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I'm curious about historical information on your site. Perhaps you've made intentional choices not to preserve certain information, but I wonder when beans go out of stock, would it be possible to preserve an archive section with the spider charts, your tasting notes, and roasting notes for these beans? It may be useful to remind ourselves of our old inventory, and to compare with new offerings. Maybe this is too much trouble?
The short answer is yes, it has been too much trouble to the point where it was not feasible.
This has been on our never ending ‘to do’ list for years now. I utterly feel your pain. When I order green coffee I have used their archive system to find roasting suggestions and tasting notes and it pains me Chocolate Alchemy has not been able to offer that information. Sure, if you wrote me, I’ve always been happy to send you the data but there was always one reason or another that got in the way of it being available online.
95% of the issue was Shopify not allowing me to publish a product with a price of $0 (you can’t sell a product for no money they said) or where I didn’t have any inventory to sell (if you are out of stock you have to remove it they said - it looks better). They also would not allow us to convert products to static pages (you are an edge case - no one else needs that functionality). And of course we couldn’t just leave up page after page of out of stock items.
If you have not noticed (why would you?) we have 3 different platforms running Chocolate Alchemy (4 if you count the forum but I’d rather not). We have two independent Shopify stores (Retail and Wholesale - this is why you can’t combine those carts any more than you can combine a cart from Chocolate Alchemy and Sweet Maria’s) plus Squarespace which houses pretty much everything else and try as we might, they just don’t like playing with each other in an automated fashion.
In short, yeah, it was beyond too much trouble.
Yet.....on my morning hike I got thinking about this, turning it one way, then another, checking out the angles.....and slowly I realized that Shopfiy has been making changes. They no longer restrict us from making a zero cost item. They now say “out of stock” instead of ‘sorry, that value can’t be zero’. We have in place system that allows filtering of products based on criteria I set (Organic, price, flavor, good for dark chocolate, etc). As all of this started swirling in my head I watched issue after issue drop away until I realized I had a workable solution. I picked up my pace to get back so I could present my idea to my Number 1, Ruzz so he could tell me where the holes in my thinking were.
He didn’t quite do that. Instead he announces “That’s a horrible idea”.
I have to tell you, I felt like he just kicked the puppy I don’t have.
It turns out it was not quite as horrible of an idea as he thought and he restated his more complete thoughts in more gentle language. He is a bit of a coding purest and found the idea using a filter system off label was horrible. Not unfair. He also saw a number of places that could cause us issue. About an hour later, and a few problems later (ok, he was somewhat right), it seemed like my shiny new idea was going to work.
For the astute, have you noticed I’ve been using the past tense a lot? Good job if you have as I’m thrilled to announce...
WE HAVE COCOA BEAN ARCHIVES NOW!
More specifically, I’ve started them. They are not complete, but I’m working on it. Both on Retail and Wholesale.
As you see above, you can now choose between In Stock and Archived. So the choices are not overwhelming once the Archives fill up, you can now sort by country of origin and harvest year. The current plan is to go back to 2020 or so. If there are beans you remember from the before time, feel free to email me and request them and I’ll do it if we have the information still.
The new filters mean you can check out the tasting notes for two of the new arrivals we ran out of very quickly.
New Beans:
Oh, did you not hear about those? You might want to consider subscribing to one or all of our Mailing Lists. Last week I sent out a newsletter telling subscribers about 5 new beans and to jump fast as quantities were limited. I rather meant to make an announcement here the next day but it just got too busy and suddenly it was a week later.
Here is an excerpt:
We have in 5 new direct trade beans from Peru. Every one of them is bright and lively. Links are below. (2 GONE)
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If you want to grab them all, there is a Peru Sampler you should check out. (GONE)
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The Kit of the Month will be highlighting the dynamic Peru Pangoa. You don’t even have to subscribe. Just buy it one off. It is going to be an experience. (GONE)
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With our long standing Ghana RFA gone, I've put together a Ghana Apocalypse Sampler
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A little bit of Dominican Republic Zorzal, Guatemalan Cahabon and Madagascar are also back in stock. When they are gone, they are gone.
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We also just landed our first Single Origin ORGANIC Ghana from Three Mountains
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It is that time of year again where we stop selling Cocoa Butter Silk. It is gone at the end of the month.
Here are those beans I promised you.
Peru Awajun Organic 2024 - The first impression is upon taking a bite is sweetness with a backdrop of tangy red fruits
Peru Pangoa Organic 2024 - The acidity is high and bright, layering together with clear tropical red and orange fruits.
Peru Sisa 2024 - Straight out of the gate you are going to have lime in both acidity and astringency. As that wave passes I get sassafras root and lime pith.
Ghana Three Mountains 2023 Organic - Walnut skin like tannins with a moderate but not excessive astringency play well off the sweetness. Low toned notes of loam and leather round out the experience
I have to tell you, it feels really great have the archive to do item checked off our list. It’s only been there a decade.
Take care my friends and be kind to one another. I’ll be away next week but back the following with hopefully a deep and insightful Ask the Alchemist..... if only I had a deep and insightful question......