Well, there are a number of things that I am excited about this year. Here are some of the things you can look forward to hearing about:
- We have on the drawing board a heated Santha. When that becomes available, you will be able to take your experimentation to a new level with time vs temperature conching.
- There is a prototype winnower that is looking promising. That will be rather useful for those that want to get into chocolate making for a small business.
- Also, for those interesting in larger capacity equipment, I will updating availability of larger Santhas.
- I am going to put together a "how to" of building your own cocoa roaster. I roast in a coffee roaster I built for under $100. I want to offer plans and possibly a kit (if I can find the time).
- We will be offering a nice scale from Escali within the next month.
- There is Fair Trade Certified Cocoa from Ghana on the way. I hope to have samples in February.
- The whole site will be given a facelift. I plan to get all the old posts categorized into topic, add a search feature, and hopefully (yes, I keep saying this) have a real shopping cart.
I am sure there is more. I will continually be experimenting with different cocoa beans, techniques, recipes, etc and passing that information on to you.
As always, please email me if you have questions, concerns, problems or praise. I love to hear from everyone. And don't forget about the E-mail list we offer. It is not a really busy list, but there are some really good and knowledgeable people there.
Happy new year everyone and thanks for making 2005 a great year.
Your humble servant,
Alchemist John