Piura Blanco Organic 2022 - The aroma is an interesting mix of persimmon and apricot.  

I am so bloody excited to announce we have a new tri of Brewing cocoa

I also just watched you winnow using a hair dryer and it looked like it worked well. My only missing piece is cracking the roasted beans. My Question: Rather than purchase a Champion Juicer, I'm wondering if there might be an effective alternate (cheaper) way to accomplish the cracking?

Drum roasters are so expensive.  They are only a drum, motor and some heat.  Isn’t there a cheaper alternative?  Couldn’t I roast in a pan like they do where they make the cocoa beans.  Would you tell me how to do that?  Should I use low or medium heat?

Insert the question of your choice about the big headlines about lead and cadmium in chocolate.

Is everyone ready for Thanksgiving? I know I am, mostly for the time off and spending some lovely time with some friends I’ve not seen in a while.

It kind of feels like 2020 has been an absolute roller coaster of dodgeball played with live ammunition. We were doing ok and then coming into the home stretch of the year is seems we got hit a few times.

I am opening a chocolate factory and want to make the best chocolate and know price is very important to sales. What is the cheapest bean you have? They must support the farmer. And can you turn them into nibs for me so I don’t need to buy so much expensive equipment.

What an interesting set of questions I’ve been receiving this last year. Well, I am using the term interesting in sort of a gently sarcastic way. I find them interesting because

When you make liquor, some solids are screened out by the (Champion) juicer. However, when you just add nibs straight into the melanger, all these solids end up in the chocolate. Is there a difference in the end product either way?

When will your next Roasting seminar be?

In the attached, are the temperatures mentioned air temperatures or bean surface temperatures?

As promised last week, the two new crops of previous favorites have landed.

Think of this as the start of a FAQ. I also want to note there are some oddly phrased questions below and I’m leaving them as written, not to make fun of anyone as it is pretty obvious they are from folks who do not speak English as their first language and being monolingual myself, I applaud them for writing in. Their English is worlds better than my Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin or Italian.

I know you don’t like chocolate roasted in an oven. There are lots of chocolate out there that have won awards and roast that way. I’m having trouble figuring out how to roast in my oven. The chocolate is only ok or bad. What roasting profile should I use? Can you tell me what temperature I set my oven to and for how long?

Today we have two questions related to Brewing Cocoa and I find one of them really interesting from an assumption standpoint.

While ordering my cocoa beans from a supplier, I came across a couple of unfamiliar terms known as 1. Bean count 110/100gm and 2. Fermented bean percentage 85%. Kindly shed some light into this topic and please let me know if these are acceptable values for making good quality chocolate.

Depending how long you have been with the Chocolate Alchemy maker's family (yes, if you are reading this, you are part of the CA family), this may be an "at last, they are back" announcement or something you have never had the opportunity to experience. In either case, for me it is really exciting. It has been nearly 10 years since I have had beans from Venezuela and over a decade since I had the one from the Cuyagua region.