Forum Activity for @Brad Churchill

Here in Canada, bar codes aren't required. Having said that, in most cases bar codes will be required by the retailer, as they almost all now use scanning devices to speed check out and manage inventory. As such, there is a national barcode database that you can register your product with, and have a standard bar code associated with it.

If you are selling your product through retailers, then you will probably be asked to have bar code. However if you are selling it yourself as an artisan, unless your POS system requires it, you don't need bar codes. (at least here in Canada).

One very important thing to add: You MUST make sure your ingredient list includes all ingredients need to make the ingredients you use! For example: If you use dried blueberries, the producer will often use sulphites as a preservative, so in your ingredient list you must do something like: Ingredients:blah, blah, blueberries (blueberries, sulphites), blah blah.

Also, if you are an artisan, making and selling the product, and you aren't selling it through anyone else, the nutritional panel is not necessary because the customer always has access to the source of the product. It's only whenthe consumer doesn't have direct access to the source of the food item that all of the nutritiional information is mandated.

Cheers.

Brad

No. Technically cocoa butter is the one ingredient that must exist in ALL chocolate - whether it's milk, dark, or white. Cocoa butter is the medium that suspends all of the little particles of solids, and has properties that other fats don't have.

Sorry. Without cocoa butter you don't have chocolate.

what you have is a buttercream icing that will work nicely on a cake. It isn't even close to chocolate.

Chocolate is a suspension of tiny particles of cocoa solids, sugar, and vanilla in cocoa butter, not real butter. The emulsifiers listed on bar wrappers are actually NOT emulsifying anything. They are actually coating the solid particles and allowing them to slide easier through the fat. It's a manufacturer's way of making the chocolate less expensive to produce, as it makes it more fluid without adding cocoa butter. Having said that, forget about the so-called emusifiers as they won't help you anyway.

Hope that helps explain things a bit better.

I have 4 of them.

There are flaws in the design of the machine which I have notified the manufacturer about and will share here:

1. The control board (circuit board) is in the same compartment as the heat and fan. My staff use the machines 8 hours per day, every day. As a result they are subject to very significant heat fluctuations, and EVERY control board in EVERY machine has failed due to lack of protection. I have modified one of our machines to include a barrier between the heating compartment and the control board, and then added a cooling fan and vent opening to the bottom of the machine in the cooling board area. The fan turns on every time the light bulbs turn on to heat the machine. I have done this just a few weeks ago, so it will take 3-4 months to find out if the consistent temperature now maintained is going to save the new control board.

2. The machine has 5 program cycles, which are very helpful in managing the viscosity of the chocolate throughout the day. We start with one "temper" cycle, and then throughout the day as we work with the chocolate it continues tothicken (crystalize). We then have 3 other programs which increase the working temperature of the chocolate by one degree at a time. My staff can very easily control the viscosity of the chocolate as they work with it. However, there is a significant problem with the programming: Every program has a heat/cool/reheat cycle. The minutea newprogram starts, the bowl stops spinning regardless of whether the chocolate is too warm to start with, or needs heating to reach the first temperature mark. REALLY REALLY BAD DESIGN. Our chocolate is already thick and crystalized!!! Having it sit there motionless for a few minutes will cause it to solidify in the bowl. The heat created by the light bulbs on the paused bowl of chocolate takes the chocolate out of temper. Yes... There is a motor "over-ride" button on the side of the machine which allows an operator to press it and start the bowl turning. HOWEVER the switch doesn't lock down. The operator has to stand there, with their finger on the button until all the chocolate heats up! Are you kidding me???? I have swapped that stupidbutton out with one that actually turns on and off. My staff have better things to do than stand there several times a day for up to 15 minutes at atimeholding a button down!

3. Chocolate gets into the inner workings of the machine and into the motor. We have had to replace several destroyed motors as they aren't sealed, such as with the design of the Savage machines (which I also own two of and have been running 24/7 for 4 years without a single issue!).

There are also positives that I will share:

1. The overall construction is solid. ROCK solid. The case is polished stainless steeland easy to clean. I also have 6 ACMC machines and their plastic construction pales in comparison.

2. The ability to define your own pre-set programs is fabulous. If you are working with a consistent product, it takes all the guess work out of tempering and an unskilled worker can make properly tempered chocolate confections with very little instruction.

If I were to purchase more Pavoni's I would stipulate that the design flaws be rectified before I spent the money.

Hope that provides you with some insight.

Brad

I have seen modified cooling tunnels which use the type of air conditioner that fits in a regular window (Hilliards comes to mind). Hot air rises and cool air drops, so why not use one of those, and tastefully duct it over top of your confections when you are not in the shop? They often run 24/7, can cool a 700 square foot room easily. You could have it built into a box on wheels, and then using flexible ductwork vent the cold air output over your confections. Heck, you could even build it right into your cabinet! For cooling such a long time and a small space you wouldn't even need to run the air conditioner on "super cold" setting. This could be a great, portable, and economical solution, and like I said, if done tastefully, will not detract from the aesthetic appearance of your shop.

Cheers.

Brad

I also read on Wikipedia that it works very well for reducing blood pressure (provided you don't exceed the LDL50). Seeing as I have high blood pressure, I could technically make a special "Brad" chocolate, eat it regularly (like that's tough to do already! haha!), and do away with my expensive meds. Theoretically....

Seeing as I have a few hundred lbs of shell, how does one boil them down and crystalize the theobromine from the residual? This is VERY intriguing!!!

Thanks.

Brad

I'm curious too. Why would someone want to extract Theobromine? What use is it?

I have an excellent sourcewho has assured me that cocoa powder is in fact added to the Lindt Excellence bars at the end of the refining period, to increase the intensity of the dark chocolate flavour.

With regard to your question about whether or not they need to disclose this, the answer according to the FDA is "No".

Here is an exerpt directly from the FDA's website:

Aha! Lindt finally got it right and has started giving away their "Excellence" bars! It's about time they realized it's not worthy to sell to people. 3 nights a week we use it as a comparison to what we make (after all, it's what most peoplehere in North America associate with "quality") and 3 nights a week I watch people spit it backout.

For those of you out there making your own chocolate, Lindt 70% excellence is a great baseline to use to compare. The cocoa powder they include adds astringency and grittiness, and the chocolate has a very nice "burned rubber" finish indicative of significantly over roasting their beans. (They call it a dark roast. I call it burnt - especially when I can create that exact flavour by burning ANY chocolate on my stove at home.)

Cheers

Brad

Chantelle;

At first I took it as a jab, and started to write one of my tyrades, but then went back, read the thread in context to what you wrote and retyped my response.

Good thing. I would have thoroughly embarrased myself.

I agree with you whole heartedly about transparency. That's what my business is all about.

From a business perspective it's also a good thing to observe a company's practices surmise why they are doing something, and then read feedback from those who have tried their product and see a correlation between what they are doing and the reasons. In this case, the locals don't like their chocolate, so they have to find other markets in order to move product.

Cheers and best wishes in your venture.

Brad

Chantelle;

Mast Brothers ships their product. Choklat doesn't. It makes sense thatthe Mast Brotherswould be more well known, as more people all over the world have access to their chocolate. That doesn't mean their chocolate is any good though. In fact, given their very limited production ability and the fact that they are in the center of a wealthy city with a daytime population of over 8 million people and need to sell outside of their geographic region, I would seriously question their quality.

If the locals aren't buying it...

Conversely, my business is in a city 1/8th the size and we can barely keep up with demand. In fact some days I'm very happy a lot of this city still hasn't heard of my business (I don't advertise). Why would I care what the rest of the world thinks of my product or business if my supply is constantly sold out locally?

...and anything more than $10k for a ton of beans is a load of bunk in my opinion. Either that, or the buyer got played.

Brad

Thanks Thomas

Lowe;

Not to split hairs here, but you're assuming that the 70% cocoa content is 100% cocoa nib. It may not be. In fact very few chocolate companies use 70% beans, as the fina. cocoa butter content is too low and makes the chocolate thick and hard to work with.

I tried to look at their website to get a more accurate percentage, but there's essentially nothing about their bars on there. I would hazard a guess that it's most likely a 55/15 split between cocoa beans and cocoa butter. However this is just a guess. If I am accurate, then given the price of their beans in relation to the cocoa butter they buy, it would only bring their cost down a bit more.

Cheers.

Scott;

After reading your post I went online and found DallasFood's 10 part article on Noka. It was great, and epitomizes what I've been talking about here in Calgary for a few years. It's much better written than anything I could come up with, and I'm personally glad that Noka's out of business.

Cheers and thanks for the update.

Brad

Clay;

To some degree you're right. I get a tremendous amount of press as well, have been on the front page of every local newspaper,front and center on regional television as well, and have had some of my recipes published - in all over 40 different media appearances/publications.

When you talk to people who areIN the chocolate industry, many people have heard of me. Chances are they haveread something I've written, or some review about me somewhere online. However outside of the chocolate industry it's a different story and there's a good reason: Almost nobody pays attention to traditional media these days. The proof is in the pudding so-to-speak.In the past 31/2 years, in spite of garnering 10's of thousands of dollars worth of free press in a community of a million people, less than 5% of our gross saleshas some from it - 5 % of over 52,000 transactions! What's even more interesting, is that in the weekly events I host in my shop, while everyone claims to love chocolate only 25% of the attendees have ever heard of Choklat. After 3 1/2 years of publiclykicking sand in the faces of every local chocolatier, only 25% of the population has heard of me!

Having said all of that, when you look at the size of New York, or even the US in general (10X the population of Canada), I think you'll find that very few people will have heard of Mast Brothers in spite of all the press they get, UNLESS of course, that person is IN the chocolate industry - and most people aren't in the industry.

I think their words will have more effect on those in the craft chocolateindustry, but based on the market research that I continue to do, their words will have a negligible effect on the general public - largely because they didn't hear what Mast Bros said in the first place, and secondly because a large portion of the general public simply doesn't care.

Now, having said all of that, I'm in no way diminishing what you offer here to the chocolate community. It's been a valuable resource for me, which is one of the reasons I keep contributing. However I think if you poll your thousands of members, I think you'll find that almost all of them work with chocolate in some capacity - they aren't just end consumers.

Again, I think it's great that we police each other in this industry, and this popular forum is a great way of spreading the word. However on the grand scheme of things, what we say here will have almost no effect on the general public - kind of like screaming in a vacuum.

I'm completely fine with agreeing to disagree on some levels, but would like to say that I vehemently agree with your stance on deliberate misrepresentation. I'm just trying to be pragmatic in my assessment of the level and scope of potential misrepresentation. Forexample: You have 5,000 members (I'm guessing). I'm also guessing (optimistically) that another 5,000 people lurk this forum. That's 10,000 people out of the 350 million people in North America alone - or about one person per city. How many of those people do you think will care enough about what Mast Bros (or any other chocolatier for that matter)say to be the town cryer and convince others to change their buying habits? Like I said.... Hardly a ripple to the general public - which is probably a good thing, as maybe what he said was a slip of the tongue, or he was a bit "enthusiastic" about his product. In the end is that one sentence any better or worse than the majority of chocolate shop employees who claim their owner makes chocolate in the back? What's worse?

Noka Chocolate is the poster child for this example. How many people in the chocolate industry would actually "Pay" for one of their outrageously priced and pretentious confections? Certainly not I or you! Yet they still do great business in spite of the negative comments available on the 'net. Most people don't know, and many don't care.

...just my thoughts.

Brad.

This is a very interesting topic, but in what wayare their claims any differentdifferent than "re-melters/Fonduers" claiming to make chocolate when all they make are confections out of chocolate, or large companies claiming "artisan" products, or using "fair trade" or "organic" as a marketing tool?

If it were Nestle' or Cargill, or Callebaut who started boasting about prices paid such as that I would be concerned, and I'm sure someone would call them to task. However, the Mast Brothers following / production capacityis so infinitesimally small in the whole grand scheme of of even New York chocolate consumption (let alone US chocolate consumption), that it will have virtually no impact on what happens in the chocolate industry.

For those of us who are in the industry, actually "making" chocolate, it's good to know what others are doing and saying, and at the very least prepare our answers if the question arises. However, the overall impact of what a micro chocolatier says or does hardly creates a ripple in the pond, so my position is why worry about it? I think I'll wait to circle the wagons when Nestle' makes such an outlandish claim.

Someone wise once told me to stop sweating the small stuff....

Just my thoughts...

Brad

Theoretically it IS possible to pay that much for cocoa beans and still make craft chocolate at a profit. The finished price of the chocolate per lb (transport costs included) will be somewhere around $12-13 per lb. Given that their bars are 70 grams +/- they will get 6.5 bars per lb and at $10 per bar that's $65 per lb retail, putting their food cost at roughly 20% - 10% lower than the standard in the food industry.

Personally, I think paying that much for cocoa beans is foolish, and bragging about it is even more foolish.

The most I've ever paid for cocoa was $10k USD per tonfor my Chuao, but that also came with the ability to say that it is the legendary chuao. Jeff is correct that the average for premium beans is around $5k per ton.

This is of coursejust my opinion.

Brad

Those are pretty cool. How do they do for cutting caramel?

Just curious....

Have you asked them what THEIR budget is?

THEIR budget, not yoursis your starting point.

Quite often organizations will dangle the carrot of "exposure to new customers" as an incentive to bring your price down and/or almost work for free. I promise you that you will get very little business from an event like this. You need to find out what they can spend on dessert, and then see what you can do to make something for them AT A PROFIT. It's a business summit. They'll understand if you tell them you can't work profitably within their budget.

It's also ok to walk away from business opportunities if they simply don't make sense financially. Remember.... Your business isn't a charity. You have bills to pay just like every other business, and in fact handing opportunities like this to your competitors is a good thing in some ways. Let THEM work for free!

Cheers

Brad

Another problem: What temperature does the hotplate get to? Chances are it gets much hotter than the contents are intended to get, and as a result could burn your chocolate - especially if it's not being moved off of the bottom. Case in point: Even a baine marie will burn your chocolate if you let the water boil and not remove the chocolate from the sides and bottom of the bowl.

My recommendation: If you're going to waste time "rigging up devices" to try and do what's already been invented and proven to work, put in a few more hours at your paying job, save your $$ and buy the right tool for the job - a proper tempering machine. They aren't that expensive.

Brad

We've ordered from Alufoil since we opened. They have always provided great service.

Thanks for the feedback Jessica.

Cheers.

Kerry;

Just because it's deemed "safe in small quantities" doesn't mean we should consume it. Chlorine is even MORE toxic than Ethylene Glycol, and it's put into our drinking water! 10 years ago I started drinking purified water, because the tap water here in Calgary smells and tastes like the water from a local swimming pool. Yuck.

Who wants to try this experiment? Drink a glass of Propylene glycol, a glass of clorine, and a glass of ammonia, and let me know how you feel in the morning!

Oh... and ammonia.... here's a good link to peruse: http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/pinkslime-ammonia-ground-beef.htm

In the meantime, I'll stick to cream, sugar (processed without bone char), fresh butter, and my chocolate. Oh... and the blue powder we add to our whipped cream is naturally derived and not man made - just an FYI.

Cheers.

Brad

Gap;

You're not splitting hairs at all. In fact I'm glad you brought this up. I'm talking about ingredients that don't exist in nature without some alchemical process being applied. Propylene Glycol for example is a poison. I use it in my race bikes as anti-freeze. However, the FDA and CFIA have deemed it to be safe for use in minute quantities in food to stabilize whipped edible oil products (aka the white whipped crap on mass produced cakes and pastries thatsome call whipped cream). Stuff like that.

While I have modified our milkchocolate recipes to no longer use lecithin, it does exist in nature. It just has to be extracted from its source.

With regard to glucose syrup, I would expect that even though it doesn't at first exist in nature, currently it IS created through the process of enzyme hydrolosis, whereby naturally occurring enzymes and bacteria are added to a mixture of corn starch and water, to break down the starch and produce the glucose.

I think to determine whether or not the use of glucose should be used would be splitting hairs. However propylene glycol's a pretty blatant one. "Don't drink anti-freeze! (but you can use it in your whipped white crap! HAHA!).

So, Gap... Just to ensure this stays on track, am I to understand that you too believe that everything is about taste as well? I think I read your post that way.

Cheers.

Brad

The other day I had a discussion with a chocolatier who brought into our shop an entire binder of beautiful chocolate and pastry work he had done and photographed. It truly was food art.

Trying to convince me to come aboard, he told me and I quote, "We eat with our eyes." We discussed the possibility of him working for me. He described grandios plans he had for creating wonderful displays of chocolate confections, citing different types of stabilizers he can use to make the products last longer and still look good.

I gave him a two part reply. I said:

People only generally eat with their eyes the first time they visit a restaurant. It's the only mechanism the customer has to focus on something that helps them make a decision, because they've never experienced the food. Once they've actually "tasted" the food, a trust between the business and the customer has begun to develop and the customer is more willing to make subsequent purchases sight unseen. At that point the presentation takes a back seat to taste. Given that I'm interested in RETURN customers, and not a bunch of one-timers, I take the position that taste is more important.

For example: a small subset of our customers complain that we color the whipped cream on our drinking chocolates blue. They don't like how it looks, yet they buy it time and time again because the emotional response from the taste far surpasses the uncomfort they get from the blue whipped cream.

As my daughter so eloquently put it a few years ago: "Daddy, it doesn't matter what it looks like, 'cause when you do a chew-and-show it all looks the same anyway. The most important thing is how the food tastes."

From the mouth of babes..... I couldn't agree with her more. Personally, I don't care how beautiful the chocolatier's creations are when I walk into a shop. The first thing I do is ask what kind of chocolate they use. If I don't like that brand of chocolate, I won't buy a thing regardless of how beautiful it is. (although I DO take time to appreciate the chocolatier's skills with the product).

My second part was pretty blunt: Given my stance that the driving force behind what we do is customer service and product freshness and taste, we will NEVER, EVER, EVER, .....EVER use chemicals or food stabilizers to give our products shelf life. EVER.... If we can't make it fresh, we won't make it at all.

While I truly appreciate his skill with modelling food, that more or less ended the interview.

So....

Having said all of that, what do you people out there in ChocolateLife Land think? I pose this thought-provoking question to you, because in the past couple of years of reading this forum, I've heard many people ask how they can make their confections more beautiful, while at the same time asking questions relating to how to extend the shelf life of their products.

What's important to you as a consumer? How a product looks, or how a product tastes?

I look forward to reading your resplies AS CONSUMERS.

Cheers

Brad

www.SoChoklat.com

I'd lay bets that it's fibre that's been infused with sucralose. If it's 99.9% "natural" as the website claims, the 0.1% is the chemical sweetening agent, and the rest is filler.

That's what I'm guessing.

Notice that it isn't being marketed in the US, where a product like that, if legit would take off like wildfire??? How come?

Interesting indeed.

Brad

Jim;

I went back and re-read my initial post, and would like to make a clarification. My last sentence could be interpreted that your prices are high. I would like to, for the record here comment that the prices you and John have quoted me for equipment in the past have been in line with what is typical in the industry, so your prices are in fact NOT high.

Not sounding like one of your sales guys here, but I would also like to point out for the ChocolateLife community that when I was originally looking for budget-oriented equipment, both of you were an invaluable source for some information, and for that I thank you.

Cheers and Best Wishes

Brad

www.SoChoklat.com

Hi Jacqueline;

Foil wrapping machines are very expensive if you're only doing a couple of thousand bars per month. One part time,$10 perhouremployee can easily wrap 100 bars per hour, so you're only looking at 20 hours worth of work for one person for the entire month (about $0.10 per bar)- hardly enough to justify a $15,000 machine, the cost of theelectrical, cost of training to set it up, AND the monthly cost of renting the floorspace for it to sit there idle most of the time.

If you look at the cost of the floorspace alone (Sherwood Park, right?), let's say $14/foot plus $6 op costs for a total of $20 per square foot, assuming you're in an industrial area, and not a retail space where premium square footage costs would be charged, you would need at least a 10X10 space for your machine, and walking room around it (100 square feet). According to my calculation, just the space rental would be about $167 per month. Right there is almost all of your part time person's wages to do your bars.

My suggestion would be to wait until you have at least two people dedicated to working full time wrapping bars, before you consider purchasing a machine like that.

That's just my opinion for what it's worth.

Cheers and Best Wishes from Down Here in Calgary.

Brad

Now.... Having said all of that, if you're still set on blinging out your shop with a foil wrapper, Union Machinery sells some used and reconditioned ones. Just make sure you're sitting down when you get John or Jim's price quotes! www.UnionMachinery.com

Convection Oven.

It roasts 35lbs at a time (260lbs in 8 hours), and does a fine job, provided you place the beans on screens or use perforated sheet pans.

On a smaller scale (Under $30k), there simply is no better solution. On top of that, you can roast your dinner, and cupcakes, and brownies, and coffee, and anything else you like.

Cooking ANYTHING is about heat and airflow. It's that simple. A convection oven has both.

Cheers.

Brad

I've looked into coffee roasters too, and the one issue was drum speed. The people I contacted indicated that they could slow down the drum rotation of any size of coffee roaster they sold, but there would be an extra cost.

It sounds to me like Antonino has it dialed in (no pun intended) with the digital drum speed control. Sounds Interesting!

Cheers

Brad

You might want to try www.unionmachinery.com . Jim Greenberg and his brother buy and sell a LOT of chocolate equipment for many different volumes of production.

Olivier's Chocolate & Candy here in Calgary has a prodution facility with moulding machines and cooling tunnels to address your needs. They can even source out a well priced chocolate for you.

info@oliviers.ca. Chocolate Factory: Bay C 2828 54 Ave SE, Calgary, AB (403) 266-6028

Cheers.

Brad

I ran into the same problem with a couple of other pieces of chocolate equipment from Europe.

After tearing the equipment apart completely, I narrowed the problem down to the black plug on the machine where the cord (kind of like a computer power cable) plugs in. Unbeknownst to me, there is a TINY in-line fuse in the plug mechanism, which isn't disclosed on ANY manuals or user documentation. The fuse is on the negative (hot) circuit.

This was a completely frustrating PITA for me, andmay be your problem. My suggestion is to wrap the stupid, and unneccessary fuse with tinfoil, put it back and forget it exists.

Hope that helps.

Brad.

Clay, I agree.

Brian's evidently very passionate about what he does, and he should be. I've watched some of the videos, and I think it's pretty cool what he's doing. Sometimes I wish I could spend timeat the plantationswhere my beans come from. I certainly don't want anyone to think I discredit his efforts and passion there.

That being said, my question was asked and answered, and my opinions contributed. I have nothing more really to add.

Cheers

Brad

Brian;

You call me a hypocrite, yet you openly admit to not knowing if your chocolate is the rarest or not, while at the same time actively promoting that it is.

You call me a jerk because I openly ask the question and call you on it.

I never once called you abrasive.

I simply called you to justify how you call your chocolate the world's rarest, and you could provide NO definitive justification for doing so. Instead, you resorted to calling the person who asked the question, a hypocrite, abrasive, and a jerk - tactics ofsomeone who's been caught in a lie andbacked into a corner, which is exactly what I did to you here. I backed you into a corner.

Nobody canquestion how rare the cocoa is that I use, and I don't claim to make the world's rarest chocolate, because I don't make the world's rarest chocolate.

Nor do you, so stop publiclyclaiming to.

I have no problem being the "bad boy" of the industry - pointing fingers and blowing whistles. Somebody has to. At the same time, if I'm wrong, and I seldom am, I will be the FIRST one to admit it, and make changes to make things right.

I post on forums like this, not because I'm out to make friends. I post on forums like this to legitimately help people when I can, and to let people know that what they read isn't always accurate or true.

Having said that, not a single person who has involved themselves in this conversation believes you have the world's rarest chocolate. It's not just me.

Like I said before, you should focus on your fabulous relationships with your growers and the special effort you make to harvest the cocoa you use to have your chocolate made for you. That IS truly special.

Brad.

In a debate, when one has absolutely no recourse, or valid reply to a point, they attack just as you have. At that point, the discussion is over.

Right now, we have a limited supply of Claire Echevaria's Porecelana I acquired a couple of years ago. Is it rare? Yeah. Is porcelana commonly considered the holy grail of chocolate? Yeah. That's why Amedei sells their limited supply of blended porcelanafor $25 per 53 gram bar! Can you only get a ton or so a year? Yeah. I guess when you weigh that amount to the several billion lbs of cocoa available on the market every year, it would be pretty safe to deduce that it's the among the rarest in the world. If it weren't EVERYONE would make chocolate with it.

We also have a small supply of Chuao. Everybody's heard of Chuao. Heck, there's even chocolate companies who have named themselves after that bean! Those beans are among the rarest and most sought afteras well. No refuting it.

We also have a small supply of beans from a plantation in the Cuyagua district of Venezuela. Same story as the Chuao.

Are Jim's beans rare? I don't know. They produce an amazing chocolate, and form the basis for all of our confections and a couple of our bars. However they are primarily a well fermented and harvested brazilian forastero. There's nothing that really makes them "rare".

We DO use some of the rarest cocoa beans in the world, and I've had some of the most prolific chocolatiers walk through our doors and spend time learning what it is that we do here.

What I DON'T do is call my chocolate the rarest in the world. It's not. Nor is yours Brian.

I'm not the one being a jerk or a hypocrite. I'm simply asking pointed questions. ...and I'm CERTAINLY not lying to my customers by advertising it as the "Rarest Chocolate In The World", then openly admiting in a public forum(IN WRITING NONETHELESS!!!) that I don't reallyknow if it's the rarest in the world.

Who's the jerk now????

Brad

In a post a couple of hours ago, Brian wrote "We can probably all agree not to parse each other's marketing language down to the last degree."

Personally, I think his quote goes to the root of what we as artisinal chocolate makersCAN change! We MUST be clear to the customer about what it is that we're selling. If we aren't, it not only hurts us, but also discredits every other artisan chocolate maker and chocolatier in the eyes of the consumer.

I've taken a lot of heat from consumers defensive of "their" chocolatiersin the past couple of years because I've stepped up and boldly spoken the truth about what I do and what goes on in the industry - truth that is substantiated by considerable, and in many cases irrefutable research findings, then blatantly contradicts what they claim to do. As a result, many of my peers (a couple of big ones too) have taken enough flak from customers that they have actually changed the verbiage on their packaging to more accurately reflect what it is that they do. It doesn't diminish the quality of their product. It simply offers the consumer more accurate portrayal of their crafts.

We've all pretty much agreed on this forum that Fortunato #4 is in fact NOT the world's rarest chocolate. Yet the website I was sent to BOLDLY states that it's, and I quote: "The World's Rarest Chocolate".

I make a 70% bar from a Mexican Porcelana bean I acquired a couple of years ago. I make the chocolate in small 50lb batches. Each batch turns out slightly different. Given that it's Porcelana, and it's made 50lbs at a time, could THIS be the world's rarest chocolate? I don't know. I certainly don't tell people it is. What I tell people is that porcelana is considered the "holy grail" of chocolate, and is considered to be among the rarest in the world. That's all true.

This HAS been an interesting discussion, and I have learned a tremendous amount from it. However, after digging down to the basis of it, even Brian admits that he doesn't know if his beans are rarest. Given that, he certainly can't claim that his chocolate is the rarest. Yet Maranon the website does, and to me that's deceptive and very misleading. (Sorry Brian. That's just how I see it).

A better approach might be to celebrate the effort needed to collect these beans from the growers and process them into a truly special chocolate - something the average person has never experienced. Sell the story and the relationship with the growers. I think that would get more play from a marketing standpoint.

Anyone's thoughts?

Brad

This is interesting indeed.

Being a born and raised Alberta redneck, I'm going to try and dumb things down a bit here to get a better understanding of what everyone is talking about. PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong. I'm simply trying to understand.

I understand that there is only one species of cocoa, and that is Theobroma Cocoa. I also understand that there are many "varieties" of theobroma cocoa which may or may not have evolved over 100's or thousands of years to adapt to their unique growing environments.

I also understand that there can be and often are genetic variations of beans even inside a single cocoa pod, meaning that a "variety" (aka: Nacional or Arriba for example) is often be a blend of many genetic variations from a particular region (mentioned just above).

Comparatively, there is only one species of human (homosapien), but many different races (aka: Varieties), and among those varieties many different genetic variations.

Am I wrong by using this comparative analogy?

If I'm not far off track, wouldn't it be reasonable to deduce that almost every small grower produces the rarest cocoa in the world? After all, the amount of beans they harvest don't even register on the scale of world (or even regional) cocoa production, and given the genetic varieties and associated percentages of those varieties that will present themselves in that particular harvest at that time is unique in itself (aka: rare). Duplicating that combination would be as likely as winning a lottery.

Further to that, only by combining the product of MANY growers in a region do you begin to create a "common" product which can be labelled for that region (such as Nacional or Arriba). It seems to me the only way this works, as you will NEVER get a metric ton of one single genotype, let alone many tons that represent a variety such as Nacional or Arriba.

Having said all of that, from a business perspective does the consumer really care, or is this simply a philosophical discussion amongst a bunch of chocolate geeks?

Personally, I don't think the consumer gives a pinch of pigeon poop. The mass majority of the general public still looks at chocolate as "Dark, Milk, White". The fact that single origin "Varieties" are making their way into the market and being well accepted is an indication that people are learning and becoming more discerning. I still don't think they care about the genotypes. That's more of a marketing ploy in my opinion - which is something that Maranon is using to differentiate it's product from others.

I also agree with Sebastian, that if this incredibly rare chocolate is being used by pastry chefs and other culinary professionals for baked goods and such, the flavour is questionable. In my opinion, the price of the chocolate doesn't reflect it's quality, or the quality isn't there, or it isn't being marketed correctly. Case in point: A chef isn't going to use a $90 bottle of Chiraz in a stew. He's going to use either a very inexpensive wine, or the left over wine from several opened bottles the previous day.

I do however think it's important for "chocolate geeks" and "redneck chocolate geeks" alike to learn and understand where their cocoa comes from, and how they can differentiate genotypes in order to create flavour profiles in their final chocolate, which in itself makes it unique to that geek who produces small batches of fine flavour dark chocolate. I also think it's less important to industrial chocolate makers.

Am I wrong? Am I out to lunch? Your thoughts?

A link to this website was just sent to me. I'd be interested in reading what people think...

http://www.maranonchocolate.com

I look forward to reading your replies.

Brad

I've never seen it, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen! Margarine and Fondant in truffle centers sounds kind of gross actually. Definitely not for me!

Hi Jonathan;

When I was first getting into the industry, I had a romantic vision of acquiring a large stone melangeur as well, (saw one at Scharffenberger's factory). They are very veryhard to find, but I've heard rumblings that some Italian companies have considered starting to manufacture them again to address the growing artisan market demand.

There are however other more efficient (and lighter) solutions. I can't share everything with you, but I hope this post will help save you time looking for something that you may not find, and allow you to be more productivefocusing on a better solution.

Cheers

Brad

Kat;

I think it's great that you are seeking out the truth. The considerable deception in the chocolate world is the reason I got into the business in the first place.

Far too many people blindly believe what they read in the media, then take it and preach it as gospel.

Never stop asking questions!

Cheers.

Brad