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and dark milk chocolates later on the most important overall conclusion is how much people have to learn about the potential of chocolate in the audiences that i ve talked with i estimate that less than 5 have had artisan chocolate and tend to be surprised at the variety and complexity available and at the seminars at least a few people run off to order bars from the maker s websites that is the ones that haven t pocketed bars off the testing table 1 comment mega producers micro producers reviews united states permalink posted by tspyz conflict chocolate report june 28 2007 the good folks at grendel in the underworld linked to a report by global witness about how cacao is funding the civil war in ivory coast this monster report 70 pages of meticulously researched detail discusses how both sides in the war are taxing cacao growing and transport and how cacao is being smuggled through togo and other countries to disguise its origins and evade government blockades cacao farmers face paying taxes to the government and escort taxes to rebel groups to allow them through the maze of checkpoints set up throughout the country depressing next up postings on making batch 10 a cream powder based milk chocolate leave a comment mega producers permalink posted by tspyz too much chocolate impossible june 22 2007 does it indicate a problem when you have 27 different kinds of chocolate in your fridge i took a quick picture of all the research samples in the cacaolab collection today amano amedei askinosie caffarel guittard lindt richart devries theo pralus bonnat chocovic rovira and friends building a taste vocabulary for chocolate is hard work reviews on these and more coming in the next weeks leave a comment mega producers micro producers permalink posted by tspyz patents gone wild june 7 2007 the original intention of the patent system was to encourage innovation by giving inventors of useful novel and non obvious inventions the monopoly to enjoy the fruits of that invention in exchange they would have to publish the invention in a patent and thereby increase the amount of knowledge available to the public and other inventors recently there has been a movement to reform the patent system as it is not used to patent plants one click shopping and a whole host of inventions that seem to defy the original spirit of the system in that vein i recently came across this patent owned by the mars company that covers improving the health of a mammal by administering chocolate with enhanced levels of cocoa polyphenols the very odd thing about this patent is that it doesn t claim the process of making chocolate with elevated polyphenols though it does discuss this process probably because the process involves making chocolate with underfermented cacao which is probably not patentable instead they claim any process that improves the health of a mammal presumably humans by ingesting chocolate made with underfermented cacao maybe this means that if you ate some not so fantastic chocolate and your health improved in some way mars could sue you for patent infringement and by reading this blog post you now know about the patent and could perhaps be charged with willful infringement which triples the damages you owe the world s largest candy company nice to know that patent craziness is not just confined to the software and internet space leave a comment mega producers permalink posted by tspyz like water for chocolate june 5 2007 artisan chocolate made by hand with exacting attention to the cacao bean is what motivates this blog at the same time it s fascinating to look at how far science and industrial production can drive the frontiers of chocolate chocolate making is a gigantic industry and like any gigantic industry there are millions of dollars poured into advanced research and development all with the hope of gaining some competitive edge side note for a peek into how brutal the candy industry is at the top levels check out joel glenn brenner s the emperors of chocolate which details the rivalry between hershey s and mars it s a 35 year old slugfest that makes coke vs pepsi look like 3rd graders squabbling in a playground even more remarkably mars and hershey s used to work together closely with hershey s supplying raw chocolate to mars as a side effect while the first m in m m s stands for mars the second stands for murrie the president of hershey s at the time patent 7 186 425 just issued on march 7th shows how this kind of research can turn centuries of technique upside down in traditional chocolate making rule 1 is water is the enemy even a small amount of moisture in chocolate can render it lumpy granular and can make it sieze up destroying machinery almost every step of the conventional chocolate making process is about driving out moisture and the end product has less than 1 water this patent shows how paradoxially to make chocolate that contains up to 30 water the motivation is to create a lower calorie chocolate that can also contain nutrients that are only water soluble the trick seems to be to premake chocolate then very gently mix in a suspension of water in oil using lecithin or pgpr to emulsify the mixture keeps the water from forming a continuous phase preventing it from affecting the cocoa fat matrix and screwing up the chocolate various other inventors have proposed processes for this trick but none have gotten to this level of water content according to the patent with proper handling through the conching process and careful tempering this watery chocolate will form bars with classic chocolate texture that will not bloom for a long time the primary inventor of this process is s t beckett the author of the encyclopedic industrial chocolate manufacture and use and the introductory science of chocolate i don t think i ll be heading to the store for any watery chocolate anytime soon but i have to admire the pure mad scientist aspect of this technique leave a comment making chocolate mega producers references permalink posted by tspyz a work in progress may 15 2007 if you glance upward you ll notice a new tab on the top of the page a directory of artisan chocolate makers those of you reading the rss feed will need to regress back to the old fashioned technique of actually looking at the blog page this is going to take a lot of work to complete and i know the list is missing a boatload of makers and there s probably some inaccurate information there my goal is to get a relatively complete list of the companies making artisan chocolate along with capsule biographies feel free to leave a comment if i ve terribly botched something or left out a favorite producer i will only list companies that start with beans and indicate origin which sadly means leaving off some great chocolatiers anyway enjoy browsing and by all means hit your local chocolate store and demand that they carry product by some of these great names leave a comment mega producers micro producers references uncategorized permalink posted by tspyz do i need a prescription for this may 13 2007 hershey s has introduced a somewhat bizzare line of chocolates under the goodness label even the url for their site hersheys com happiness goodness seems like some kind of subliminal sales tool they ve released three bars under this label one is a whole bean bar which threw me for a while after all all chocolate is made with more or less the whole bean right well not quite the clue here is that the whole bean bar contains naturally occuring fiber where do you get fiber in a cacao bean the husk i m guessing that what they mean by whole bean here is that they ve skipped the step where after roasting you remove the tough outer hull of the bean and have just tossed the nib and the hull into the grinder this is not an unknown way to do things oaxacan chocolate is ground with the hull intact along with almonds and other spices part of the problem is that the resultant chocolate is not very stable since the small amount of fats in the hull are incompatible with cocoa butter so the chocolate tends to bloom quite easily there s no way that hershey s is going to put up with a product that blooms so they must be performing some kind of science on the chocolate to stablize it given that hershey s knows how to produce non melting chocolate this is probably well within their capabilities another interesting question is how this bar fits in the fda definition for chocolate being that the nibs used to make chocolate are supposed to be no more than 1 75 hull looking farther i m guessing this stuff is completely off the fda reservation since it also contains sucralose and other sweeteners this stuff sounds so bizzare i have to give this a try i ll file a report when i get a bar to review as a side note i m currently reading the emperors of chocolate by joel brenner which details the intertwined history of hersheys and mars these pharma chocolates are an echo of the past for hershey s milton hershey s first venture was sold fruits nuts and taffy the start of it s undoing was hershey s father convincing him to invest in making medicated candies 1 comment mega producers united states permalink posted by tspyz famous chocolate people and free chocolate may 4 2007 the san francisco bay area is in the midst of a small chocolate boom there are an almost embarrassing number of places to go buy absolutely top end chocolate fog city news chocolate covered cocoabella bittersweet recchiuti xox truffles michael mischer and dozens more that i m forgetting now the bay area is also home to three major chocolate manufacturers guittard a world class producer that supplies some of the top restaurants in the world ghirardelli now a part of the lindt empire sharffen berger now part of the hershey s empire and blommer a nearly invisible company that is one of the largest chocolate makers in the united states one of the benefits of living amidst all this chocolate activity is the opportunity to rub shoulders with and perhaps even gain some insight in the process some talented and experienced chocolate artisans adam smith at fog city news has been an unfailing advocate for quality chocolate he s built an enormous tasting database that s accessible in the store and sponsors visits by local chocolate makers and chocolatiers he s got a great lineup of people coming by his store over the next few days these are not super crowded events so you get to spend some quality time talking with the folks that make their living working with chocolate here s the lineup of people that adam has coming up may 4 michael mischer chocolatier in oakland making some really interesting combinations may 7 lloyd lindy martin chocolate visions santa cruz chocolatiers may 9 katrina markoff vosges haut chocolat queen of a high end chocolate empire out of chicago maker of a really fantastic spicy chocolate ask her about chocolate and yoga may 10 gary guittard king of guittard chocolate which makes fine chocolates from the bean and probably the base of any dessert you get at a highly rated zagat restaurant the guittard family has been making chocolate in the san francisco area for four generations the other bonus is that adam is quite liberal with the free samples when the makers are in the store 1 comment mega producers micro producers united states permalink posted by tspyz chocolate and child slavery april 27 2007 chocolate by in large is grown in some low income parts of the world the theobroma cacao tree only thrives within about 12 degrees of the equator and is cultivated largely in south america and africa this presents chocolate producers with some of the same environmental fair trade and labor issues that the coffee industry has dealt with thus the increasing number of chocolate products that feature fair trade organic or shade grown designations the most disturbing are the persistent reports of child slavery used in the cultivation of cacao particularly in ivory coast one of the largest producers in the world accounting for about 43 of the world cacao crop a 2002 report from the american university trade environment database detailing the conditions in ivory coast paints a pretty depressing picture there are reasons to believe that the situation may be getting better the world cocoa foundation has started a program to certify various countries as not using slavery and ghana now has a certification however even very recent news articles attest to the fact that human trafficing is still an active practice in this area it s often difficult to discern the truth when it comes to super heated issues like this but there seems to be a preponderence of evidence here that a huge fraction of the cheap bulk chocolate used around the world comes with a heavy moral price leave a comment mega producers permalink posted by tspyz tasting ghirardelli and some words on roasting april 24 2007 thanks to eric i had a chance to taste some ghirardelli intense dark a 77 dark chocolate bar with no indication as to bean origin it s a very smooth bar with a strong chocolate flavor and predominantly nutty and grassy smell notes for a 77 it s not too acid or astringent suggesting a high content of probably african forestero beans it s beautifully tempered with a very high gloss the interesting thing about this bar is the very long lingering nutty afternote with many darker chocolates i find the afternote to be much fruitier and acid this afternote is much more bitter and a lower note almost coffee like why might this be in a word roasting ghirardelli is unusual among chocolate manufacturers in that they roast the nib the inner part of the cacao bean after shelling the bean as opposed to the more traditional process of roasting the bean in shell then removing the hull after the hulls are removed either before or after roasting the hulls are discarded and the nibs are ground into chocolate liquor that is then refined with other ingredients into actual chocolate some manufacturers have experimented with roasting the liquor but have found it largely unsatisfactory the reason for roasting the nib is that you don t need to worry about burning the outer hull of the bean and can hence roast harder without getting off notes traditional roasters hypothesize that roasting in the hull may contribute to flavor development as the hull has presumably taken up some of the flavor notes that existed in the pulp of the cocoa pod research into flavor development during the earlier parts of the process fermenting and drying the beans indicates that there is significant chemical interplay between the germ the nib the hull and the pulp of the cocoa pod some research results for future summarization protein evolution and microflora given the complexity of the process there may be hull to nib interaction during the roasting process that alters the chocolate s taste profile i don t know if the lack of hull during the roast process or the ability to roast more aggressively contributes to the flav...