patric Chocolate – Triple Ginger & Browned Butter Bar & Red Coconut Curry, Missouri
• Ritual Chocolate – Mid Mountain Blend & Belize 75%, Utah
• Rogue Chocolatier – Jamaica & Tranquilidad, Massachusetts
• SPAGnVOLA – 70% Single- Estate Dominican Republic & 75% Single Estate Dominican Republic, Maryland

CONFECTIONS

• American Spoon – Chocolate Fudge Sauce, Michigan
• Amy E's Bakery – Peanut Brittle, Oregon
• Ashby Confections – Fresh Orange Sour Strips & Salty Desert Heat, California
• Askinosie Chocolate – Hey, Hey Chocolate Hazelnut Spread, Missouri
• Batch PDX – Batch Bar & Twicks Bar, Oregon 
• Bees & Beans – Honey Bar Reserve, Oregon 
• Bixby & Co. – Nutty For You, Maine
• Black Dinah Chocolatiers – Maine Mint Truffle, Maine
• Ethereal Confections – Blood Orange and Vanilla Bean Meltaway, Illinois
• Farm Chocolate – Panforte in Dark, California
• Fat Toad Farm – Fat Toad Farm Original Goat's Milk Caramel Sauce, Vermont
• French Broad Chocolates – Hazelnut & Almond Dragee, North Carolina
• JJ's Sweets Cocomels – Palm Sugar Cocomel, Colorado
• Katherine Anne Confections – Cucumber Cooler Caramel, Illinois 
• Lake Champlain Chocolates – Apple Cider Caramels, Vermont 
• Little Apple Treats – Rose and Cocoa nib Caramels, California 
• McCrea's Candies – Black Lava Sea Salt Caramels, Massachusetts
• Neo Cocoa – Toffee Nib Brittle, California
• Nosh This – Lavender Crack, California
• Sapore della Vita – Caramel Sauce & Torrone & Totally Fudged- Chocolate Fudge Sauce, Florida
• Serendipity Confections – Chocolate Covered Butter Caramels with Fleur de Sel, Wyoming
• St. Croix Chocolate Co. – Wild Grape and Peanut Butter Bar, Minnesota
• Videri Chocolate Factory – Sugarplum Ganache Bonbon, North Carolina

If you are referring to the Academia de Cacao in Nicaragua, the course in May is not yet filled. However, it is not bean-to-bar class, it's rooted in what you need to know to improve cocoa quality.

Matt -

You might want to look into the small business nutrition labeling exemption. As a small business (under something like 500 employees and $50,000,000 in sales) you are not required to put a nutrition label on a package, especially if it it's small. And I think federal law trumps state law on this. You do however, have to have the nutrition information available and it has to be easily accessible. But, I am not a lawyer and you should check.

That said, some retail outlets will demand it, along with UPC codes. Ingredients labels with allergen statements should be considered mandatory no matter what the regs require. 

As you are in the US you only need to really worry about internationalization if you find yourself selling outside the US. As near as I know there are no special requirements unless you are wholesaling to a retailer unless the retailer requires it for liability reasons.

Jason -

For such small quantities learn to do it by hand if you can't afford the machines. The experience you gain learning to hand temper will pay huge dividends going forward. In the end, machines can only do what you tell them to do. If they don't produce correct results and you don't know what tempering looks and feels like then you are not in a position to know why the machine "failed" to temper properly. 

It's not the machine's fault, actually. They are not artificially intelligent and cannot read your mind or evalaute the chocolate they are being asked to temper. They don't know the external temperature, or humidity, or anything like that. So they can't react to changes in ambient environment, for example, that will affect temper.

Finally - and I really don't want to dissuade you from pursuing your chocolate dreams, at this stage if the difference in price between a Rev 1 and a Rev 2 is straining your budget then wait and save until it's not an issue for you.

:: Clay

Brad:

If you go to the Academy of Chocolate web site you will find the criteria for what constitutes "bean-to-bar." Specifically:

BEST DARK BEAN TO BAR (%)

Open to manufacturers who use cocoa beans (as opposed to cocoa liquor, paste, or couverture) as their raw material in any of the three specifications below.

Please specify on the entry form which best describes your bean to bar product. This is for office information only and will not be disclosed to the judges. [Emphasis in the original.]

• Tree to Bar. Made from beans managed by the producer. This is the end-to-end process of manufacturing owned and controlled by a single business.
• Tree to Factory. Management of cacao at the source with a third party manufacturing the bean to bar process.
• Factory Roast to Conch [sic]. Bar made from beans purchased from a grower or an intermediary. All manufacturing processes i.e. roasting, grinding, refining and conching owned and controlled by a single business.

IMO, these "distinctions" make it possible for virtually everyone to claim to be bean to bar. As I interpret the guidelines, I could make a phone call to ECOM and get a container of beans - sight unseen - delivered to ICAM and have chocolate made and I would qualify.

WRT to Papa Chocolat - if Callebaut sources the beans and someone else makes the chocolate for them then it fits under the Factory Roast definition. That said, I can see how Original Beans, Idilio, and Åkesson fit the definition - they source beans and have the chocolate made for them - Factory Roast again. But it's harder for me to see how some others fit. And I am fairly knowledgeable.

To me, bean-to-bar means – at the very minimum – all stages of the transformation of raw cocoa beans into finished chocolate are performed under the direct supervision and control of the company claiming so. Secondarily, it means that the company actually has to sell product (bars) at retail in a package with their own name on it. 

I have long had a problem with the phrase bean-to-bar because of this malleability and I strongly encourage the Academy of Chocolate to take a long, hard, look at their classification criteria before the next installment of the Awards. This is because, in the long run, the context of the guidelines will get stripped from the award itself when it appears on a box or wrapper and the uninformed consumer will not see the asterisk that a knowledgeable professional might.

:: Clay

Annalynn -

There are not many options for small guitar cutters. One is available through Chef Rubber (www.chefrubber.com). Click on the Search box and type ' guitar ' into the search box on the next page. The mini-guitar plus accessories are listed there.

They are still not cheap, and one difference between this and larger options is that the base is plastic, not metal.

If you are in the business of selling chocolate, products, or services, the way to promote your business to ChocolateLife members is through a member marketplace ad.

Melanie - 

Have you checked in with Union Equipment? They might have something. The FBM enrobers all come with bottomers so I don't think they are an option for you. You might try Hilliard as I know they make pre-bottomers for their belts.

:: Clay

@Lavinia -

The answer is ... it's not that simple. 

First off, whatever powdered sugar you get is probably going to have an anti-caking agent in it, often cornstarch. This will make it unusable for chocolate. If you do find a powdered sugar that is suitable it may still be too coarse (the particles are too big), and you will still be able to feel the sugar crystals as grit on the tongue. Another thing to consider is that adding powdered sugar into chocolate will make it very thick - especially if you add it all at once.

A better process would be to take your own sugar and refine it in a food processor and then grind it into the melted liquor in a grinder/refiner. You can add cocoa butter to get to the fluidity you need. How much will depend on the amount of sugar you add.

Any tempered chocolate that is left over can be poured into a pan to let cool and to use for later remelting and retempering. If you need seed chocolate, pour some of the tempered chocolate into a thin layer - making sure it stays in temper. You can break this up and use it for seed in future batches. The rest of the chocolate can be stored at room temps, just make sure no moisture condenses on the chocolate. In other words, you don't need to put it in the refrigerator or freezer.

Melanie -

I need to ask some questions for clarity. 

You need tunnels that are 12 inches or 24 inches wide, correct? Or 12 inches wide and 24 feet long? Also you are looking for used? You have the tempering machine(s) and enrober(s) already? 

And this is for delivery in the US?

Thanks in advance,
:: Clay

James -

I've known Alberto Franceschi for about five years now, and Domori has used beans grown by Franceschi on the Hacienda San Jose for their origin and varietal bars. So I think that those beans can be used to make very good chocolates. I am not sure which beans you are looking to purchase, but they do know what they are doing.

Getting the export permits could be challenging, but perhaps the beans are already in a warehouse outside Venezuela.

Mariano -

Is this the same request you made a couple of days ago or a different machine?

:: Clay

Sebastian:

I have never heard of Tapatalk. I will take a look into it. I do know that I need to make some coding tweaks to make it usable on mobile browsers - something is messed up and I am looking into it.

Sebastian: I was going to say the same things. I would start with getting the humidity under control to see if that helps (might need to get it down as low as 55 RH, at least that's my experience in some places). If not, then cooling things down is the next step.

Jennifer -

You can get residential chest freezers really quite inexpensively. They do require a little more thinking about how you pack stuff into them, but it's hard to beat the cost per cu ft. The Johnson controllers work with these quite well.

Stephen: The EZTemper is not a tempering machine, but it's a good approach for small production. The EZTemper produces crystallized cocoa butter that seeds the chocolate and tempers it through mixing. You are still working in small batches and have to worry about keeping the temperature in the right range until you've used up the batch. I know some FBM customers who use both: they use the Aura for the chocolate they use a lot of, and use the EZTemper for the chocolates they use in smaller quantities for decorating or special short runs. The two are not mutually exclusive.

I see you are in Olympia. I spent a year at Evergreen and am currently slated to return to campus on 6 October to give a lecture/tasting to a class. I am not sure of my schedule that day and hope to catch up with at least one friend who's still in town. But who knows? Will you be in Seattle at the end of the month? We could meet there as well.

@eg -

Yeah. I can't recommend starting a business in chocolate that is not properly financed from the outset. You may wish to operate like a lean startup but if you don't have the capital to get the right space and the right equipment and finance bean (and other) inventory and have the resources to market your product properly ... wait until you do. It will increase your chances of being successful.

BTW, a back-of-the-envelope calculation says that you should be processing about 1MT of beans per month to be profitable, even as a small, lean startup. If you're planning on doing 300-500kg/mo then what you have is a nice hobby, not a real business.

My .03 (adjusted for inflation),
:: Clay

Sarah -

I have been doing some research and if you want a shiny/pearlescent finish - i.e., the luster part of luster dust - then I think that something like titanium dioxide and/or mica are going to be required ingredients. I don't see any source that does not have these listed as an ingredient. ChefRubber has product categories called Pearl Powder and Liquid Luster but they are both empty.