Forum Activity for @Arcelia Gallardo

Roasting nibs instead of whole beans

Posted in: Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, & Techniques

I am in Sao Paulo, humidity is 80%, after a few hours with a dehumidifier I can get to 60% woohoo, I am using the small premiers for now. I was afraid that the humidity was causing my 70-80% bars to be too viscous and thought that roasting nibs, instead of cacao, would help me maintain more butter in the nibs. I will weight before and after roasting, then after proofing and see how this changes things. Thanks everyone. 

Roasting nibs instead of whole beans

Posted in: Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, & Techniques

Hi there, is anyone cracking unroasted beans, winnowing, then roasting the nibs? I am curious whether this would create a less viscous chocolate since more of the cocoa butter would in the nibs and not absorbed by the husk. Also, is there a trick to cracking unroasted beans. Thanks!

Sundried cocoa in Brazil

Posted in: Make Mine Raw ...

Hi David, I would like to see how you collect, store, transport, freeze the cacaohoney.

Also, do you allow visits to your farm?

Freezable chocolate packaging

Posted in: Tech Help, Tips, Tricks, & Techniques

Hi Francis, all boxes can be frozen but the plain thin cardboard type are more prone to absorbing moisture if not packaged well. You can consider a cardboard box wrapped in plastic. Or a plastic type box all together. Do you mean you want to sell them frozen to customers so they can also put in the freezer or frozen to businesses that will defrost and sell individually as needed? 

Chocolate Academy - Callebaut

Posted in: Chocolate Education

Hi Christian, I am actually looking into taking a course with them; I will follow up with you. But on a side note, you want to perfect your abilities? The only way to do this is to practice a lot. What exactly do you want to learn?

For the most part the only people I know that have been successful with ONLY chocolate are in extremely high trafficked areas. Micheal Rechiutti does chocolate only but he is in the Ferry Building which is the number one tourist stop in SF and 2. he just opened Chocolate Lab where he makes desserts and other non chocolate items. I think Cocoa Bella is chocolate only but they are in the most popular mall in SF. Our best bean to bar makers in SF (Dandelion and Tcho) sell other items; hot/cold drinks, books, desserts and coffee. When Scharffen Berger was around they sold desserts, books and tshirts. La Maison, Jacques Torres, FIKA all have hot/cold drinks and some desserts. I am not sure if I am being helpful; successful is also a vague term; I am not sure if they are profitable if that is the measure of success you are asking. ONLY chocolate and seemingly successful: Richart, Teuscher, Christopher Elbow, Alegio.

Hi Karen, we have a 900sf space and have been open for a year and sell about 10k-16k per month with the exception of the holidays, Dec was 68k in retail sales. One thing we didn't consider was payroll taxes, in CA it's about 7k per employee per year so keep that in mind. I know smaller shops that are about the size of shop you are looking into and they are bringing about 100k in gross sales, 1 employee. But they nor we have the permit to do coffee which can change a lot of things because people will buy coffee daily. I agree you should think about the baked goods. We do bon bons and baked goods here. We have repeat customers for baked goods, 2-5 days of the week repeat and they come in for the chocolates for special occasions only. You can buy a small counter top oven for this. It is up to you if you want to use the same chocolate; if you are buying bulk it may be cheaper than buying smaller amounts of a less quality chocolate. Hope this helps. I think you should do it. It seems you have a following already and I would suggest doing classes in that new shop to help with revenue.

-Casa De Chocolates