The Chocolate Revolution

It’s coming.

The cocoa bean has been disrespected for far too long and things are about to change. Remember when ‘coffee’ was a cup of instant granules mixed with hot water, milk and white sugar? …Wow, what a time!.

With today’s abundance of specialty coffee shops, bespoke roasters and baristas with master degree levels of knowledge on the physics behind good coffee, it’s hard to imagine a time when the choice of coffee extended no further than ‘black or white’.

The flavour profiles of the actual coffee beans can vary wildly, even within the individual coffee farms they come from due to various environmental factors. The artisanal coffee revolution meant that we were finally given the opportunity to appreciate these differences. Previous to the noughties coffee revolution, mass produced, poor quality coffee beans were over-roasted to hide the taste of the bean. Decades of generic burnt coffee beans, meant that what the vast majority of people considered to be ‘the taste of coffee’ was this burnt bean taste. When combined with milk, sugar and eventually a collection of flavoured syrups and whipped cream, this coffee was drinkable. It was not good coffee, but it was consistent and we grew to accept this burnt, over-extracted, sweetened final product as ‘coffee’.

Nowadays, we know far better than to accept that kind of coffee as a representation of the real thing. We’re spoilt for choice when it comes to high quality, Fairtrade, organic, single origin, artisanally roasted, speciality coffee.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for chocolate.

The journey of a cocoa bean is similar in many ways to that of a coffee bean. From the variety of bean used and the specific location it is grown on in a cacao farm to the temperature and length of time it is roasted at. A high-quality cocoa bean that has been expertly roasted does not need flavourings or artificial sweetening as is such with the artisanal coffee beans of the post-coffee-revolution world. However, high quality cocoa beans are expensive and hard to come by and in general, require a lot more effort than the generic mass-produced cocoa beans used by most large chocolate manufacturers.

To mask the taste of poor quality beans and to make sure all their chocolate tastes the same no matter what the environmental conditions of the cacao farms, a lot of big companies burn their beans. Refined sugar, flavourings and emulsifiers are then added to mask the taste of poor quality, over-roasted beans. That way, even though the taste won’t be great, at least all of their chocolate will have a consistent flavour. You may be getting Deja-vu here from the aforementioned historic abuse of the coffee bean…

At Lucocoa, we treat the cocoa bean with the same respect as the coffee bean. We believe that the flavour in chocolate should come from the intricate complexity of the bean itself and not from additives. Because we use different beans for different bars, our chocolate differs in taste as much as coffee beans or wine from different regions would. We want to spearhead the inevitable chocolate revolution!

What is bean to bar chocolate?

We make our chocolate from BEAN TO BAR. Which means:

· We choose where in the world we get our beans from,

· We choose which specific farm we get beans from,

· We import the beans,

· We find the best roasting time and temperature for each variety of bean through trial and error,

· We roast the beans,

· We deshell the beans (leaving us with cocoa nibs),

· We conch the cocoa nibs (i.e. Stone grinding the cocoa nib to release the cocoa butter, leaving us with 100% pure cocoa liquor.

· We add unrefined coconut sugar and ground Lucuma fruit (for our dark chocolate varieties) and also add whole milk or coconut milk powder to our Milk chocolate and our ‘Natural Blonde’/’Matcha tea’ chocolate.

· We temper the chocolate (a process of specific temperature manipulation of the chocolate to ensure a glossy sheen and a crisp bite).

· We mould the chocolate,

· We wrap the chocolate.

This is chocolate in its purest form.

Surprisingly, there are very few chocolate manufacturers who do all of these steps in house. Most companies make their chocolate by:

· Buying bulk/mass cocoa liquor and making their chocolate from that

· Buying pre-made chocolate from a mass producer and add their flavours to it

· Mixing cocoa butter and cocoa powder together in what is bizarrely being called raw chocolate?!

· Adding emulsifiers like soya lecithin, artificial sweeteners, flavourings and sometimes preservatives.

Although the companies who use the above methods may be fair-trade, organic and/or refined-sugar-free, they are not bean to bar and what they produce really isn’t how real chocolate should taste.

Often, buzzwords are used as part of clever marketing techniques for companies who do not make bean to bar chocolate. The words sound good, but often have nothing to do with the quality of the chocolate or even the practices of the farms the cocoa has been imported from (for example, a cacao farm may be organic, but this does not mean it’s doesn’t utilise child labour – however, people usually assume that if a farm is organic/Fairtrade, then all other practices are as they should be, which is often not the case).

BUZZWORDS:

‘Raw’ chocolate:

We aren’t raw chocolate we are real chocolate. There is actually no such thing as raw chocolate. The fermentation and drying process within the country of origin throws raw out of the window. Temperatures when drying beans can be up to 60-70 degrees - well above the 42-degree max required for ‘raw’ foods.

Some companies say they make their chocolate from so called ‘raw’ ingredients; again, this doesn’t exist because you can’t get raw ingredients. The making process for chocolate can be more than 70 degrees, there is no way around this as stone grinders are used to make chocolate and friction causes heat...

Another version of raw you may come across is actually a combination of cocoa butter and cocoa powder. This is barely even chocolate, let alone raw chocolate!

‘Fair trade’ and ‘organic’:

At the moment, the problem is that people stop questioning chocolate brands after they have the answers to “Is it fair-trade?” and “Is it organic?” - We want to get people to question the actual making process of the chocolate and be aware that most companies aren’t making their chocolate from scratch.

We aren’t technically ‘fair trade’ as we pay up to 50% more than the fair-trade recommended price for our beans. We believe fair-trade has done some great things for farmers but we feel that this is the equivalent of a minimum wage and we believe in long term sustainability and paying our farmers the equivalent of a living wage. Each year we get a transparency report from our farms which tells us how much of the community has benefited from us buying their cacao. How many women own hectares of cacao and how many children are in school etc.

All of our ingredients are organic but we aren’t certified organic as we are small company and haven’t paid to be affiliated with the soil association or another governing body. All of our ingredients are organic.

‘Single Origin’:

This is a purposely ambiguous phrase; ‘Single Origin’ literally means ‘from one place’. Most people see this on a chocolate bar and assume this ‘single place’ is a specific farm. This is not always the case. Most of the time, this just means one region (i.e. Colombia), or even vaguer, it could just mean the beans are all from South America. South America is huge, but if your beans are all from South America, technically you could still call it ‘single origin’.

Our beans are also ‘single origin’ but we mean one single farm in one single region. But the term single origin has lost all meaning these days because of its ambiguous use!

‘Gluten Free’:

Saying chocolate is ‘Gluten Free’ is like saying water is gluten free… of course it is! Gluten has never been a necessary ingredient in chocolate so using the buzzword ‘gluten-free’ is just used to make chocolate brands sound like they are doing something original, when in actual fact, there is no reason that any chocolate should have gluten in it!

‘Artisanal’:

Artisanal literally means ‘made in traditional, or non-mechanized ways’. The artisanal way to make chocolate is most definitely bean to bar.

‘Hand Made’:

It’s hard to call any chocolate 100% handmade (even if its bean to bar) because to release the cocoa butter from the cacao nib (an essential part of chocolate making) the nibs must be stone-ground for a number of days in a conching machine. It would be virtually impossible to do this by hand and even if you had the man power to do so, a human couldn’t exert as much pressure as a conching machine and therefore would be unlikely to be able to create cocoa liquor. We do most of our processes by hand but we physically could not do the conching by hand!

Chocolate Glossary:

· Cocoa mass:

o The product of conching cocoa nibs leaves you with 100% cocoa liquor (or cocoa mass). However, if ‘Cocoa Mass’ is listed as a main ingredient in a chocolate bar, it is often a sign (particularly in the UK) that the chocolate is not high quality as the cocoa mass has been sourced, usually from multiple regions.

· Soya lecithin/Emulsifier:

o Soya lecithin is an emulsifier that is added to chocolate to reduce viscosity and save costs on more expensive ingredients like cocoa butter.

· Cacao/cocoa:

o The definition of this is still open but the basics are that cacao is Spanish and cocoa is English. The current definition which people have bought into is that the bean before it is roasted is called cacao, and once it has been roasted it is called cocoa.

· Cocoa butter:

o Each cocoa bean has a certain amount of oil within it. Once a hydraulic press is put on a cocoa bean the oil extracted is called cocoa butter and the dry part is cocoa powder.

· Cacao ‘Belt’:

o The cacao belt is a narrow band 10 degrees north and 10 degrees south of the equator. It is only within this ‘belt’ that conditions are right for cacao plants (Theobroma Cacao) to grow.

About cacao beans:

There are three tiers/quality of cacao beans.

1. Criollo – This is the top tier golden beans.

2. Trinitario – The name comes from the country where it was discovered but is found all over the cacao belt. It was discovered in Trinidad after there was a disease which wiped out a lot of cacao in the Caribbean region. This cacao is the combination of Criollo and Forastero, the mix created a new breed of cacao called Trinitario.

3. Forastero – This is the lowest tier of bean and considered a ‘bulk’ bean. It is what you will find your Cadbury and Hershey types of chocolate are made from. These beans are usually found in West Africa.

With Forestero there aren’t that many flavour profiles. With Criollo and Trinitario you get incredible flavour profiles. Sometimes you can have different flavour profiles in different beans from different harvests. For example, our 2015 Belize harvest was mellow in flavour and in 2016 the harvest had strong pineapple notes!

Chocolate is an absorbent. It sucks up strong flavours that surround it. So for example if you leave chocolate in the fridge with strong cheese it will absorb that flavour. That is what happens where the cacao is grown too, it sucks up the flavours of the surrounding crops.

The life of a Cocoa bean

Growing and Harvesting

GrowingThe cocoa bean begins its life growing somewhere within the ‘Cacao belt’. The cacao belt is a narrow band 20 degrees north and 20 degrees south of the equator. It is only within this ‘belt’ that conditions are right for cacao plants (Theobrom… — **Growing**
The cocoa bean begins its life growing somewhere within the ‘Cacao belt’. The cacao belt is a narrow band 20 degrees north and 20 degrees south of the equator. It is only within this ‘belt’ that conditions are right for cacao plants (Theobroma Cacao) to grow.
**Harvesting**
Cocoa pods are harvested twice a year at varying times (dependent on the region). The pods are cut off the stalks of the Cacao tree, usually with machetes, so that the cut is very clean and will not damage the ‘flower cushion’ of the stalk. Damaging the flower stalk could affect future harvests so the cleaner the cut the less likely this damage is to occur. The pods are cut open and the wet flesh containing the cocoa beans are removed.

Fermentation and Drying

Fermentation:The pulpy cocoa beans are then allowed to ferment for 5-7 days, but the specific length of fermentation is dependent on the bean type. The wet beans are placed into wooden containers and turned every so often to ensure even fermentation… — **Fermentation:**
The pulpy cocoa beans are then allowed to ferment for 5-7 days, but the specific length of fermentation is dependent on the bean type. The wet beans are placed into wooden containers and turned every so often to ensure even fermentation. By the end of the fermentation period the fleshy pulp that surrounded the beans will have been broken down by the second day of fermentation. The chemical reactions that occur during this process are part of what gives cocoa beans their flavour.
**Drying:**
After fermentation, the cocoa beans need to be dried. This process reduces the moisture content of the beans. Most of the time the beans are sun-dried. This needs to be done carefully and the beans need to be totally dry before transportation across the globe so this is a very important part of the cocoa preparation process!

Roasting

Cracking

Winnowing

Conching

Tempering

Moulding

Demand more from your chocolate!