Forum Activity for @Clay

Preface

At times I wonder if I am the only person who has read the English–language version of Georg Bernardini's Chocolate—The Reference Standard   critically because it seems like mine is the first review of any edition of TRS that is anything less than glowingly positive.

In his response to my review (which is now Part 1 of what will be a three-part series),

Georg writes:

The best chocolates and pralines in the world
What’s behind it all and what we can gladly forego

"Sorry that you don’t understand the phrase. Perhaps the translation is not correct [emphasis added], but the initial idea was not that the two phrases are in context.

"But I understand. You want to tear up the book and everything you find is good to massacre."

The fact that I don’t understand what the author and publisher actually meant is precisely my point: Difficult-to-understand translations are present on nearly every page and annoyingly confusing, detracting from TRS’s usability. The problem starts on the front cover.

Summary

"I don’t think that any of your accuses is correct. There are perhaps some delicate details which could be more clear, but in summary I don’t agree at all with your opinion."

I never expected Georg to agree with my observations (not opinions)  but I did not write my review for Georg . He has said he will probably never update the book, never giving himself the opportunity to correct any of the points I bring up. So why bother?

My review was written for people who have purchased the book—or are thinking of purchasing the book—so that they can see that there are some serious concerns with a lot of what is presented as fact, along with editorial inconsistencies, and the reader might want to consider those concerns as they are reading the book.

All comments refer to the 2015 English–language edition, except where explicitly mentioned otherwise. I did not look at any prior edition of TRS to see if the issues I raise are in any other versions.

The Cultivation Countries pp27-37

Fine Flavor Cocoa Classification (p30)

Bernardini states “… ICCO classifies the cocoa and bindingly regulates [emphasis added] the percentage of cocoa which a country may export as fine flavor cocoa.”

This was not my understanding, so I reached out to someone who was at the ICCO Ad-Hoc Committee meeting in London this past September to confirm that the committee agrees upon a percentage of exports that can be considered as fine flavor as reported by the countries themselves . ICCO absolutely does not regulate exports .

A cocoa expert should be expected to know this. (As an aside, the numbers are from 2010 and at the September meeting some of the percentages were changed. Thus, the percentages reported in TRS are out of date but I don’t know if Georg could have known about them before TRS went to print.)

The Cocoa Varieties (pp27-28)

Bernardini says that there are four main varieties of cocoa: Criollo, Trinitario, Forastero, and the (Ecuadorian) Nacional sub-variety of Forastero.

We now know that not to be true. Perhaps the first most obvious place where the book was out of date before even the first edition was published , in my opinion, is that there is no mention of Juan Carlos Motamayor and team’s 2008 research paper, Geographic and Genetic Population Differentiation of the Amazonian Chocolate Tree (Theobroma cacao L) .

Motamayor’s paper mentions ten distinct varieties, and several more have been identified since then.

For Bernadini not to even mention Motamayor’s work is baffling to me (and to others to whom I mentioned this omission) in what aspires to be the reference standard.

Cocoa Aromas of Different Countries of Origin (pp32-36)

You mean, apart from the fact that the author conflates (or confuses) aroma (smell) with flavor? (Or is it a problem with the translation?)

The list omits Central America entirely : Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, El Salvador (Mexico was somehow transported to South America): other than Mexico (see S America) not one of these countries was found deserving of a discussion.  How did an entire sub–continent go missing during the editorial review and fact–checking process?

The list omits several African growing countries: Cameroon, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Liberia.

In South America, Colombia is misspelled and has been ceded a new country: Mexico!

In Oceania, Fiji and Samoa are missing.

In the Caribbean, Haiti is not mentioned.  St Lucia is not not only given more coverage than either the Dominican Republic or Grenada—both far more significant producers—but is treated fundamentally differently from every other entry in the section.  Research into another question uncovered a possible reason for the length of the entry on St Lucia: The mention of a specific brand (glaringly, the only entry in this section to do so) that sources some cocoa from the island. Coppeneur (at which Bernardini worked) made (and may still make, as—lazy me—I did not try to find out) chocolate for Hotel Chocolat, the mentioned brand. I am not claiming this as any sort of proof of anything, I am just pointing out an undisclosed connection that could provide a reason this baffling editorial inconsistency.

Bernardini calls the carmelo cocoa grown on Rancho La Joya, Porcelana (p34), while labeling it extremely acidic. When discussing Venezuelan Porcelana (on the same page), he describes it as “absolutely not bitter, acidic or astringent.” One of the reasons for this is that carmelo is not genetically a pure Criollo like Porcelana. The term Porcelana refers to porcelain white, and is virtually synonymous with particular Criollos. While carmelo does have 100% white beans, it has been identified as a genetic amelonado, a fact confirmed to me by a member of the team who did the SNP analysis. One reason carmelo may be acidic is that it is not being processed properly post–harvest: It's being fermented as if it were a Criollo (which might account for excess citric acidity as well as a lactic tendency). But excess acetic acidity is almost certainly a result of poor drying practices, which Bernardini should know. I know this because I visited Rancho La Joya in December 2015 and saw their operation and asked what they were doing and tasted fresh pulp and beans.

Rancho La Joya is in the state of Tabasco whereas “the Xoconusco” is in the state of Chiapas, an important distinction to the people who live and farm there.  Between them, Tabasco and Chiapas produced about 22,500MT of cocoa in the 2015 harvest according to the Minister of Agriculture for Tabasco, a figure I learned during a meeting with him during a trip there in December.  It is estimated that less than 50MT of the combined total was exported as fine flavor cocoa—a fact corroborated by someone who arranges for the export of fine flavor cocoa from Mexico.  This argues against the claim that the majority of cocoa grown in Mexico is mostly Criollo and Trinitario and not much Forastero. If they were growing a lot of high quality Criollos they’d be exporting a lot more of them.

Bernardini reports that the main variety of cocoa grown in Ecuador is Nacional (p33), but also Forastero. While there is mention of CCN-51 on the next page, it naïvely misrepresents the current situation with respect to production in Ecuador.  During the recent ICCO ad-hoc meeting, Ecuador presented records showing that more than 25% of current exports were CCN-51. A colleague that I reached out to who works for a firm that exports large quantities of cocoa from Ecuador provided figures from INIAP that about 40% of what is currently produced in Ecuador is CCN-51, another 40% is Nacional, about 10% are Trinitarios, and the last 10% is other hybrids.

On p34, Bernardini fails to mention that a significant portion of the cocoa crop grown in Peru (and exported) is CCN-51.

Made up Terms (p34)

In his response to Part 1 of this review, Bernardini disagrees with me about the use of the terms Sanchez and Hispaniola with respect to so-called “varieties” of cacao grown in the Dominican Republic.

A quick survey on the topic with more than a dozen colleagues at the Salon du Chocolat in Paris last October and during the recent Fine Chocolate Industry Association Winter meeting suggests that he is alone in this belief.

On p27 Bernardini lays out the four main varieties. By using the word variety in his description of Sanchez and Hispaniola (and calling Hispaniola prestigious), Bernardini suggests to an unaware reader that Sanchez and Hispaniola can be used the same way as Criollo and Forastero, which is clearly not the case.

In his response he doubles down on his assertion.  Bluster does not confirm the truth of something.

Idiosyncratic Translations

Why should readers be asked to parse sentences like, “On the other hand it looks after reduction of the still retained moisture and escape of undesirable flavors”(p49)?

If this were the only instance, it could be seen as a charming artifact. But there are way too many lazy translations and they quickly cross the line into being annoyingly confusing.

Questions about the quality of the translation are at the heart of one of my main criticisms of TRS. Bernardini mentions that he hired a translator. But just because he hired a translator does not mean he hired a translator whose background and skills were up to the challenge of a book like TRS. Was the translator a subject-matter expert on chocolate? Based on my less–than–superficial reading of the book I have to conclude, no.

The Concept of the Book (p17)

In his reply to the Part 1 of this review, Bernardini states:

“Sorry, I don’t think that there is any really important company overlooked. Give me a sample, please.”

Well yes, actually, there is one that jumps out very quickly: Felchlin .

Bernardini does give himself the out on this one (and points it out in his response to me). On p17, he explicitly states, “Only companies which are present in retail with their own brand are considered in this book.”

Does he mean present in retail at the time the book was published? Or at any point, ever?

Rules are meant to be broken, and Bernardini breaks this one on p281 with the inclusion of Chocovic (four pods). While Chocovic used to produce retail–branded products, they were purchased by Barry–Callebaut several years ago and no longer make chocolate bars for retail sale, a fact that Bernardini laments while including the ratings for products that can no longer be purchased. Why is Chocovic included?

He overlooks this rule even earlier, in the review of A Xoco by Anthon Berg (p144) in one of the single most confusing entries in the book—and it’s just the second entry!

A Xoco is listed as a partial bean-to-bar brand in the processing stage (also using couverture). Yet in the company portrait, he says that neither chocolates nor confectionery have been produced since 2014 .

“Even if I regard drageés as confectionery, as neither chocolate nor traditional confectionery is offered, I can no longer consider the brand in my book.”

He then goes on to list the reviews—from the first edition!—for six bars and three confectionery collections that are no longer available . A whole page is spent that could be put to better use on another brand whose products you can actually buy.

He overlooks this rule again on p405: Gnosis Chocolate has been out of active production since December 2014. (I had conversations about this with founder Vanessa Barg in December 2014 and in November 2015 here in NYC).  There may be others.

“Quite assuredly, one will miss the one or the other brand in the book,” followed later on in the section by, “I had to draw a line in the case of 550 brands.”

We can wonder about that number and the selection of the brands and products, and it’s Georg’s book as he’s the author and the publisher, so he makes the rules. But we should recognize that the self–imposed limit is a limitation of the print format itself, nothing more, and the author argues against hIs own claim of being comprehensive (on the back cover).

“Every brand included in my book is portrayed—depending on how intensely it influences the market, in more or less detail. Brands of particularly good or bad products receive more attention independent of their size and significance for the chocolate market.”

In Part 1 of this review, I pointed out that Ecuadorian chocolate marketing company Hoja Verde (four pods, private label, made by Ecuatoriana, a large private–label producer in Ecuador) received four full pages of editorial whereas much more highly regarded companies—including Valrhona, Bonnat, Cluizel and Pralus to name just four—received half the love. I questioned the reason why .

I have mentioned this curious fact to many professionals in a position to know and the reaction I invariably got was, “Hoja Verde who ?”

Which returns us to the question of the selection criterion about “intensely influencing the market.” Hoja Verde influences the market intensely just how, precisely? Their products are middling—neither very good nor very bad—and it gets a four-pod rating. So, why so much love? It’s a reasonable question to ask.

I wondered if there could be any connection with the fact that Bernardini consulted to Hoja Verde. I am not offering this up as proof, just asking the question. It’s a reasonable question for a reviewer to ask.

Bernardini may say that he published guest reviewer Mark Christian's reviews unedited but that explanation falls flat given how concerned he is with the available space. He could easily have asked Mark to edit them. He asks us to  trust him, there is no conflict of interest, but I have no way of confirming that. I am supposed to trust Georg and no one else ? Or the evidence of my own senses or experience as a published author? Why? On what evidence given how poorly much of the rest of the book was edited and fact checked?

“There will always be exceptions, and I cannot and do not wish to subject myself to a rigid rule [emphasis added].”

But, for The Reference Standard (and maybe the last edition its author will publish), don’t readers who are asked to depend upon the information being comprehensive and reliable deserve of the author a rigor in the selection criteria used for inclusion?

Isn’t it his job to communicate to readers clearly what the criteria behind his selections are?

The above statement illuminates why, in the author’s own words, I think TRS is an ambitious compendium, and not a good reference standard.

But in the end, it’s Bernardini’s book — his playground, his rules, and my lack of understanding about which companies were chosen and why is my concern, not his.

What I am doing is pointing out inconsistencies and questioning them, and considering whether these inconsistencies contribute to, or detract from, TRS’s claim to being the reference standard.

My opinion is that these inconsistencies result in a deeply flawed book. It cannot be taken at face value as being either comprehensive or accurate. It is a compendium that did take a lot of work, but some very important work was left undone.

Reviews and Ratings (pp142-837)

I have no intent to do an entry–by–entry fact checking of the reviews. That is an editorial task that requires many hundreds of hours of work that, quite frankly, Bernardini needs to hire editors and fact checkers to do. What I can do is point out a few “facts” that weren’t vetted properly. These may seem small, but they make my point that TRS was lazily edited and fact checked. A closer read will probably reveal hundreds of these errors.

Bernardini does mention in his response to Part 1 of this review two late changes that were caught before going to press. But catching two instances in no way proves that all of the information is up-to-date.

A Few Out of Date Facts That Were Not Caught

As has already been pointed out, Gnosis (p405) is no longer in production. Nor are A Xoco by Anton Berg and Chocovic.

Scharffen Berger no longer manufactures product in Berkeley, CA.  In 2009, operations remaining in the Bay area after the 2005 sale were closed down and all manufacturing was taking place in Illinois.

TCHO no longer manufactures product in San Francisco.  TCHO also purchased equipment from the Berkeley factory when Scharffen Berger closed down and moved, an interesting part of their origin story.

Stale Entries

The author makes a great deal of the number of brands and products reviewed. As he should – the book is a mammoth undertaking. But, again, is that labor everything it seems?

A close look reveals that not all of the products included in this edition were reviewed for this edition. Many were reviewed for the first edition. Anything not specifically tasted for this edition lacks tasting notes (pages!), and are thus incomplete and stale.

That would be okay (maybe) if there were just a few. But, perusing alphabetically from the beginning, the list includes:

A Xoco by Anthon Berg; Amatller; Amrani; Australian Homemade; Beschle; Bioart (partial); Bovetti; Butler’s; Cacaoyere; Café-Tasse; Charbonnel et Walker; Chococo; Chocolate Orgániko; Chocolove; Chocovic; and Coco Bruni. Sixteen companies whose reviews are implicitly labeled as stale (IMO) in the first three letters of the alphabet.

I did not have the patience to count through the entire 550 reviews, but a casual extrapolation suggests that there may be 100 or more entries— or 20% or more of the total —whose reviews and/or tasting notes were not updated for this edition.

This again speaks volumes for my thinking of the book as a compendium and not as the reference standard .

In his response to Part 1, Bernardini says, “

Again an error, Clay. Some batches are published (example: Brazen p227). … But who cares which batch was tasted? The reader? What the hell you think is usefull [sic] to him to know that I tasted 6, or 8, or 10 months ago Batch #40, Bar 32 of 44 from Brazen Bar Dominican Republic 70%??? … How many pages would I have to add if I note all the batches?”

Seriously? Let me unpack this for you:

Pointing out one instance I did not see and claiming that this proves his entire point is not proof.

If Bernardini thinks that the batch information is not useful, then why include it in any instance in the first case? ( I do agree that listing bar number figures is pretentious in most cases.)

Wines are vintaged because we know that they vary from harvest to harvest. Even mildly aware wine drinkers do not expect the 2010 vintage to taste the same as the 2011.  Batch numbering is important because (especially in the case of small craft producers), the chocolate is very often not consistent from batch to batch. Everyone with a decent amount of experience tasting craft chocolate knows this. Many craft chocolate makers embrace this: It’s at the heart of my distinction between craft and industrial chocolate.

So, if someone reads a review of a small-batch craft chocolate maker based on a review, knowing the batch number signals to them that if they buy a bar from a different batch it might not taste exactly the same—or be even close.

For Georg not to understand this basic fact of chocolate demonstrates to me a pretty fundamental lack of understanding. And not to even recognize the validity of my raising the issue . Seriously, Georg? Really?

I have recent personal experience with this issue. I was in a specialty chocolate store in NYC and purchased 10 bars each of three chocolates as a part of a horizontal flight from the same origin. I was not paying attention and it did not occur to me that the store would stock a shelf with bars from different batches at the same time. When I got to the tasting (in a foreign country) I realized that I had bars from two different batches of “the same” chocolate. However, they tasted nothing alike: they were not even recognizably the same chocolate. If I had purchased one of the chocolates based on Bernardini’s reviews (not knowing the batch number), I might have been bitterly (literally) disappointed in what I bought. Thank goodness I know enough to understand why, but many consumers would not. BTW, a ll three chocolates were produced by companies that the author gives decent to outstanding ratings to in TRS and that have won awards in international competitions.

On a side note, this is a fundamental problem I have with virtually all bar ratings that get published. I mention this not in defense of Georg, but in a book that calls itself the reference standard I expected a less cavalier approach to the topic.

As I pointed out earlier, the limitations of length are an inherent limitation of the print format. To suggest that a reason not to include potentially valuable information is because of a lack of space undermines claims of being comprehensive and again begs the question of why many companies were included at all.

Ironically, if Georg had done a good job of editing the English translations from the German and fixed the awkward construction of many sentences it would have eliminated a lot of redundancy—freeing up more than enough space to include batch information in the ratings of bean-to-bar companies. On the other hand , using a construction in the Brazen review Bernardini offers up of Dark: Dominican Republic 70% (B#37) would not have changed the length of the book by a single page.

Lazy Editing in the Reviews

Some city names are not spelled in English (e.g., Belgrad [which is German, where Beograd, which is Serbian, and in English it would Belgrade]), where others are (Lucerne [Luzern], Cologne [Köln]). Consistency is important—either all English, or all in German, or all in the local tongue, but not a mix. This is what good editors do. What the publisher fails to want to understand is that these kinds of mistakes undermine the credibility of everything else in the book—for educated readers.

Some terms are just plain not translated (e.g., preiskategorie in the entry on Damian Alsop).

Apagey chocolate uses Barbarian [sic] sugar.

At least one entry lists a website URL and a Facebook URL. Why only one? Why not every company that has a Facebook page? Space? That's been addressed already.

The Rating System Used in TRS

Those of you who have been following my work on chocophile.com starting all the way back in 2001, on TheChocolateLife.com, and/or have read Discover Chocolate know that I am not a fan of numerical rating systems for chocolate.

Why is that?

In part it’s because I am partial to systems that make sense emotionally, that embrace the idea of “liking” a chocolate for reasons beyond a simple sensory evaluation. Such as, “Is this chocolate a good value for the price?” or “How fiercely do I like this chocolate?” These are concepts that are not conveyed by conventional numerical ratings.

Another part of the reason is that I struggled endlessly with where to establish the relationships between the different sensory characteristics that come into play. I asked myself (this was beginning back in 1998) “What percentage of the final score should flavor be? 25%? 20%? 40%? Aroma? Texture? Or technical aspects such as snap (hearing) and sheen (sight) which speak to how well a bar is made and attest to the skill of the maker in different ways?”

There is no standard around these weightings, making comparing ratings that assign different weights to variables or that have a different number of variables pretty much useless because an 87 in one rating is very likely calculated differently from an 87 in another rating system.

But a main part of the reason is, to this day, nearly 20 years on, I that I still ask myself: " What is the meaningful difference between an 87 rating and an 89 rating?"

What is the difference in perception created in a reader’s mind between an 89 rating and a 91 rating?  Even though the 89 and the 91 are the same distance apart as the 87~89 rating?”

Why is it important? A 91 often leads to the mistaken impression that it is much better than 89 just because the leading digit is a 9 and not an 8. It's the psychological difference between getting a B+ and an A-.  I have no good answers to these questions—and I suspect that they are not answerable in any satisfactory way.

Bernardini takes the inherent dysfunctionality of numerical rating systems as I point out to an illogical extreme: not only does he ask us to believe that there is a meaningful difference between fractional points (e.g., an 81.00 rating and an 81.10 rating) but that his palate is discriminating enough to reliably tell the difference .

He also asks us to believe that he can reliably distinguish the difference down to hundredths of a point! It is just not reasonable to ask anyone to accept that there is a meaningful difference between two chocolates rated 62.75 and 62.63 or that Georg has a palate that can reliably and repeatedly operate at that level of discrimination. (Examples of hundredth–point differences in ratings can be seen in the entry for Richart on p676.)

I am confident that this is actually an artifact of the math used to calculate the ratings, and not a reflection of any preternatural tasting ability on Bernardini’s part.

But it is precisely this very precision that implies a credibility that cannot exist except in the minds of unsophisticated and unquestioning readers.

Summary of Part 2

In his response to my review, Norbert Mergen-Metz effusively praises TRS, calling it a “master piece” [sic]. A dictionary definition of masterpiece is, “a work of outstanding artistry, skill, or workmanship.” There is an enormous amount of work involved in compiling, writing, editing, and publishing a book like TRS. But the amount of effort involved is not listed as a criterion for attaining masterpiece status.

There is no question, whatsoever, that Chocolate – The Reference Standard (“TRS”) represents an enormous amount of work. It is a not-close-to-being-comprehensive-compendium of many things chocolate and attempts to treat the subject holistically (literally from tree to mouth) at a scope that no other book I know of has done. For that effort the author needs to be acknowledged, and I did and do. But again, I caution that it is important not to confuse quantity with quality.

I have been approached privately by several people who have chastised me for the tone I used in my review and to say that the reviews in TRS corresponded with their own tastes and so they found them useful. But I am not concerned with TRS just for its reviews, and I acknowledge that the reviews serve a purpose and are a useful guide for some readers. O thers who have been in touch with me find the reviews less useful. YMMV – your mileage may vary.

Georg suggests that companies who feel slighted by his reviews should look at his comments as an opportunity to improve going forward (as if they should change their practices to meet Georg's standards). Georg should feel the same way about many of my comments—as constructive criticisms to address for future editions of TRS.

Except there probably won’t be any future editions. So, what he has published, warts and all, has the potential to become the reference standard purely by default .

And therein lies the danger. There is an awful lot of information in TRS that is inconsistent, incomplete, and just plain wrong. As the reference standard, these inconsistencies, partial truths, innuendo, and errors have the potential to become the truth as they are repeated on the Internet by people who don't know any better.

And that would be a very sad thing for chocolate.

I stand by my basic conclusion that the finished work product does reflect considerable laziness: laziness in editing the translation, laziness in basic fact checking, and laziness in not being internally consistent in the application of its own guidelines.

Stay tuned for Part 3 !

[Feb 2: Edited for typos, grammar, and clarity.]

Daniel -

All good suggestions.

Ian -

It sounds like what you are trying to do is to make a lavender-scented chocolate using flowers. By adding scented cocoa butter to nibs and sugar you need to make the lavender flavor in the butter very strong to be evident in the chocolate. You are using fresh lavendar, right?

The way the Italians did this traditionally (albeit with fresh jasmine) was to aromatize the beans. They put layers of beans in boxes alternated with layers of jasmine and the fat in the beans absorbed the aroma of the flowers, which were discarded before the beans were processed further.

Try an alcohol extraction of the lavendar using everclear. This will pull out different aromatic compounds than the fat extraction. Evaporate off the alcohol by pouring it over some nibs and put in a very low oven. You can still use the fat extraction to deliver a fuller flavor.

You could pre-process some of the sugar in a food processor with some of the lavendar flowers. This would extract the aromas in the sugar and the particles would be further refined in the grinder/melangeur. Might not be perfect, but the little hits of lavendar from the larger particles could be an asset, not a defect.

Sebastian - Do you have any experience or opinions using permethrin spray to control and combat cocoa moths? It's available commercially in quantity, not too expensive, and appears to be harmless to humans and lethal to moths and larvae of not only cocoa moths but other insect pests.

Disclaimers

I purchased my copy of the English–language version of  Chocolate – The Reference Standard at full face value at the Origin Chocolate event in Amsterdam in October 2015. It was not given to me as a review copy. In reading, I noticed a favorable mention of TheChocolateLife (p875). This did not influence my re view. On a side note, it was the marketing department of my publisher, Gotham Books, who decided to include the phrase “… The Ultimate Guide …” as the tag line on the cover of my book, Discover Chocolate, over my objections. Sadly, to me, “ultimate” was prophetic in one respect – it is still the only book of its kind.

Chocolate - The Reference Standard

Germany [Bonn]
http://www.thechocolatetester.com/home/

Overall Rating:  Six pods (out of six) for sheer scale. One pod (out of six) for objectivity and reliability of information.
Processing stage : Unedited or lightly edited translation (Unconfirmed).
Price category: €€€€€

As Rick and Mike Mast  have been so publicly reminded over the past few weeks, if you are going to make superlative claims for your product, you had better deliver on those claims. This is a lesson that Georg Bernardini, author of Chocolate – The Reference Standard (“TRS”), may well be forced to learn.

By deliberately renaming this edition of his book The Reference Standard (p14) , the task the author set himself was not just to create a broad survey of available chocolate (4,400 individual products from 550 brands from 70 countries, according to the author: I did not count them) but also to ensure that the information presented as fact is, in fact, factually accurate. In other words, to create a volume that actually deserves to be held up as not just a reference standard, but as the reference standard.

With respect to the former task of creating a survey of currently available chocolate, Bernardini set himself an almost impossible task because no matter how comprehensive the attempt is or was, there were and are bound to be many companies overlooked or given short shrift, and much of the information, especially about the products and companies would be out of date by the time the book went to press.

Nonetheless, it is the scope and expansiveness where TRS is the most satisfying. Although I have been involved in chocolate professionally since 1998 and have been writing about and reviewing and rating chocolate since 2001, there are companies in this book I had never heard of before. Not “known about but never tried,” but genuinely never heard of before. The little trill of discovery when running across a new name is cool—it some rate an entry in my travel journal as a place to visit when I can.

The information about the companies is presented in a reasonably consistent and generally approachable and understandable fashion. It’s possible to skim the book looking for a known favorite brand (entries are arranged alphabetically and there is a listing up front) or to scan the book for companies that are rated highly (five or six pods) or that Bernardini is less sanguine about (none or one pods).

It’s this grazing aspect of consuming the book that makes it fun but the fact that there is a whole lot to consume lends an un warranted perception of value to the book; it is when you stop grazing and actually start examining TRS closely that some very real flaws reveal themselves.

Flaws, that, in my opinion, make the book dangerous and its author not someone to trust, let alone laud.

To be fair, it’s hard for me to know from where many of the flaws stem, because I am not fluent in German. But when you start reading the book it’s quickly clear that after the book was translated there was none, or only very little, editing or fact checking done by anyone whose first language is English or who is knowledgeable about cocoa and chocolate.

TRS is littered with grammatical and typographical errors, and the awkwardly convoluted structure of many sentences clearly comes from TRS’s German–language origin. The first times I came across these, they struck me as amusing. Very quickly, however, the quirky sentences became annoying because they make trying to understand what the author actually wants to convey much more difficult and many times impossible.

More troubling, to my mind, is that there are some things that are presented as fact that are ambiguous or just plain wrong. And it’s here that my lack of understanding of German (and my unwillingness to fork over another €50 plus shipping for a German-language version of TRS) comes into play.

I just don’t know how many of the errors are in the German-language original or if they crept in during the translation. The translation may be the source of some specific jarring language choices that are not in the original. Two examples, gladly forego on the cover and the overuse (to my mind) of the words tolerate and suspect . (TRS is offered up as a reference standard, so nothing should be suspect. It should be verified and fact-checked as true, or it doesn’t warrant inclusion.)

I suspect (this is a review and I am not claiming it to be a definitive reference and I am going to use the word to highlight several points) that the source of some of the factual errors in TRS are a result of the translation, but I don’t know that this is the case in any specific instance.

For example, in the section on cocoa sourcing and the Dominican Republic (p34), the text reads, “The two most frequently cultivated varieties are Sanchez and the prestigious cocoa bean Hispaniola.” Actually , Sanchez and Hispaniola are not varieties of cacao, they are terms that refer to fermented beans (Hispaniola, from the name of the island), or the lack of fermentation (Sanchez, from the name of a port). The question is, is the source of the error the translation (I think not in this case), or is it actually a fundamental misunderstanding on the author’s part? If the latter, then that calls into question everything the author claims as fact: What does he really know? What can we trust? What can we take at face value as being true?

I don’t know.

And in this specific instance I am consciously committing the same act that lies at the heart of my main criticism of TRS and the one that undermines its credibility and any claims it has to authority: I am being lazy . I could easily reach out and find someone who owns the German-language original and ask. But I did not, in order to make the very particular important point that there are many places in TRS where Bernardini has been lazy, and dangerously so because of claiming the mantle of reference standard.

An egregious example of this laziness is in the entry for Perú’s Cacaosuyo (pp 239-40). Bernardini opines that the processing stage Cacaosuyo occupies is “Bean-to-Bar (Unconfirmed)”.

The text reads, “It is not quite sure whether the company actually manufactures the chocolate itself. Too often it is rumored that they are private label products … It is hard to believe that the company controls all steps from cultivation to manufacture … For this, the communication and transparency are too meager for me [emphasis added].” And in the Summary, “A little more communication and transparency on their website because, apart from a logo, there is nothing and it would do the credibility of the company good.”

The only way I can read this is that Bernardini relied on reports of rumors and a lack of information on their website to punish the company by questioning its integrity with the Unconfirmed label. Apparently, Georg did not actually take the time or make the effort necessary to find out for sure one way or another: he perpetuates rumors with innuendo. To what purpose? What does this say about Bernardini’s integrity?

Note : I have personally visited the Cacaosuyo factory in Lima and have seen the process from the bean to finished bars. I have not visited the farms, but have spoken extensively with Samir Giha about them.

The entry for Pacari is similarly lazy and dismissive, but here’s where the deep waters of editorial decision-making become murky when a competitive entry is examined closely.

Quite rightly, Bernardini recuses himself from writing the review for Ecuadorian chocolate company and Pacari competitor, Hoja Verde (four pods, pp440-43), because he points out that he consulted to them in 2013.

Notwithstanding this distancing, Hoja Verde, which does not make its own chocolate, is given four pages of editorial where Pacari, a much more highly-respected and better-known brand internationally, a brand that consistently places highly in international competitions where Hoja Verde does not, rates the same four pods but just two pages (pp641-42) and is given the reputation–questioning (Unconfirmed) status label.

Even Valrhona , arguably one of the five most important companies in the book, rates only two pages plus a paragraph (pp792-95). Bonnat gets two pages (pp220-22) and six pods; Cluizel, a shade over two pages (pp289-291) and the same four-pod rating as Hoja Verde; Domori two-and-a-half pages (pp339-241) and six pods. Utterly bafflingly, Felchlin rates zero pages though is mentioned in passing as one of the best, if not the best, private-label manufacturers in the world!

Given these direct observations of what did and not make the cut, I can’t help but wonder how much Bernardini’s involvement with Hoja Verde did actually factor into the hard–to–believe editorial decision to give them far more love than many far more important and deserving companies. As the publisher, responsibility lies solely in Bernardini’s hands.

Favoring Hoja Verde with so much unquestioning editorial makes no sense in a book that purports to be The Reference Standard with a focus on “the best … in the world.”

Note :  I have not personally visited Pacari’s operations in Ecuador. However, I have contacted people who have visited Pacari over the course of years, who know what to look for, and whose integrity is above reproach.

There are other examples of this laziness, or suspected undisclosed bias, throughout the book. Patrice Chapon (for example) is also punished with the (Unconfirmed) label, and reading the lazy and superficial explanation leaves me wondering if there is something personal behind the review.

For me, this consistent pattern (barely–known companies being given a lot of coverage and well–known companies being overlooked entirely or having comparatively few products reviewed and rated) who are clearly not “the best in the world … [that] we would gladly forego”  is a key factor that undermines both the credibility and authority of the book as there are no clear guidelines about what was included—other, I suspect, than what Bernardini could get his hands on to review.

And It makes me wonder if there are any other instances where editorial coverage was influenced for personal or business reasons. Was, for example, the Maison Boissier review influenced in any way by the full page ad for The Salon du Chocolat?

Why I Say TRS is a Dangerous Book

TRS is self–published, and hiring experienced and knowledgeable editors and fact checkers to review a book of this breadth would be a very expensive proposition. However, for a book that calls itself The Reference Standard , it is precisely at this point where the author/publisher has undermined his own efforts, let down his readers, and created a situation ripe for dangerous exploitation.

As was revealed during the unfolding Mast Brothers story, the people reporting the story took the claims the Brothers made at face value and, at least apparently, did no fact checking. This meant that no one methodically looked at and publicly challenged their claims to have (for example) created/invented/innovated the entire production pathway they used until the series of articles on DallasFood.org. The Brothers (deliberately and cynically in my mind) took advantage of the lack of knowledge of media covering them and the consuming public, and coupled with some strategic endorsements from chefs who probably should have known better, were able to advance their claim that they made the best chocolate in the world.

It is exactly this confluence—ignorance (of chocolate), gullibility (it’s such a huge book it must be valuable/good), and lack of critical questioning—that lulled media and organizations and individual that should have known better into endorsing (explicitly or by implcation) both The Reference Standard and Georg Bernardini.

This uncritical institutional acceptance only serves to give weight to the claim that the book is, in fact, deserving of its self-attribution as The Reference Standard . There are ideas and errors of omission and commission in TRS that will be perpetuated for years, and reputations called into question because Bernardini was either lazy or cheap in not editing the translation or fact checking very important facts, and possibly favoring at least one company over all others.

Despite these flaws and many others, people are citing the book as a credible and authoritative source. The fact that TRS is a print publication does a great deal to imply the credibility that to my mind it does not deserve; the book was out of date before it went to press; any errors due to mistranslation or other reason cannot be corrected or discussed. If the information were online it would be far more usable (assuming the database was searchable), though far less valuable – to Bernardini’s reputation. A point that I believe is not lost on the author (who is also the publisher).

Summary

In the end, readers of Chocolate – The Reference Standard  should recognize that the ratings and reviews represent the opinions of a single person (with the exception of the troubling Hoja Verde entry). They are not gospel, the truth. They represent the opinion of one person. Your experiences tasting these chocolates will differ.

In part this is because not all products mentioned in this edition were rated specifically for this edition and may not represent the current state of the product, which may have been reformulated since being reviewed in a prior edition. Furthermore, among craft bean–to–bar chocolate makers especially, great pride is taken in the fact that their chocolate is not meant to be the same from batch to batch. Nowhere in any of the reviews of bean–to–bar chocolate I read did I notice any indication of which batch was tasted, even when that information would have been available. Thus, it is virtually guaranteed that whatever you taste it will not be what Bernardini tasted, reviewed, and rated.

And where is the reference standard value in that?

While we can marvel at the effort required to compile such a collection of entries in a very short period of time, it is also that effort in such a short time frame that undermines their reliability. We should not blind ourselves into believing that the quantity of effort involved is in any way equivalent to any qualitative aspect of that effort. I have pointed out just a few of those aspects above. There are many, many , more.

At best, TRS is a survey of a sampling of products from over 500 brands that Bernardini could get his hands on, and not, as the cover proclaims “The best chocolates and pralines in the world; What’s behind it [sic] all and what we would gladly forego”. If these are the best chocolates and pralines in the world – why would we gladly forego any of them? So, it’s important to recognize that TRS is a personal, idiosyncratic survey and sampling, one that because of its vastness is rife with errors of omission and commission, filled with factual errors, and that would be far more usable and useful if it were not distributed on dead trees.

Conclusion

I would like, in any comments, for members to focus on fact checking the book, not engaging in nit–picking the ratings and reviews of specific products, which, as I mention above, are completely personal. But – if there are factual errors in the book, I think everyone who owns a copy or refers to TRS as a reference standard should know about them. I can’t know everything and I don’t have the time to go through the book with a fine–toothed comb looking for them.

Read Part 2 of my review.

Listing image by @vera-hofman as posted on TheChocolateLife.

There is no particular reason to heat up cream in the Cadix and transfer it to a Stephan unless the Stephan has a vacuum attachment and the Cadix does not. If that's the case, then it may simply be a volume issue - the Cadix is a large heated vessel. You can get Cadix Pros with vacuum attachments.

As Sebastian points out, heating the cream to a certain point can help with shelf life and a high shear mixer is good for creating stable emulsions.

If your volume requirements are much smaller and you don't need the vacuum, something like a HotMix Gastro Pro might be worth looking at.

@dallas - commonly used on enrober (take-off) belts, no; they are most often found on cooling tunnel belts.

The take-off belt on most enrobers is too short for the chocolate to completely set, that's why paper or parchment is used to cover the belt and to make it easy to transfer the product to some other location to finish cooling. The textured belts (often with a logo) are custom-order items.

It's a product from CadixPro in France. Similar to a Stephan or RoboQbo. http://www.cadixpro.com/portfolios/sugar-cooker/?lang=en

In the simple view, Barry-Callebaut is a "bean-to-bar" maker because they do make chocolate bars. Huge ones that are mostly only used by remelters. Small from-the-bean makers who wish to differentiate themselves from industrial producers would have a problem calling B-C a "bean-to-bar" chocolate maker though they are in a literal sense. They make chocolate from cocoa beans and they mold chocolate bars.

From-the-bean clearly differentiates a remelter, who would be properly labeled "from-couverture."

By throwing the retail bar in their own label requirement in, you can say that a "bean-to-bar" chocolate maker starts with cocoa beans and ends up producing finished bars for retail sale. This disqualifies Barry-Callebaut (and, unfortunately Felchlin as well - which produces very fine bars for many companies under private-label contracts), but it means that companies like Guittard, Valrhona, and Cluizel, and many others who are also industrial-scale producers can be considered bean-to-bar.

The question is ... where do you want to draw the line? Purists will say that a "true" bean-to-bar chocolate maker must own all of the equipment and do all of the work in-house. I am less demanding because I can see a lot of value of roasting and liquor-making at origin. But to be considered bean-to-bar the chocolate maker would have to personally supervise every single roast and grind. If they just phoned it in, then they'd from a from-liquor chocolate maker.

Some companies, like Pralus and Scharffen Berger in the early days, only produce some of their bars. When I visited the Pralus factory I could only see wrapping machines for their 100gr bars, not the smaller tasting squares. Those were (at the time, I don't know the situation now), wrapped by someone else with special machinery.

Answers to questions about where to draw lines become even fuzzier if we want to start talking about the definitions of craft, or artisan, or micro-batch. In the end I think that these are nuances that are important to only small, but passionate, segments of the producer and consumer markets.

[Edited on Jan 5, 2016 for typos and grammar.]

By Simran Sethi and Clay Gordon

The Mast Brothers were in the right place at the right time with the right product and the right image. Clay made  this observation  back in 2012; they captured the cultural zeitgeist perfectly, guiding and riding the wave they expertly caught. But change any one aspect of that picture and the Bros may have had less success. Take away Williamsburg, the flannel and, yes, the beards they claim were  grown on a bet  about the amount of chocolate they sold. What you have is chocolate built upon the work of others, heralded by journalists and cool hunters hungry to rave about a hot new thing—some of whom are now indulging in gleeful  schadenfreude  about the takedown.

There are many reasons to be disappointed in the Mast Brothers. They were willfully dishonest about which, if any, of their chocolates were bean-to-bar (as chronicled in exquisite detail by Scott Craig in his  four-part series ). This is an affront to any chocolate maker dedicated to the painstaking process of sourcing beans from various origins, paying for shipping (a much greater expense for smaller makers who do not have economies of scale) and then working through the laborious process of transforming the seeds of the cacao pod into chocolate.

It takes about 400 beans, or approximately 11 pods, to make 1 pound of chocolate. The seeds we call beans are roasted, cracked to release the cocoa nib, and then shelled (winnowed) to remove the papery husk. Next, the nibs are ground into a paste known as cocoa liquor, which can be directly processed into chocolate or pressed to separate the fat (cocoa butter) from the non-fat solids. The resulting “presscake” is processed into cocoa powder which can later be recombined with cocoa butter to make chocolate or with vegetable oils, like palm oil, rendering a much lower-quality product (that cannot be called chocolate in the U.S.)

The cocoa bean contains between 47 and 54 percent fat—a stable fat with a long shelf life, one that’s solid at room temperature but starts to melt in our mouths or under our touch. Its stability means it’s coveted not only in chocolate but also as an ingredient in medical and beauty products. The butter can have a mild to very present cocoa flavor, depending on the way it’s processed, and is the only part of the bean used to make “white” chocolate.

Butter separated out from the powder is often added back during the chocolate-making process because fat—glorious fat—makes the chocolate creamier and, as the carrier of cocoa’s aroma compounds, more flavorful. (Interestingly, some craft chocolate makers do not add any cocoa butter to their recipes, thinking that added butter detracts from the “true nature” of the cocoa bean.)

The resulting mass (with any added ingredients—sugar and, perhaps, vanilla) is now the texture of coarse mud. As it’s refined, the size of the cocoa and sugar particles get progressively smaller. Conching (most often a separate step from refining) improves texture and tames harshness by evaporating off unwanted volatiles and fostering chemical reactions that can create delicate aromas and flavors.

A chocolate with particles over 30 microns will register on our tongues as gritty. Through refining, a cocoa liquor that starts out with particles in the 100 to 150 micron range is, ideally, reduced down to between 18 and 22, resulting in a smooth texture. That sensation influences the entire experience of flavor. “The whole process of making chocolate is to break down particle size and expose flavor,” explains Trinidadian chocolate maker Matthew Escalante. “Every step of processing changes the possibilities.”

The next step is tempering: forcing the fat crystals in the cocoa butter to line up in a specific shape through a controlled combination of heating and cooling. This increases the chocolate’s sheen and intensifies its snap. Tempering is tricky; if the chocolate isn’t tempered properly, it has a greater chance of getting fat bloom, the whitish coating or splotches caused by cocoa butter separating out of the chocolate. After tempering comes the sublime moment when the tempered liquid chocolate is poured into molds, cooled and—finally—packaged for consumption.

You can see why chocolate makers would be frustrated by anyone melting down pre-made  couverture chocolate and claiming they’d had a hand in the entire process. This work is arduous.  Through unclear labeling, Mast Brothers allowed consumers to assume all bars were made from beans they had sourced. They were not; they fudged the truth. 

By 2006, about the time the Bros turned their attention to chocolate, the real pioneers of the American craft chocolate movement— Scharffen Berger  first of all; then John Nanci’s  Chocolate Alchemy  and his work with  Santha  and  Crankandstein.net  to solidify the first end-to-end micro-batch craft chocolate production pathway; and chocolate makers including  Steve DeVries ,  Art Pollard ,  Shawn Askinosie ,  Alan McClure , et al.; and even Clay’s own chocophile(.)com ( now TheChocolateLife.com )—had done all the necessary preparatory groundwork. Work that had, in turn, been built on the efforts of  Valrhona ,  Cluizel ,  Bonnat ,  Pralus ,  Bernachon ,  Domori ,  El Rey , and  Vintage Plantations  (the list stretches on), plus the community around Martin Christy’s  seventypercent.com .

In essence, the required foundation had already been laid for them, the path already paved, and the market proven—chocolate could pretty much be made by anyone. But chocolate is a product almost everyone loves, but few actually know anything about when it comes to sourcing or production. A product with none of the universally accepted sensory evaluation criteria that has been long established in wine and coffee.

Was it done out of wondrous fascination for the purity of what they made in the cloistered atmosphere of the apartment where they first started experimenting? Or was it with an awareness of a unique market opportunity? Probably a combination of the two:

• right place;
• right time;
• right product—with no established local competition; and
• right image—where the Masts really set themselves apart.

The beards were distinctive; they solidified the Iowa-farmboy-cum-Amish/Hipster personae that the brand gelled around. The tattoos didn’t hurt, nor did the puzzling (at least for Iowa farm boys) nautical references.

And then there was the wrapping on the chocolate. The paper gave a tangible aura of quality, gravitas, even  value  to the chocolate—a characteristic that their early attempts at chocolate making did not possess. (And, many would argue, the product still lacks.) There was and is something about opening up the wrapper of a Mast Brothers chocolate bar that lends credence to what’s inside, that says, “Take notice of me. I am important!”

Was the packaging any better (or more authentic?) than what Shawn Askinosie was doing at the time? Shawn was putting pictures of actual farmers on his labels, naming people and identifying the real communities from which his cacao was sourced, and closing the wrappers with threads from the jute bags in which the beans had been transported from origin to Missouri. His wrappers were (and are) physical artifacts—a tangible bridge between the farmer, the end product and the consumer.

We may never understand how and why the Masts thought it necessary to start gilding the lily—or perhaps, more appropriately, the paper—but at some point they did. The most cursory examination of the chronology shows that the equipment and methods needed to make craft chocolate from the bean had been created well before the brothers started experimenting in their apartment.

Did they invent the bean cracker they used? Nope. The barley mill for home beer makers they purchased from Crankandstein was modified at the request of John Nanci. Using a hair dryer to winnow? Also John Nanci. Using a Champion juicer as a pre-grinder? John Nanci again. Using Santhas as grinders? Guess who. The  CPS winnower  they bought? Not John Nanci, but the Masts had no hand in its design. The winnower  they claim to have built ? A modified Brooklyn Cacao Vortex Winnower.

In short, almost every claim they have made about their roles in equipment innovation and processes of craft chocolate making are, to put it politely, embellishments. Or, to put it plainly, misappropriation. They were creating a myth and they spun it of whole cloth because, for one reason or another, no one called them out on it publicly. There was no little boy pointing out that the emperor was not wearing any clothes. Chocolate makers were whispering this to themselves, but not one journalist turned the whispers to shouts  until earlier this year .

As a result, the unknowing and unsuspecting public continued to grow mesmerized by gossamer tales woven of sheer fabrication, regardless of what their own intuition or taste buds told them. Mast Brothers were the “it boys.” Surely if the New York Times and renowned chefs, such as Thomas Keller, thought so, it must be true. Our own sensory experience—at least the one that culminated in our own mouths—could not be trusted.

Simran  (a relative newcomer to the world of chocolate who cared less about expert opinion than she perhaps should have) explored this in May of 2015, when she started to tease apart taste in her book  Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love :  “Cacao from Papua New Guinea is often dried on beds heated by diesel or wood, both of which can impart hammy or oily tastes to the beans because fats absorb odor. These are defects, the kinds of things most chocolate makers, particularly those concerned about flavor,  don’t  want because they mask aromas inherent in the beans. Yet one maker—who has gotten a lot of media attention and puts its chocolate in the most beautiful of wrappers—has decided to turn this defect into an attribute, repackaging the off-flavor as a novelty by highlighting the smokiness of the bar. Many craft makers who work closely with farmers on improving drying techniques and eradicating those off- flavors question if this is something we should celebrate—if, by buying into the smoke, it’s making it harder for producers who are trying to improve the taste of their beans. This is a question only we, the eaters, can answer, but it’s important to recognize we’re vulnerable to external influences, including hype and packaging.”

A  2008 study  by neuroscientist Hilke Plassmann and her colleagues reaffirms our vulnerability: We tend to enjoy identical products more when they’re priced higher or highlight positive “expectations of ... pleasantness.” This doesn’t just happen in our mouths and noses but also in our brains.

This isn’t to say we shouldn’t try a wide range of chocolates, but if we’re going to expend time and money and take in calories, we should know what our investment is supporting. We should try to understand where the flavors come from—and what good farming and processing practices taste like in order to understand  why  we love what we love.

We understand people wanted to believe the story that two brothers, toiling away in their Brooklyn apartment, had discovered something new and pure, something that never before existed. It’s part of why many were so willing to overlook and excuse the discrepancies and write them off to youthful frat boy hijinks, an aberration long in their ancient past.

The Masts now claim they were open about melting Valrhona as part of their early experimental years, before moving into their first workshop. Once they settled into their brick-walled storefront on North 3rd Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, their refrain became, “Trust us, 100% bean-to-bar.”

Trust us …  now .

If a company positions itself as an “authentic” “bean-to-bar” chocolate maker obsessed with integrity, purity and every little detail (from how the cocoa is sourced right through to the wrapping), then  any  bar produced that strayed from that storyline should have been clearly identified. That is very different from being “open” about re-melting only if and when asked. The vast majority of people who purchased products in the early days were not knowledgeable enough about production to make those inquiries. They accepted the statements made about the product at face value—statements that were not honestly represented on the labels of at least some of the products.

To rebuild trust with chocolate makers and consumers, the brothers need to document their trips to origin. They claim they source directly from the best farms in the world, yet the names of specific farms and details on varietals are conspicuously absent from their wallpapered labels, their website or any other source that can be found.

Yes, Venezuela is an origin, but if you were sourcing Chuao, or an Ocumare, or Cuyagua, Carenero, Sur del Lago, or a Guasare why wouldn’t that be featured prominently? Perú does produce some terrific cocoa, but if the Masts were using some of the best—say Cacao Gran Blanco from Piura or Marañon—why isn’t that information prominently featured? Craft chocolate makers mention specific origin and varietals whenever they can because it’s what sets them apart and helps consumers ascertain value. Where are the proud photos of the bearded brothers at origin, working with “their” farmers? Or, as they proudly proclaim, sailing said beans from origin? It’s economically unsustainable to sail a small cargo of beans from Papua New Guinea, Madagascar or even the Dominican Republic on a regular basis to Brooklyn. What is also out of the economic reach of most makers is what Rick Mast boasted about claiming they once paid ten times the market price for beans. If they actually paid that price at the farm gate, we would be truly impressed. But if a significant portion of that cost is tied up in transportation and other costs, then it’s far less impressive.

So, why do we care? We are not makers. We have no professional axe to grind.

Our motivation is simply to clear up misconceptions: The Masts dished it out, and most of us gobbled it up.

But through their assertions, Mast Brothers make it much harder for chocolate makers who do actual good works to flourish. And it makes it harder for us to do the work we want to do in supporting quality chocolate and makers with integrity.

Too much #mastsplaining.

Take Shawn Askinosie. He profit shares with his farmers. He has created self-sustaining school lunch programs in communities from which he buys cocoa.  Or Gianluca Franzoni of Domori, who works with the Franceschi family to preserve endangered strains of cacao in Venezuela. Volker Lehmann’s work with cacao silvestre in Bolivia and Marañon in Peru. Ingemann in Nicaragua. Graig Sams, Gregor Hargrove and company well before anyone else had their eyes directed toward Belize. Or the efforts of the  Cocoa Research Centre  in Trinidad,  CATIE  in Costa Rica or the hundreds of other conservationists and farmers working to conserve the very best varieties of cacao.

The Mast Brothers consciously and deliberately set themselves apart from the rest of the craft chocolate community. When asked by journalist Megan Giller about critics, Rick Mast glibly replied,  “We are a dangerous company because we are outsiders to the chocolate industry, never leaning on industry norms.” 

Given the meticulousness that has gone into crafting every other aspect of the brand, it’s hard not to conclude that the adoption of this position is just another aspect of the brand. As self-proclaimed dangerous outsiders, the company justifies operating under a different set of principles—and different measures of accountability—than other craft chocolate makers. Rather than replying to the press storm with openness and transparency, they have r esponded  by turning inward and closing their doors tighter shut. Their response reinforces that what the Bros may be remembered for is their branding—the beards and the paper—not their chocolate.

Simran  Sethi is the author of Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love — a book about the rich history—and uncertain future—of what we eat. Sethi is also a former visiting scholar at Trinidad’s Cocoa Research Centre housing the largest collection of cacao in the world. 

American Rotary is a good source for phase converters. You can call (or email) one of their techs with the sizes of your motors and other elements and they can size the converter you need. Also - you may be able to get away with a static converter if there is no cooling compressor.

So here's a question to consider after re-reading this and editing it for typos:

For me, the questions are about which parts of the process truly matter in the final product. Roasting? Check. Grinding, refining, and conching? Check.

Molding and putting it into wrappers/boxes? Maybe not so much. I agree that tempering is an important art to learn, but actually doing it myself when a contract manufacturer could do it better might be worth it.

This is what Scharffen Berger did for several years before they got bought to Hershey, at least for the small tasting squares. It made no economic sense for them to buy the (expensive) machines to wrap the squares so they shipped the chocolate across the country to NJ to a company who did that work for them. Did that make them any less of a "from-the-bean" or "bean-to-bar" chocolate maker?

I think not. What think you?

ab -

That's a very good question, and one that's being asked in a lot of quarters these days. The answer in the end is that I think everyone will be better off as a result of the scrutiny and improving customer trust.

Brad -

PLEASE do not put words into my mouth. What I am asking - as I have been asking consistently for years - is that you respect my desires about how to comport yourself on TheChocolateLife. We have had many private discussions on this topic.

You can make exactlly the points you want to make. But you don't have to bluster. You may not care what other people think of you, but I can tell you from personal experience that people will pay more attention to what you have to say if you aren't so confrontational.

That's it.

Now I realize that you are frustrated about people in your market (and elsewhere) deliberately misrepresenting what they do. Saying they make 100% of their chocolate from the bean when they are buying couverture and remelting. And I realize that you are happy that someone is calling the Mast Bros out.

BUT one of the reasons people paid attention to the DallasFood-org articles is that they are written dispassionately. If they were written any other way they would probably have been dismissed out of hand. Now Scott has been having fun in social media tweaking the Brothers but the articles stand apart from that. Which is important to remember.

Please believe me when I say that I have every motivation to root out and expose deceptive practices in the craft chocolate world and elsewhere. Although I am not explicitly mentioned in many of the articles, I have been involved in several - and in some very important ways. There are huge media forces like the NY Times weighing in on this subject and they have the ability to shape the narrative in ways that are beyond our control.

I have been doing, and will continue to do, the best I can to see how we can use the firestorm that has been kicked up in positive ways.

If I were you, I'd write a reasoned op ed to the local papers and figure out how to make this a positive for your business.

Yes. I saw the image. Posting a ticket on it now.

Brad.

IMNSHO: Calgary is not Williamsburg, or even Manhattan.

It's not about you , so crowing about reflected sainthood is out of place and only reflects badly on you.

Why do I say this?

There are far larger issues at hand, especially with the media coverage on The Guardian and other outlets focusing on price and how $10 is too much to pay. Comparing Mast w/ Hershey and Green & Black's and not understanding why the comparison is ludicrous. One good question is whether or not this will have an impact on the sales of other craft chocolate makers. NYTimes even says that this could bring the whole Brooklyn craft food "movement" down. 

I know that the author of one of the follow-up articles is horrified at how the story has been twisted. Fact is, we are no longer in control of it and it may be impossible to put the genie back into the bottle. Will it destroy trust? Some chocolate makers think so.

I am not interested in starting a flame war here on TheChocolateLife. If you want to take up the issue in The Calgary Herald or The Calgary Sun, I think either or both are more appropriate outlets.

There are some very substantive issues at play here and I would really like the focus to stay on those issues. Here's just one of my takes .

:: Clay

iPhone 5 not 5S? What version of iOS? Safari, right? Does this also happen in any other browser? I can't test as I don't have an iPhone 5.

My response in a comment to an article posted on The Guardian about the Mast Bros: Mast Brothers: taste-testing $10 chocolate bars as controversy boils over .

What is a real shame about most of the media reporting that has occurred in reply to the series on  DallasFood.org  (including [the article on TheGuardian]) is that it has featured a sensationalized focus on price. And that is not what the series is about at all. It's about transparency and deliberate, systematic, misrepresentation, which can happen at any price level.

It is an indisputable fact that the overwhelming majority of chocolate—whether sold as solid bars, candy bars, or confections—is sold at a price that means that the cocoa farmer was not paid a living wage for their work.

One thing that most craft chocolate makers strive for is equitable relationships with the farmers they buy their cocoa from. And an aspect of that equitable relationship is that the farmer gets paid a fair price for their labor. A price that enables them to have pride in their work, feed and clothe and send their children to school, and all of the other things we strive for for ourselves, families, and communities.

We all have our taste preferences, but this is not about what's better - Cadbury, Ritter Sport, Lindt, et al. What it is about is knowing that, when you buy any chocolate where one factor in your purchase decision process is how cheap it is, is that one of the consequences of that decision is the perpetuation of a cycle of poverty of heart-breaking, gargantuan, proportions. The fact is, virtually all chocolate is too cheap, yet most people are unaware of the fact that their perceived "right" to enjoy inexpensive chocolate is a major driver behind children laboring in cocoa farms.

Having blind faith in certification schemes is not *the* answer. Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance, Utz, et al, can only do so much; you as a consumer and large companies use those labels to avoid having to truly confront the reality of the situation.

Small chocolate makers who go to great lengths to source their beans provide one key to solving the problem. They confront the reality and work very hard to address it within the context of their own businesses.

Because craft chocolate makers cannot afford to buy hundreds of tonnes of beans at a time and don't have expensive automated plants, the price they *willingly* pay for high–quality cocoa beans and their costs of production are much, much higher than those of industrial producers who use their size and buying power to get the cocoa they buy at the lowest possible prices - not caring about the impact on the farmer.

In this context, what's important is not the price of the chocolate bar, it's the price the farmer receives for the cocoa beans - called the farm gate price. The higher the price paid to the farmer, the more expensive the chocolate is going to be. If you're buying a mass-market bar, most of the profits go to the manufacturers and retailers as well as to advertising and promoting the products - many of which actually have very little cocoa in them because cocoa is the most expensive ingredient!

And this is where the small chocolate maker strives to make a difference. Source the beans as closely as possible to the farmer, reduce the number of intermediaries who handle the beans - which increases their already high cost, and then work very hard to craft a product that people will like and buy more than once. Most of these small chocolate makers are self-funded startups who barely break even, let alone generate a profit.

And that's the source, I think, of much of the indignation surrounding The Mast Brothers. Their claim to being one of this amazing group of makers is on very shaky ground as the  DallasFood.org  series reveals. Most of the press surrounding the Brothers is about their beards, or about the paper used to wrap the bars, or about the design of their shops. And that's messed up. We were being lied to. It's not about the prices, it's about what appears to be systematic deception. That's why the chocolate community is up in arms. It is not a good thing for craft chocolate.

We can agree or not on whether we like a chocolate the Mast Brothers makes. That's partly a discussion of value: is the money I paid worth it, to me? In the case of the Mast Brothers - for me - the case is usually no: I did not get good value for money, but then I am focused on what's inside the wrapper, knowing that the wrapper is a not-insignificant reason for the price being what it is.

You may think I am an idiot to pay $10 for a bar of chocolate - but I have willingly paid much more. And I will continue to do so. I will do so because I want to see smiles on the faces of cocoa farming families when I travel at origin. I will do so because I believe in supporting honest, dedicated, craftspeople who work extremely hard to produce products they believe in and that they hope customers will buy and like.

What I try to avoid is purchasing chocolate where I know the farmer was not paid well or where the marketing is less than genuine.

And that's what this story is really about . It's not about a tenner.
###

Ben -

Login may have been resolved. I set the expiration time for the login cookie too short. It's now much longer (20,000 minutes). Also, if you are in chrome there is an extension called "EditThisCookie" that can be used to "protect" a cooke and keep it from expiring. You can use this to make your login cookie permanent on your end.

Working on other improvements over the next weeks.

:: Clay

Ben -

I agree, the situation with Groups is messed up. I need to get professional help to make them work properly.

Also, I have noticed that the Forums are working well for what the Groups were trying to so - and people are using the forums for those purposes. So, I am working on fixing the sorting problems for archive retrieval purposes, but pushing people towards using the Forums.

As a part of the process I will be updating the home page - rearranging things - and I will add the last updated timestamp.

The login thing is probably a browser cookie issue, but I will ask the developers. I don't ever have an issue here, and I use Chrome, Safari, and Firefox on MacOS. Is it in more than one browser? What combination are you having problems with?

:: Clay

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse

ICCO’s Ad Hoc Panel on Fine or Flavour Cocoa met in London last week to update the list of countries where they consider fine or flavor cocoa grows – and the percentage of the crop that is considered fine or flavor. From the ICCO web site:

"The share of fine or flavor cocoa in the production of cocoa beans of individual countries has developed over time. Successive International Cocoa Agreements recognized producing countries exporting either exclusively or partially fine or flavor cocoa. The list of countries and their proportion of production of fine or flavor cocoa under the successive International Cocoa Agreements of 1972, 1975, 1980, 1986, 1993 and 2001 are reproduced in Annex C of each Agreement."

The last time the panel met was in 2010 and in the intervening five years the landscape of production has changed. Jamaica has been moved out of the 100% category down to 90%, and Peru’s fine or flavor production figure has been reduced from 90% at the meeting in 2010 to 75%. Ecuador held steady at 75% despite presenting documentation that more than 25% of exports are CCN-51.

Hondura and Guatemala (both at 50%) and Viet Nam (40%) were recognized by this year’s panel. Perhaps surprisingly to some (but not to me, who visited the country twice this summer), Nicaragua was added to the 100% list - the only such addition this year.

The final list as recommend by the panel according to the requirements of the International Cocoa Agreement of 2010 follows. This is the recommended list, as the recommendations still need to be ratified by the ICCO General Council at a meeting in Dominican Republic in May of 2016. The percentages listed are the percentages of that country’s EXPORTS that ICCO considers to be fine or flavor cocoa beans, not the percentage of total harvest:

100%

• Bolivia
• Costa Rica
• Dominica
• Grenada
• Madagascar
• Mexico
• Nicaragua
• Saint Lucia
• Trinidad

95%

• Colombia
• Jamaica
• Venezuela

90%

• Papa New Guinea

75%

• Ecuador
• Peru

50%

• Belize
• Guatemala
• Honduras
• Panama

40%

• Dominican Republic
• Vietnam

35%

• São Tome

1%

• Indonesia

The Panel also recommended that it met bi-annually to review the list and that a standardized grading scheme be developed. For more information about the history of the Panel, visit: http://www.icco.org/about-cocoa/fine-or-flavour-cocoa.html

I love, love, love, love the Timmy Bros, Water Makers parody. For those of you interested, here's the link to the Mast Bros video that's being parodied .

Russ -

Given the time of year I generally do not recommend that you try and put a brand new machine with a different technology into production right now. The time you spend to get it integrated into your work flow can lead to production interruptions. You are right to worry about being down at the busiest time of year, but that should not be an issue for a brand new/demo/refurbished machine. Going forward, good preventive maintenance is the issue to keeping the machines in production at the busiest times of the year - something that many people neglect to do.

The challenge I see (and that you neglected to mention in your post) is that your chocolates are sweetened by honey. It's a challenge to temper honey-sweetened chocolate. FBM does have customers who do, but in general it takes larger machines - with longer tempering pipes and greater cooling capacity - to handle this kind of specialty chocolate because of the moisture in the honey, which inhibits crystal formation and spread.

As you may know, I represent FBM, in part because I believe that they are technically superior machines to Selmis. I don't think I have a machine in the US that is kitted out to handle honey-sweetened chocolate reliably. It would require testing and I don't think we could get that done in time to get you into production before Christmas. Because of the way I know that Selmis are built internally, I think that would be no more effective than FBM. The same is true of Gami, Bakon, Pomati and every other company that uses the tempering screw approach.

I'd like to say it was easy, but it's not. If you were working with conventional couverture I have at least one small demo machine (a PRIMA) here in the US (220V, 3-phase power) that I could get to you in a week or so. However, I could not in good faith recommend it for honey-sweetened chocolate without extensive testing. 

I know of no measured depositors that attach to your Chocovision machines.

:: Clay

PS. Here's the link to the FBM web site where all of their chocolate machines are listed. The one being used for honey is the Maestria, outfitted with the craft chocolate upgrade and the pneumatic doser. The list price on that machine is about €31,000 which is a lot for 80kg/week of bar production.

Good luck on this, my quick research into this shows only one company - Real Food Source in the UK - offering something like this. I doubt they are making it themselves, though, so the challenge would be to find out who's making it for them. Also, the prices are in pounds - that's 50% higher than USD$ prices right off the bat.

Mack -

The uploading problem was probably not a filetype issue - but a matter of your profile not having full privileges. I have move you out of the "unassigned" user category to the "chocolate maker" category so you should now be able to upload.

GIF, JPG, and PNG are all supported.

Another fun substitution game. Substitute hipster for expert!

“Thousands of chocolate lovers make the journey to visit our factory every week,” says Mast. “These are our chocolate [experts|hipsters]. If it is the perspective of a(n) [expert|hipster] that you seek, I encourage you to become that [expert|hipster].”

For those ChocolateLife members and others who do not know ...

there is more than a little controversy surrounding the Mast Bros.

Quelle surprise!

Much of the backlash (from people who know what good chocolate actually is) stems from the astonishing hubris of the Bros marketing and PR apparatus. In an article in Vanity Fair , Rick Mast grabs hold of that hubris, pins it to the breast of his chef coat, and wears it as a badge of honor: 

“I can affirm that we make the best chocolate in the world.”

WTF? Says who? Not any acknowledged, reputable, chocolate experts, anyway.

In an  article on Slate.com the very next month, that: 

“We are a dangerous company because we are outsiders to the chocolate industry, never leaning on industry norms.”

Um, no. The Mast Bros are dangerous, IMO, but not because they ignore industry norms. The danger is when other chocolate makers copy them, thinking that if they make chocolate like the Mast Bros they too will be successful, as I point out in the Slate article. Rick jumps through the open door willingly to sum it up: 

“Thousands of chocolate lovers make the journey to visit our factory every week,” says Mast . “These are our chocolate experts. If it is the perspective of an expert that you seek, I encourage you to become that expert.”

I was reading Ethan Siegel on Medium this morning when I ran across this quote in an article on NASA's EM drive :

“No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master. ”  [Emphasis is mine.]
— Hunter S. Thompson

Freakin Hunter S. Thompson of all people just nailed it. On. The. Head. In the immortal worlds of Emeril - “BAM!”

I encourage everyone to read the entire article, substituting 'cocoa' and/or 'chocolate' for 'any word vaguely related to maths, science, history, and/or physics.' Here is an edited version  [text in brackets]  of Siegel's text to show you where this leads, if you are too busy in your workshop actually educating yourself about chocolate with an open mind and curious heart:

“We like to think, as human beings, if we can only keep an open mind, that anything is possible. That if we put our minds to it, buckle down and do our research and apply ourselves 100%, we can not only understand what’s going on as well as any expert, but that we ourselves can make valuable contributions to whatever field we’re interested in. We think this about ourselves when it comes to [energy|chocolate] , [the environment|chocolate] ,   [health and medicine|cocoa and chocolate] , and even   [physics and mathematics|cocoa and chocolate - refer to the title of the article that spawned this thread ] .

Yet simultaneously, we’re also aware of the years — if not decades — of study that’s typically required in order to become a legitimate expert [in any one of those fields|in chocolate] . We know it’s difficult, even for the smartest and most talented among us, to make groundbreaking discoveries in a field we’ve spent our entire lives working on.

But there’s this romantic notion we all hang onto, nonetheless, that if some talented maverick with a novel perspective comes along, even without the proper background, they (or possible we, ourselves) can change the course of  [history| chocolate] forever.

This is the story we tell ourselves about a genius like Albert Einstein, whose general theory of relativity turns 100 this year. It’s the story we tell ourselves about Tesla, Edison, Faraday, Newton and more [are the Mast Bros in this category?] . We all know the danger of following the crowd, of a herd mentality, and of accepting what’s presently known in science [chocolate] as absolute, indisputable truth. And that’s why, when it comes to the biggest lies and hoaxes of all, it’s often the [most intelligent|hippest]  among us who are the most gullible.”

Amirite? Or Amirite?

[Note: Edited to correct typos on 11/21/2015.]

It just keeps getting better - a gift the keeps on giving!

"Another step is tempering, where chocolate goes from its naturally bumpy texture to the smooth surface we are used to as consumers."

Chocolate has a naturally bumpy texture. Who knew? Wonder what branch of topology that belongs to? But is topology maths, not physics?

Pretty Stupid, Apparently.

In a June, 2014 article on the World Science Festival website entitled, The Mast Bros Unveil the Physics Behind Chocolate , some rather amazing claims are made, and not all of them about the physics of chocolate. To be fair, it's impossible to know if the quotes attributed to Rick Mast are accurate or whether the reporter took a liberal interpretation. Either way, the site, which encourages visitors to "rethink" science [sic], is presenting a revisionist version of chocolate  physics.

"... raw beans have a much higher acidity level so it’s a more botanic flavor,” Mast said. “Roasting brings out other flavors to balance out the acidity.” The bean’s sugar and protein molecules gain energy in the higher temperature, and that increased activity leads to new atoms coming together and new molecules being formed."

There is so much unnecessary obfuscation in the above paragraph I don't know where to begin. Sugar and protein molecules gain energy creating new atoms? Okay, the beans heat up and chemicals in the chocolate change. Why not give the compounds names? Pyrazines, furans, esters, and ketones are among the classes of compounds formed during roasting, Rick, via processes knows as the Maillard reaction, Strecker degredation, and pyrolysis/polymerization, among others. It's science, not sex education, you can be explicit - the more explicit the better - with chemical names and processes, they are not pornographic, are they? Are they too explicit for young scientists' ears?

Furthermore, the flavors created do NOT directly balance out the acidity. Which acid? Acetic or citric? Some of the acetic acid evaporates out [during roasting], but enough remains so that the Dutch had to invent alkalization to neutralize it  (oops, that's history, not physics) . Conching does reduce acidity among other things (and arguably, the Mast Bros do not conche properly if at all) - and conching effects acetic acid more than citric acid which is why some chocolates have bright fruity notes and others don't. Fruitiness is not a generally-recognized flavor trait of alkalized chocolate, however.

"... For that to happen, the particles have to be just a miniscule [sic] 20 microns across (for comparison, the width of a strand of hair is 50 microns) § . The grind “is still acidic until all the sugar crystals have slowly emulsified with the cocoa butter so it tastes like one thing" 

​I am sorry. Could. Not. Stop. Laughing. The chocolate is still acidic until the sugar has emulsified with the cocoa butter? No. That's not the way it works.  

First off, chocolate is not an emulsion. Chocolate is a suspension of particles in fat. Emulsifiers are used to reduce the surface tension of the fat molecules so the chocolate flows more easily. There is no physical process (and no chemical process) that I am aware of that reduces the acidity in chocolate by simple grinding, emulsification or no.  There is a reason why the chocolate is just so bad.

After eight years, Rick still appears to know very little about the real science - physics and chemistry - of chocolate. To give him some benefit of the doubt ... maybe he does know the science but chooses not to communicate it clearly. I don't know - but the end result is the same. 

§ - Or maybe not. According to Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_micrometres) the average width of a human hair is 100 microns. Footnoted as: ^According to The Physics Factbook, the diameter of human hair ranges from 17 to 181 µm. Ley, Brian (1999). But - maybe red beard hairs average 50 microns? Yeah. That has to be it.

[Note: edited to fix typos on 11/21/15.]

According to a recent press release,

Cargill’s acquisition of ADM’s global chocolate and compound business in August of this year included the deZaan-branded line of premium gourmet chocolate, but the acquisition did not include the deZaan trademark itself. As such, we have decided to discontinue selling these products in North America [beginning in November].

There is a link in the attached update that can be used to learn (a little bit) more about the decision.

DeZaan Gourmet Update.pdf - 121KB

Balpreet:

Wet grinders are just small melangeurs. However, melangeurs purpose-made for chocolate were designed and built to process cocoa beans. Small wet-mill grinders used in making chocolate were designed to handle much softer materials (think cooked lentils) and to run for short periods of time (think less than thirty minutes).

"Real" chocolate melangeurs use much harder granite and are designed to run for hours at a time. There are also some very specific differences with respect to axle design that separate the two – wet grinders have a single axle, for example.

One thing they do share in common is that they are not conches. And they never will be conches. Despite what the manufacturers claim. Despite what chocolate makers claim. They are not conches. They may deliver some of the benefits of conching, but very inefficiently.

Brad -

I reached out to a member of the Academy of Chocolate and shared my observation that the guidelines, as written, enabled pretty much everyone to qualify as "bean-to-bar" even if what they were doing was sourcing cocoa beans from a broker and shipping them for private label production.

The response I got was tepid, but my guess is that they will look at the issue more closely before the next competition. They will be holding their bi-annual meeting next October and I am going to suggest that this is a topic that gets discussed. In public. With everyone contributing.

Congratulations to all of the finalists!

CHOCOLATE

• Areté Fine Chocolate – Camino Verde 75% Dark Chocolate, California 
• Brasstown Chocolate – Ecuador 75% & Belize 70%, North Carolina 
• Charm School Chocolate – 70% Dark Belize, Maryland
• Creo Chocolate – Purely Dark, Oregon
• Dick Taylor Craft Chocolate – 70% Bolivia, Alto Beni, California
• Escazu Artisan Chocolates – 70% Piura Blanco, Peru, North Carolina
• Fruition Chocolate – Bolivian Wild Harvest 74% & Nacional Dark Milk 68%, New York
• Just Good Chocolate – Madagascar 70%, Michigan 
• Lonohana Estate Chocolate – Kanahiku 70% Dark, Hawaii 
• Nathan Miller Chocolate – Gingerbread Bar, Pennsylvania
• Patric Chocolate – Triple Ginger & Browned Butter Bar & Red Coconut Curry, Missouri
• Ritual Chocolate – Mid Mountain Blend & Belize 75%, Utah
• Rogue Chocolatier – Jamaica & Tranquilidad, Massachusetts
• SPAGnVOLA – 70% Single- Estate Dominican Republic & 75% Single Estate Dominican Republic, Maryland

CONFECTIONS

• American Spoon – Chocolate Fudge Sauce, Michigan
• Amy E's Bakery – Peanut Brittle, Oregon
• Ashby Confections – Fresh Orange Sour Strips & Salty Desert Heat, California
• Askinosie Chocolate – Hey, Hey Chocolate Hazelnut Spread, Missouri
• Batch PDX – Batch Bar & Twicks Bar, Oregon 
• Bees & Beans – Honey Bar Reserve, Oregon 
• Bixby & Co. – Nutty For You, Maine
• Black Dinah Chocolatiers – Maine Mint Truffle, Maine
• Ethereal Confections – Blood Orange and Vanilla Bean Meltaway, Illinois
• Farm Chocolate – Panforte in Dark, California
• Fat Toad Farm – Fat Toad Farm Original Goat's Milk Caramel Sauce, Vermont
• French Broad Chocolates – Hazelnut & Almond Dragee, North Carolina
• JJ's Sweets Cocomels – Palm Sugar Cocomel, Colorado
• Katherine Anne Confections – Cucumber Cooler Caramel, Illinois 
• Lake Champlain Chocolates – Apple Cider Caramels, Vermont 
• Little Apple Treats – Rose and Cocoa nib Caramels, California 
• McCrea's Candies – Black Lava Sea Salt Caramels, Massachusetts
• Neo Cocoa – Toffee Nib Brittle, California
• Nosh This – Lavender Crack, California
• Sapore della Vita – Caramel Sauce & Torrone & Totally Fudged- Chocolate Fudge Sauce, Florida
• Serendipity Confections – Chocolate Covered Butter Caramels with Fleur de Sel, Wyoming
• St. Croix Chocolate Co. – Wild Grape and Peanut Butter Bar, Minnesota
• Videri Chocolate Factory – Sugarplum Ganache Bonbon, North Carolina

If you are referring to the Academia de Cacao in Nicaragua, the course in May is not yet filled. However, it is not bean-to-bar class, it's rooted in what you need to know to improve cocoa quality.

Matt -

You might want to look into the small business nutrition labeling exemption. As a small business (under something like 500 employees and $50,000,000 in sales) you are not required to put a nutrition label on a package, especially if it it's small. And I think federal law trumps state law on this. You do however, have to have the nutrition information available and it has to be easily accessible. But, I am not a lawyer and you should check.

That said, some retail outlets will demand it, along with UPC codes. Ingredients labels with allergen statements should be considered mandatory no matter what the regs require. 

As you are in the US you only need to really worry about internationalization if you find yourself selling outside the US. As near as I know there are no special requirements unless you are wholesaling to a retailer unless the retailer requires it for liability reasons.

Jason -

For such small quantities learn to do it by hand if you can't afford the machines. The experience you gain learning to hand temper will pay huge dividends going forward. In the end, machines can only do what you tell them to do. If they don't produce correct results and you don't know what tempering looks and feels like then you are not in a position to know why the machine "failed" to temper properly. 

It's not the machine's fault, actually. They are not artificially intelligent and cannot read your mind or evalaute the chocolate they are being asked to temper. They don't know the external temperature, or humidity, or anything like that. So they can't react to changes in ambient environment, for example, that will affect temper.

Finally - and I really don't want to dissuade you from pursuing your chocolate dreams, at this stage if the difference in price between a Rev 1 and a Rev 2 is straining your budget then wait and save until it's not an issue for you.

:: Clay

Brad:

If you go to the Academy of Chocolate web site you will find the criteria for what constitutes "bean-to-bar." Specifically:

BEST DARK BEAN TO BAR (%)

Open to manufacturers who use cocoa beans (as opposed to cocoa liquor, paste, or couverture) as their raw material in any of the three specifications below.

Please specify on the entry form which best describes your bean to bar product. This is for office information only and will not be disclosed to the judges. [Emphasis in the original.]

• Tree to Bar. Made from beans managed by the producer. This is the end-to-end process of manufacturing owned and controlled by a single business.
• Tree to Factory. Management of cacao at the source with a third party manufacturing the bean to bar process.
• Factory Roast to Conch [sic]. Bar made from beans purchased from a grower or an intermediary. All manufacturing processes i.e. roasting, grinding, refining and conching owned and controlled by a single business.

IMO, these "distinctions" make it possible for virtually everyone to claim to be bean to bar. As I interpret the guidelines, I could make a phone call to ECOM and get a container of beans - sight unseen - delivered to ICAM and have chocolate made and I would qualify.

WRT to Papa Chocolat - if Callebaut sources the beans and someone else makes the chocolate for them then it fits under the Factory Roast definition. That said, I can see how Original Beans, Idilio, and Åkesson fit the definition - they source beans and have the chocolate made for them - Factory Roast again. But it's harder for me to see how some others fit. And I am fairly knowledgeable.

To me, bean-to-bar means – at the very minimum – all stages of the transformation of raw cocoa beans into finished chocolate are performed under the direct supervision and control of the company claiming so. Secondarily, it means that the company actually has to sell product (bars) at retail in a package with their own name on it. 

I have long had a problem with the phrase bean-to-bar because of this malleability and I strongly encourage the Academy of Chocolate to take a long, hard, look at their classification criteria before the next installment of the Awards. This is because, in the long run, the context of the guidelines will get stripped from the award itself when it appears on a box or wrapper and the uninformed consumer will not see the asterisk that a knowledgeable professional might.

:: Clay

Annalynn -

There are not many options for small guitar cutters. One is available through Chef Rubber (www.chefrubber.com). Click on the Search box and type ' guitar ' into the search box on the next page. The mini-guitar plus accessories are listed there.

They are still not cheap, and one difference between this and larger options is that the base is plastic, not metal.

If you are in the business of selling chocolate, products, or services, the way to promote your business to ChocolateLife members is through a member marketplace ad.

Melanie - 

Have you checked in with Union Equipment? They might have something. The FBM enrobers all come with bottomers so I don't think they are an option for you. You might try Hilliard as I know they make pre-bottomers for their belts.

:: Clay

@Lavinia -

The answer is ... it's not that simple. 

First off, whatever powdered sugar you get is probably going to have an anti-caking agent in it, often cornstarch. This will make it unusable for chocolate. If you do find a powdered sugar that is suitable it may still be too coarse (the particles are too big), and you will still be able to feel the sugar crystals as grit on the tongue. Another thing to consider is that adding powdered sugar into chocolate will make it very thick - especially if you add it all at once.

A better process would be to take your own sugar and refine it in a food processor and then grind it into the melted liquor in a grinder/refiner. You can add cocoa butter to get to the fluidity you need. How much will depend on the amount of sugar you add.

Any tempered chocolate that is left over can be poured into a pan to let cool and to use for later remelting and retempering. If you need seed chocolate, pour some of the tempered chocolate into a thin layer - making sure it stays in temper. You can break this up and use it for seed in future batches. The rest of the chocolate can be stored at room temps, just make sure no moisture condenses on the chocolate. In other words, you don't need to put it in the refrigerator or freezer.

Melanie -

I need to ask some questions for clarity. 

You need tunnels that are 12 inches or 24 inches wide, correct? Or 12 inches wide and 24 feet long? Also you are looking for used? You have the tempering machine(s) and enrober(s) already? 

And this is for delivery in the US?

Thanks in advance,
:: Clay