Forum Activity for @Dallas

" Otherwise the reader can take this errors as a charming fact for this book, translated from german to english. - See more at: https://www.thechocolatelife.com/clay/forums/opinion/16249/fact-checking-chocolate-the-reference-standard#last"

Grammatical and typographical errors in a book are not charming, and show a lack of respect for the entire book writing and publishing process, and an absolute disdain for the end reader. Don't write a book in English if you cannot do your due diligence, by having it properly edited.

-advice from an author/editor of a number of books and publications.

"The reference standard" for chocolate....

Hmm.....  

A reference standard based on the opinions of one person....

Hmmmm.......

And sheeple are buying the book....

Hmmmmmmm......

Me thinks, narcisistic, bloated, self indulgent wingnuts like the author of a book who proclaims that HIS opinions are THE reference standard do more harm that guys like Mast.  He should be stopped or at the very least slapped.  Hard.  The publisher should be contacted.  The book should be pulled.

Every one of the referenced companies in the book should be contacted and asked to NEVER sell or gift a single bar to the author again.  He's doing more harm than good.

Clay writes:  "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. "

FACT:  Not a single one of the ratings is a substantiated and accurate representation of what the average consumer of that chocolate would conclude upon tasting the bar, BECAUSE no single person can be representative of an entire populace.

Based on this single, simple, statistical fact (Statistics makes the rules.  I don't make the rules).  Every review or rating is garbage, and given that it's a large portion of the book, most of the book can be considered garbage, or at the very best, simply the opinion of one person and should not be taken as seriously as a Superman comic book.

THAT'S THE FACTS JACK.

Brad

Hi All

I am new to this site. We export Cacao from the Ivory Coast in Africa. Kindly contact me if any interest.

Kind Regards

Leigh Schoombee

lanicconsultingcc@gmail.com

Warehouse moth:  CO2 and barrier solutions

Methyl Bromine used to be employed to fumigate commercially traded cocoa imports at export or receiving warehouses.  Banned / withdrawn since 2010 often replaced by phosphine which is highly flammable and rather nasty.  Typically in the warehouse they tent the pallets and gas the bags, interestingly phosphine is available in a form where it is mixed with carbon dioxide.   I imagine this is both to make a readily applied gas mix and of course the CO2 reduces the fire risk! 

Modified atmosphere storage works and certain hot or cold treatments also work. There have even been experiments with microwaving. (perhaps Sebastian can provide industrial insights regarding this?)    A small amount dry ice in a dustbin (UK!) or trashcan (USA) for a 1/2 sack works  well according to John (The Chocolate  Alchemist).  If you're handy and a practical sort, (making craft chocolate this typically is the case)  assembling a flushing system with a cylinder of CO2 from a welding gas supplier or a friendly bar owner could work if you can't readily get solid carbon dioxide (dry ice).    The usual  safety  / hazard notes about enclosed spaces and pressurized containers..(Attempt at you own risk, I'm not recommending you do it.)     Of course also consider, you don't need to pressurize just displace all the 'regular' air and replace and hold with CO2 for a bit, even relatively inactive insect pupae need oxygen to survive.....

 FYI:  Physical barrier solutions
 At the recent FCIA meeting in San Francisco,  in the queue for evening beverages I met a nice chap (Jordan) from a company called GrainPro  (Google it) , they make / sell special barrier solutions for farmers / cacao producers to protect warehouse stock and even individual sacks of cacao or shipping containers loads.   These sorts of protection might be a way to protect your stocks and they appear to have solutions that are highly scalable.

using dry ice is an attempt to modify the atmosphere - dry ice is carbon dioxide, and it sublimates (goes straight from solid to gas without a liquid phase).  the thought is that you can use it to displace the oxygen in the atmosphere, and suffocate the critters.  it will work if you contain it. personally i think it's the path of most resistance - it's expensive, condensation will be an issue, and you need to keep it tightly sealed once the atmosphere is modified (but not before, if you seal it tightly before you'll end up with a bomb).  it would very much surprise me if bay leaves and vinegar did anything helpful.  Cool and dry with spot fumigation as needed is the best option, in my opinion.

Remember to quickly discard your winnowed shell as well - the eggs are 90% on the surface of the shell, if you let your shell lay around in a warm room, they'll be quite happy to hatch the larvae there vs on the full bean in storage as well.

Cheers Sebastian, its good to actually get advice on preventions as the Rentokil bloke was helpful in telling me how to chuck everything and cleanse the room, but not very good at saying how to prevent future attacks. The room generally is quite cold, although i dont actually have access to a walk in refrigerator which would be handy. We had an unusually hot and humid late autumn/beginning of winter this year unfortunately so i dont think that has helped. Researched some preventions yesterday and the pheremone traps sound like a great idea, also perhaps oddly, bay leaves dotted around and a tub of vinegar is a good prevention...who knew.

I also saw on chocolate alchemy that dry ice is a good thing to use to kill of anything living within the beans when they arrive. Have you used this method?

Cold and dry is the best storage.  I find 60F or below and 50% RH is a nice target.  Tarp and fumigate if you're seeing signs of activity.  You can also consider pheremone traps if you're getting fliers emerging.

First of all sorry for all errors in my answer. My english is not as good as Clay’s english.

Preamble

The book was written and the tastings were mad from September 2014 until End of March 2015.

The german version was edited twice, then english version once.

The translation was made from a professional translator born in Australia.

Why „The Reference Standard“?

My first edition was published in October 2012 in german language only.

The book won the Gourmand Award for the best chocolate book of the world in 2013 (By the way, the new edition won the Gourmand Award for the best cookbook in Germany and is nominated for the Gourmand Award for the best chocolate book in the world 2015).

Many people, media, readers and from the chocolate business, named my book „Reference Standard“ or „Chocolate Bible“, I got even the name „The Chocolate Pope“. Myself I don’ t feel to be the chocolate pope or to wrote the chocolate bible at all. I even don’ t like this titles at all. I even don’ t like to call me „chocolate expert“...

But I understand that people say that this book is a reference standard as there is no other book with this volume and fullness of information.

So, it was not me who named the book, it was the media, reader and the chocolate community.

Another reason why this book got this name is that it is the first of his kind and that I’m sure that there will not be another similar book coming out in the near future. It is the widest and the most complete compilation of chocolate companies.

Overlooked Companies

Sorry, I don’ t think that there is any really important company overlooked. Give me a sample, please. Short reviews: Yes, some companies, also big companies, got a smaller review as they don’ t worth more words. Otherwise every company got an introduction as much as I got informations. And yes, I don’ t need to taste 15 different chocolates from Cadbury, Milka, Hershey, Godiva, Leonidas etc. to have the opinion that this kind of chocolates are wasting my (and the readers) time. I prefer to take the time and the place for small pearls as Rogue, Patric, Fruition or Pump Street Bakery.

Actuallity of information

It is wrong that much of the information would be out of date. I checked in September 2014 all reviews of my first edition which I wrote in the year 2011, revised in 2012. During this two years 98 % companies still existed, in 95 % of the companies where no changes and almost 80 % of the reviewed products where still in the market.

As already mentionned I wrote the new book until end of March 2015. In summer 2015 I checked again some facts and I made some correction as the change of the name of Brasstown Chocolate (formely It’s chocolate) and the fact that Allsop, Damien ceased operations (you can check this on page 157) was added the 5th June 2015. Three and a half month before publishing the book. And Clay write that the information in my book are out of date?

I don’ t think that any edition of Gault Millau or Michelin are more up to date than my book.

Grammatical and Typographical Errors

Maybe it is true that there are some errors and yes, unfortunally I’m personnally not in the position to check it. Otherwise the reader can take this errors as a charming fact for this book, translated from german to english. As I’m not able to evaluate this point I’m abstaining me to take more position.

Tolerate and Suspect

I don’ t agree with Clay’s opinion that in a reference standard nothing should be suspect. There are a lot of facts and informations which are communicated from companies, but sometimes there is no way to check these informations. Why should this be unspoken or unwritten?

Example: A company claim to be Tree-to-Bar and you ask as an author or journaliste to get information about this, but you don’ t get an answer. Should you accept it and don’ t speak/write about this secrecy? No, never. If a company don’t answer should be something wrong and I write about this.

Hispaniola and Sanchez Cocoa

This two kinds of cocoa are sold as different varieties. This word (in German „Sorten“) is used in German language as the word to make the difference between Hispaniola and Sanchez, but also to make the difference between Porcelana and Ocumare.

The chapter where this two beans are mentioned didn’t explain WHAT the beans are. The context is only that Hispaniola and Sanchez are the two beans which are famous in the Dominican Republic. Even if the traduction is not correct, it doesn’ t disturbs as it is not relevant.

Lazy Georg

This is completly nonsense.

It is hard to read this as it is a direct attack and aggression to my person.

I worked very hard to make all research for the book. In total more than two years and every doubt I had I followed up until I got a credible answer or, sometimes, there was a dead end without a satisfactory answer.

Often I send three, for or even five emails to get information, I tried to get by phone call informations, I searched for hours online, asked friends as Mark Christian and other well known chocolate experts. I travelled to many countries and searched in books.

The most informations are from the website of the companies, of course.

Cacaosuyo:

The concept of my book is to publish always the processing stage as communicated from the companies (when they communicate it). But also to publish the processing stage, when the companies NOT communicated it. In this case I had a lot of work...

Cacaosuyo claim to be not only Bean-to-Bar, but also to be Tree-to-Bar. Tree-to-Bar means that they own at least one cacao plantation and that the cocoa sourced for the chocolate comes from this plantation. I didn’ t got any proof about this and any request forward to Cacaosuyo was without response.

The website is empty and no other information are avaible.

I’m surprised that Clay only reproaches me that I doubt that Cacaosuyo is a Bean-to-Bar producer. Why he don’t reproaches me that I doubt the Cacaosuyo is a Tree-to-Bar producer?

Until a company don’ t proof that they are Bean-to-Bar (or Tree-to-Bar) I will always have the tendency not to believe. Especially if they claim to be Tree-to-Bar without showing proofs. Damn, which serious company don’ t use pictures etc. from his own plantation for marketing purpose if they are Tree-to-Bar?

And yes, I got reliable information that Cacaosuyo was not Bean-to-Bar at the time when I tasted the bars (end of 2014). If today they are Bean-to-Bar, nice. But it still lacks the proof of Tree-to-Bar.

And yes, I only write about rumours as of course I would never divulge my source of information.

The customer have the right to get easy access to informations and this is with Cacaosuyo not the case (by the way, I like the products and they got a quite good product review).

Pacari

Almost the same as Cacaosuyo, but even more outrageous.

1. They use for marketing very penetrating „Tree-to-Bar“. This is the first what you see when you open the website. But, they don’ t own a cocoa plantation which is able to source all the cocoa which Pacari use for chocolate bars. They have at this moment cocoa from eight different regions and I don’ t believe that Pacari owns 8 plantations around Ecuador and Peru (the Piura-bar is made with peruvian cocoa). On every bar is written: PACARI – Premium Organic Chocolate – From Tree to Bar.

It is incredible that nobody move and speak out what I write. This claim is a lie and much more lie than the „scandal“ of the Mast Brothers (this scandal is overdrawn). Shame on Clay that he support and protect a company with lies so obviously. Shame to the media who don’ t follow up this lie and shame to all the „Awards“ which accept to give prices to a company which obviously don’ t tell the truth.

Also in the case of Pacari I got reliable sources of information that not all chocolates are Bean-to-Bar (especially the bars with inclusions).

To finish this point about Bean-to-Bar:

In the case that I’m not able to verify myself the information of the company I wrote „unconfirmed“. This gives to the companies the possibility to be transparence and to proof the truth.

Last thing about Pacari:

The „Raw Chocolate“ is ridiculous as it is NOT Raw Chocolate. Santiago Peralta himself told me at the Salon du Chocolat Paris in 2014 that it is NOT Raw Chocolate. He calls it „Minimal processed“ chocolate. Why he don’ t communicate it as minimal processed chocolate?

After his explication Santiago himself was not able to tell me at which temperature the beans are treated. He told me only that it is much more than 50 degrees celsius.

Tree-to-bar: Lie, Raw Chocolate: Lie. How can I trust whatever Pacari communicate?

Hoja Verde

This is the biggest nonsense in your review. The only reason why Hoja Verde got such a long review is that the review was written by Mark Christian. I was not willing to censor or cut down his review. That’s all.

I have no more relationship to Hoja Verde since 2013 and even some of my recipes where changed after my engagement.

Patrice Chapon

Another error from Clay. It is simply wrong that Chapon was declared „unconfirmed“. Everybody who own the book can check it (pages 259).

The products got a good, but not a superb review as I don’ t like as much as before the quality of his assorted chocolates. There is nothing personal behind. His quality is not the same as four years ago, that’ s all.

Volume of reviews

Better the company, bigger the review? No, not in my book. Some companies has a long history, so I need more space to write about. Other companies don’ t worth to write more or to taste more than three chocolates. For example: Tasting three, four chocolates from Cadbury, Hershey or Milka gives me enough impression not to taste more. I prefer to take more time and space for companies such as Rogue, Fruition or Metiisto.

Maison Boissier

I start really not to understand what Clay really search? What is your problem? Boissier got even not one full page with a mediocre review. Do you want me insinate that I’ m corrupt?

I give you some more „critical“ reviews as they are friends of mine:

AMMA: Diego and Frederick are for many years friends.

Wonder Chocolate: Dito, Frederick is a good friend.

Akesson: I know him for long time.

Bright Chocolate/Australia: Yes, I spend the evening there with the family with a nice barbecue.

Zotter: He gave me a lot of samples for free.

Domori: Jep, nice guy with good contacts. I have to keep him hot, who knows?

Rogue: Yes, I idolize him for his courage.

Coppeneur: My old company.

Go Clay, search any possible irregularity.

I can honestly and without any doubt say and write NO ONE REVIEW is payed or a niceness because the company is from a friend (or even I got money).

Different company wanted to support me and I never accepted anything.

By the way, only for samples I spend more than 10.000 $...

Felchlin

Hey Clay, next error! If you had read my book attentively you would know that NO PRIVATE LABEL PRODUCER, neither Felchlin got a review.

But Felchlin make for Idilio and Original Beans two great Private Label product lines and only for this reason I mentionned them.

So the reviews of them are representative. Oh yes, perhaps I got money from Felchlin for this...

Dangerous Book - Again Out of Date

That’s not the truth. Every company had the possibility to tell me a date for changes. Two examples:

In my first edition I was in contact with Caffarel because they used artificial flavors (Vanillin) in their chocolate. They told me that they will change it in the next few months. I wrote this in my first edition (Unfortunally it was a lie as it still existe Caffarel products with artificial Vanillin). I wrote about this in the new edition (page 244 intro last phrase).

Benoit Nihant: When I got the samples he used couverture for his assorted chocolates. He promissed me that until September 2015 he would change to his own chocolate. I wrote it in my intro (page 612 last phrase)

Summary – tasting different

That’ s totally wrong. Many readers contact me saying that they agree in many, many times my opinion of tasting. Of course not all and not always, but very often.
In many case during a tasting people taste different things. This is a fact that I wrote in my book.

Rating

It is true that not all products were rated for the current edition. In this case it is written and every mature reader is able to perceive this.

Nevertheless more than 3.000 products were tasted for this edition. Mainly bad chocolates were not tasted (again), this are the short review. Why spending time for bad products if there are so many new things to discover?

I checked all companies before writing only a short review if they worth to retaste them.

For example Läderach from Switzerland. They still make the same chocolates and still use in some chocolates artificial flavors. I’m not interested to taste them again until they stopp to use artificial flavors etc.

I will ot justify myself for every short review as every reader can read them and will understand why I wrote only a short review.
This also is explainted in my book.

Batches

Again an error, Clay. Some batches are published (example: Brazen, page 227).

But, who cares which batch was tasted? The reader? What the hell you think is usefull to him to know that I tasted 6, 8 or 10 months ago batch #40, Bar 32 of 44 from the Brazen Bar Dominican Republic 70 %???

How many pages would I have to add if I note all batches? Many of the companies know when I got the chocolates. They only have to check when I bought them (as I bought mainly samples from them directly). Others as Domori or Zotter can check when they send me the samples.

The companies know that I tasted during September 2014 and March 2015. It is at this volume not possible to give all informations to the reader (ingredients list would be quite interesting also). Incredible that you don’ t have any understanding for this.

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, but the initial idea was not that the two phrases are in context.

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

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.

Conclusion

I will not write a lot as I’m tired to repeat all. I have the impression that 1. you are influenced by some people (especially Santiago Peralta) because they are friends and 2. You have a personal problem with me.

Your review is so much nonsense that I will not response anymore after this post. Your hidden allegations are far away from any fairness and for this there is no base for me to continue any discussion.

Bocas del toro, an island near the North border with Costa Rica. My girlfriend's late boyfriend bought some property and discovered it had 10,000 old cacao trees on it so they bought it back to life, I guess it has been organic for a really long time. We mostly use those beans or a neighbors who works on the farm so we know the fermentation is ok. We have an organic coop and sometimes broker their beans. I have been doing the coconut sugar bars for a health food store in Panama city, at first The taste was strange but as the bar ages it mellows. Just not use to the taste of that sugar, It may be the new thing. 

yep, that is correct.  https://www.dandelionchocolate.com/ is using this mold to do 2oz bars

https://www.dandelionchocolate.com/process/#anchor

Thanks Larry!

Joe,

I found the mold listed on another website. They should be about 100 grams.

Classic break away bar
approx 3.5oz, 3 cavities,
5 7/8x 3 x 3/8in,
stripes on each small rectangle

FYI - I make it here in Houston, TX

We make bars with it here in Panama, why dont you do it yourself? What is your price point? What percent sugar, cacao, butter ect are you after.

And by the way there are at least 6 good bean to bar makers within 40 miles of me, and we sell to tourists and locals. Ours is called the sweet dream, or Darklands. Organic beans from our farm, is our source of beans. 

I sell organic beans to several bean to bar makers in the USA so for anyone to say they are the only one is cause for a law suit. I can give you a hint, Atlanta, Alexandria, and Ashville. 

No specs on grams per mold/cavity at the website link. Do you have an approximate figure? Thanks for your quick answer!

they are still available

Do you still have the molds for sale?

Hi thanks guys for your advice, its reasurring to know that its not just me and these beans that have had this problem. Sebastian, you mentioned they will always eventually occur if improperly stored, how best would you recommend storing the cocoa beans in order to minimise the chances of these moths taking hold? Currently i store them inside and have a UV fly zapper which helps, but i wondered if there were better precautions to make.

I have just discussed concerns i had with Rentokil (hope these answers can help others):

1)are they poisonous/dangerous to health - No, but like any living organism there is always the chance of bacteria being transferred

2) Do they just attack cocoa or attack finished chocolate also - predominantly they will only attack cocoa beans as that is their prefferred food source

3) What do the eggs look like - white/creamy, but also tiny, will only see them through a microscope

4) Can you safely fumigate the coca beans leaving them safe to use - Yes but the process is very expensive, starting at £3,000. So need to outweigh the cost of destroying beans, fumigating the room (normal non-food safe approx £400) and starting fresh, against using food safe fumigation (£3,000) which leaves the beans safe to use.

5) Once fumigated whats the risk of return - always a risk, moths are very common problem although not many want to admit to having it for obvious reasons, but everyone will likely have a problem with the moths at some point when dealing with cocoa beans.

Any more advice and experience to this thread would be great as i think its a problem that might not be discussed enough, but a problem that it seems is inevitable.

Hello Primal chocolate!

I've sent you an email at the address. Looking forward to reading your answer.

Alek

Email sent.

I am changing direction so I am seeling all my home-based hobby chocolate equipment.  I have a:

2 x Premier Wonder.  Great little machines that were used only few times each and bought new a year ago.  $130 each.

1 x ACMC.  Used ACMC chocolate tempering machine.  Works great and includes 2 bowls and 2 baffles for multiple matches.  Does not include lid/dust cover.  I have bought it used so I don't know how many times it was used before me. I have used 3 times and works great.  $420 

10 x Polycarbonate chocolate molds. Barely used polycarbonate chocolate molds for bars that I bought new. The models is CW2110. No scratches in the surfaces.  Dimensions are 6.1x3.0x0.3 in or 156x77x8 mm, 3 cavities, approx 2.85oz or 80 grams.  $130 (13 each).

Contact me at davemuci gmail

Hello @honmeid,

Welcome to Seattle (when you arrive, that is)!  I don't know of any jobs, but here's a list of bean-to-bar companies in the Seattle area:

http://flavorsofcacao.com/

Of course, you have likely already heard of chocolatiers like Fran's.  I'm not as familiar with the confectionaries, but you might want to look at Fran's, Oh Chocolate!, Hotcakes, and Intrigue Chocolate.  Aaron Barthel at Intrigue is very highly regarded.

http://www.seattlemag.com/article/best-chocolate-shops

http://www.yelp.com/search?cflt=chocolate&find_loc=Seattle%2C+WA

http://www.getyourhotcakes.com/

Good luck!

Blessings,

Andrew

Yes.  Use a fogger, tent/tarp your pallets to maximize contact / exposure time, and place your fogger under said tent.  anything that ends in 'cide (pesticide, insectide, etc) i don't think i'd characterize as harmless to humans, so don't go looking for opportunties to breath it in or take a bath in it.   It's very commonly used as part of routine pest management cycles, and will be most effective if you're storing in bulk to use on a regular basis (ie don't wait until you've got a room full of moths to begin treating).

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.

yomogi..
tansy？
"Yomogi" is a kind of fragrant herb.
I never ate yomogi of chocolate.

So cool!

Thanks for the good information.

They're cocoa moths.   Preetty soon they'll be flying everywhere.  They're on all cocoa beans, from every origin.  

Keep your beans in a cool and dry place and the eggs won't hatch.  If you need to fumigate, that's also done regularly in cocoa warehouses all around the world.  

It is impossible to order beans from anywhere in the world that will not have an infestation issue over time, if improperly stored.  Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying or inexperienced.

Hi everyone,

not sure how common this is as i cant find much information about it. Basically i got a small sample of cocoa beans from venezuela, didn't get around to trying them out for several months, but i just came to trial them out and found a weird bug/lavae type thing on the inside of the sack, at first i thought it might be just a random bug as i have never come across it before, however i roasted a batch 130 centigrade for about 15mins. But cracked open a bean to test the nib flavour and found another lavae inside it. I did a bit of research and found that it could be the 'warehouse moth'. But no information on how to go about getting rid of it.

Has anyone else had a similar issue, or heard of these pests? and what can be done to either get rid of them? or what process do you undertake to sort out beans with potential bugs against safe beans?

major help needed as concerned about ordering any large amount, from what is otherwise a very nice flavoured bean.

thanks

James

We are a small batch chocolate maker in Austria, working bean to bar for our ZART Chocolate Makers product range.

For our pralines and other bars (not! indicated as bean to bar) we use couverture. (although we use of course some of our "homemade" chocolate in truffles). We intend to grow our chocolate making capacity, to cover our entire need in the pralines from our own but that is a longer process.

By "hand blender" i meant a stick blender. Thank you for the response that i dont have to invest that much money . Maybe i will invest a little bit in a better stick blender (more rpm) since mine is really old and not made for 2 kg batches. I also will try to optimize my recipe for ganache. Just for information: I ONLY make ganache to cut and coat it later in our enrobing line. So i try to make the recipe as smooth and fine as possible which is still "cut-able". I also make a bottom and a top chocolate (foot?)  and cut it with the guitarcutter while the top (foot?) still soft to get perfect edges. This works great for me. Still i will experiment more for finding a better recipe.
So i guess the Vacuum unit at some mixers is only good for better shelf life and doesnt affect the texture of the ganache. 

(sry for my "not so well" english )

Maybe

It is this information,too.

List of bean-to-bar chocolate manufacturers:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bean-to-bar_chocolate_manufacturers#cite_ref-LondonAcademy_2-0

wow! I'm glad.

Thanks.

Everything you need to know about making bean to bar chocolate at home can be found here: www.chocolatealchemy.com. I'm not affiliated with the site, I just use it.

I think so.

When I learned the price of "bean to bar chocolate", I surprised.
However, it is natural to high compared to goods on the market.
Because, I think there is a need to understand the difference.
Wagashi is japanese confectionery.So is it.
Nobody complain.
I think it's because everyone knows the reason.

I want to carefully convey the words and goods.

Thank you both.
I live in Japan.
I am an amateur.(*'-'*)
That has become a great help.

If you need high quality seeds : 

https://cacao.farm/product/cacao-seeds-theobroma-cacao-amelonado/

We accept only  bitcoin at our web store. (Just as cacao beans at some point were used as currency)

If interested you can use  Circle or Coinbase to purchase.

Good luck!