You dont have a point Brad just a series of condescending, poorly constructed, rude rants. Upon reflection they are more laughable than libellous.
Can I say my (as in bought in burk) cacao powder is light brown? Appears roughly grinded? Tastes fantastic but sometimes a bit bitter? I (John) care about organics, fair trade and the nutritional value of foods. Why can't I say that? Or is it against your overbearing, chocolate fascist rules?
>it's highly doubtful that you even have a clue if it's fair trade or organic!
We have copies of the organic certifications...
>the guy who misleads people
In what way? By saying we buy cold pressed cacao powder from reputable suppliers...
>Either Iceblocks is lying about HACCP,
>OR Iceblocks is lying about his cocoa butter being cold pressed.
Because the suppliers claim its raw, before combining with other pasteurized products, the powder must be pasteurized. That is actually a HACCP critical control step.
We don't use cocao butter. What a burk.
What's highly doubtful is your ability to comprehend English or intellectually understand. What is unquestionable is your condescending rudeness
Now can we get back on topic
1) I have a copy of the organic certification certificates for the cacao powder...
2) Fair trade products come with a FLO ID...
3) I assume if a reputable supplier describes it as cold pressed that it is...
4) We legally have to pasteurize it, so it's not raw, so don't care if it was...
5) Whats the problem with people wanting a vegan product? It's their choice.
6) What is your problem with organics? We choose to stimulate demand for something we believe in. Ours and our customers choice.
7) If you cant meet a demand don't whine to me
Sounds likethe cacaomay have been dutched (alkalised) with either sodium or potassium carbonate to help it dissolve in water.
I'm definitely in the artificially coloured "white" chocolate sucks camp. There is quite a lot of subconscious psychology associate with food procurement choices.Stick a blue bar with a white bar and see which one you sell. I'm betting > 4 white sales per blue. BUT a blue bar will be bought by some one, and are they influential?
Is there any chocolate flavour in un-fermented beans?
Interesting presentation about cacao fermentation.
http://www.worldcocoafoundation.org/who-we-are/partnership-meetings/pdfs/MGilmour_Fermentation.pdf
What about dutching that should allow 4 possible raw cacao's and varying levels of dutching. i.e. black unfermented dutched cacao or lightly dutched fermented raw cacao etc.. LOL?
From my recollection they are flow wrapped in a unique resealable wrapper.The idea of trying to trademark square bars isoutrageous. I think they would also have considerable difficulty in proving prior art. i.e. that they were the first people to produce square bars.
e.g. the "Ugg" word trademark in Australia was thrown out as the term ugg was in common Australian english use prior to the trademark "ugg" being sought.
I love following the chocolate!
It's very different 
, you will not be dissapointed.
I was hoping you were producing powder. I've seen pretty simple setups for that i.e. basically a massive hydralic ram and somewhere for the butter to go.
Don't know if you have tried, it but Daintree Vanilla & Spice is maybe worth trying to up the local Ozzie appeal.
Best milk chocolate I've tasted in 10+years maybe 20.I love milk chocolate.
One thing is intriguing me from the ingredients list on both the 70% and 45% mini bar labels is the inclusion separately of both Cocao Nibs & Cocao Butter. Is the butter from Daintree too? Is there then consequently left over Cacao powder? Are the nibs produced by a separate company? If your in control of the entire processing (bean-to-bar) "Cacao Beans" would be the obvious ingredient?
I also hate the "Made in Australia from local and imported ingredients." statement knowing the way juice manufactures abuse such labelling. i.e. the only "local ingredient" being water in some juices ...
We had the fortune to try both the 70% and 45% milk chocolate today. Must say I'm *very* impressed with both. The balance of sugar and mouth feel are excellent. Did you do the roasting profiles and formulation Tom?
I have a cold today so taste is impaired but from what I could taste I liked. From what understand the price point will be $8-$10 / 80g bar?
Do you mean milk or cream caramel or caramel? Caramel is simply heated sugar so you only variable is going to be the quality and taste of the sugar your caramelising. For non dairy caramel confectionery I'd experiment with non dairy milk substitutes. My guess being that almond and coconut milk works well, rice and soy milk maybe.
Any idea how they prepare pixtle or the seed of the mamey sapote?
I have two Mamey Sapote trees growing in the garden and have never tried to eat theseeds.
The flesh is wonderful.
The seeds are quite large and have a thick black shiny case. I presume they are roasted?
I find the coconut oil / butter handles very differently at different times of the year - but we are in Australia. In summer it's very easy to separate from coconut cream and milk as it's liquid, similarly in winter its easy an its hard. There are transitional temperatures where it appears grainy and is like sludge. Maybe your working at some transitional temp. From memory it melts at about 27 degrees centigrade.
Count me in for a couple of litres ~
Some fiends here do fresh sugar cane juice and sell it at markets and in various shops. Boy do they have problems with it fermenting. I left a half bottle of it on top of my home refrigerator one day and by the time I came back from shopping it had exploded literally covering the kitchen.
What they do for shops is hard freeze asap after juicing and deliver frozen to shops refrigerators (which is quite common for many products here). Even then their longevity measures in days and they monitor shops fridges replacing fermenting bottles. They don't pasteurize as it spoils the taste in their opionion. Guess there must be some volatiles that are lost at 72 degrees C.
Sounds like a really cool idea.
From what I've seen bland complacency is all that most people can manage, unfortunately. 
Yet they are empathetic and in my experience do want to know their products, especially premium products, where they can afford to invest time and choose, and may wish to appear generous or altruistic, are sourced in an ethical, healthier and or sustainable manner.
One thing we are quite keen on is optimising labelling. Fair trade, etc. in its current guise is great for advertising raw materials. Yet for us, none of our products consist of a single certified raw material which either leads to a huge very detailed ingredients list which can be economically unfeasable due to package printing limitations (and unwieldy and failure) or failure to get leverage for a cost.
What we know is that if ingredients are presented well consumers are very interested in local sourcing, and interested in organics and fair trade. This is tempered by quality and price considerations. Local produce is usually cheaper, fair trade more expensive, and organics of variable quality, supply and more expensive.
I've found Jhai Coffee Farmers Cooperative's email address, I'll flick them and email asking a few questions and see if we get a reply on funding sources and their opinion on fair trade etc.
"I maintain that while 'Fair Trade' as it is currently constituted by FLO/Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance, et al, may A part of AN answer, it is not THE answer." So what you going to do Clay be part of an answer, invent a new answer or not be part of an or the answer?
By "simple explanation" I'm referring to the set of calculations you quote and the inherent assumptions. In the public JCFC accounts 2004-2008 there is no mention of certification costs and the simple explanation looks like they have or had grants to cover those costs with no costs to farmers whatsoever. It looks extremely likely, from public documents, that NZ Aid has provided a grant for the organic certification, which appears ongoing and another unspecified US? NGO provides or provided fair trade certification. http://www.adb.org/Documents/Reports/Consultant/40105-LAO/40105-LAO-TACR.pdf initiated by Oxfam Australia.
http://www.die-gdi.de/CMS-Homep age/openwebcms3.nsf/(ynDK_contentByKey)/ANES-7YUGRA/$FILE/Studies%2051.pdf
Looks like this is in my neck of the woods and organic certification appears to have been paid for by NZ Aid.
http://cafelao.blogspot.com/ the coffee is bought by http://www.obscura.net.au/origin.html . I wonder if problems have stemmed from being spun off from http://jhai.org/successes/ http://www.cnntraveller.com/2009/11/12/laos-how-to-make-a-better-cup-of-coffee/ "The JCFC now involves 550 households in 12 Bolaven villages, and revenues in 2008 stood at $260,000, 10 times more than in 2004. The vast majority of this money goes back to the farmers, who are able to invest in new homes, tractors and education for their children."
Clay have you tried directing your question / concerns to FLO-CERT to find if it's them and what's going on? If you can provide a copy of the paper I'll be happy to contact them if your not interested. I expect there is some simple explanation or that there is a problem that needs it's public profile raising.
Certainly in my limited experience it's often NGO's / Aid agencies who set up these co-ops and certification systems, but it looks like someone has stuffed up big time. IMO those charges on farmers are probititive to useful outcomes.
Who is providing the organic and fair trade certifications? Are the actual costs cited being picked up by the co-op directly or is it being picked up by some NGO?
I must agree with you, I don't like Lecithin for a number of reasons.
1. Aesthetic
2. Allergen sensitivity.
3. It usually solvent extracted with hexane. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexane http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lecithin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soybean_oil
I suspect its most commonly used by big chocolate to enable mass production machinery to be used with cheapened indredients.
It's really up to you, the baking chocolate we usually have here is adulterated in some way.
Solid at normal room temperature.
I'd imagine so but no experience.
1. I don't personally like the process of dutching. It's and aesthetic thing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_process_chocolate
2. No, Food grade only! You can use other fats e.g. butter, coconut, etc ... Obviously other fats will effect tempering and taste drastically.
100% unsweetened (winnowed, ground and often roasted cacao) is referred to as chocolate / cacao / cocoa liquor which may be why your having problems finding it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate_liquor
If your still having problems, what you could do is buy pure cacao powder (e.g. http://www.bigtreefarms.com/cacao/ see link at bottom for stockists) and cacao butter from a health food store and combine to reconstitute a liquor. You would have to know the proportion of butter (fat) in the powder to do that, roughly aiming for a 50% butter content by weight.
Things to remember, that I did not realise with mould copy's, when doing market research is:
1. Some children will inevitably put the copy in their mouth.
2. People get really disappointed if the product looks different to the copy.
3. Colour and appeal are actually very important, an ugly copy will impact sales negatively.
I reckon mixing food grade beeswax with cacao powder may provide a similar sheen / lustre and also make the beeswax melt at a higher temperature. Whether the result is convincing and appealing will take experimentation.
