We were talking to Donna of Pot and Pantry and she told us we had a little mention in the latest issue of edible SF because of our involvement in the New Taste Marketplace:
It’s nice to get our first written press :)
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Last November, while Todd was in Costa Rica on vacation, he went to a Bribri reservation and checked out one of their chocolate houses where he bought some sample beans from the APPTA collective:
He was super excited to try the beans so we roasted them up as soon as he got back. Unfortunately, the batch turned out pretty badly so we had to throw it out. We were busy with other things so we didn’t have a chance to really understand the beans and why they made bad chocolate… until now.
We were doing some cleaning and rediscovered his sample of APPTA beans. Now that we have our own handy Magra, we decided to do a cut test to try and understand what was causing the poor flavor:
As soon as we opened the Magra, it was completely obvious what was wrong. First, there were a lot of unripe beans:
You can spot the unripe beans (in red circles above) by their purple color. They have a pretty neutral flavor to start out but then they get really bitter and nasty, almost like a bad olive. Once this flavor’s in your chocolate, you can’t get rid of it. Our tolerance for unripe beans when making chocolate is near zero and these beans were almost 40% unripe!
Unripe beans were only half of the story, though, as there were a large number of under-fermented beans too:
You can find the under-fermented (again, circled in red above) because they look plump and full (well fermented beans have lots of ridges and look “brainy”). Unlike unripe beans, under-fermented beans don’t add a lot of bad flavor. In fact, they don’t really add flavor at all which means that a few under-fermented beans isn’t going to cause a big issue. However, if you have a lot of under-fermentation, you’re not going to get great flavor. Combine that with a lot of unripe beans and you’ve got a bad recipe.
Unfortunately, because APPTA is a collective, they have a number of challenges, particularly around quality control. With about 1000 producers, it’s really hard to verify that each producer is harvesting at the right time. Worse, because beans are combined across producers, you never know what you’re going to get. Add to that variable genetics across producers and the challenges get even bigger.
So what does all this mean? The take away for us is that there’s no replacement for knowing who’s growing your cacao and how they’re doing it. Without that direct relationship, you’ll never be sure of what you’re going to get: even if you get good stuff once, you may not the next time around. Also, as most cacao farmers have never actually tasted finished chocolate, by going direct we can give them feedback on how their processes affect the end product and how to improve them. Finally, and most importantly, by working directly with the farmers, we can make sure more money goes into their pockets rather than someone in the middle.
We just got our Square in the mail and we’re looking forward to using it at the next market. We also started shipping out orders from yesterday.
We’re really excited to announce that our online store is now open! It took a bit of time to get all the necessary pieces in place (chocolate, permits, shipping, shopping cart, etc), so we’re glad to finally have it out. Now you won’t have to hunt us down at one of the markets to get your chocolate fix. Anyway, we hope you enjoy using the store (and eating the items from it) as much as we enjoyed getting it all ready.
We’ve also moved our blog off of tumblr to our own domain, so please note the new address.
We finished our bean inspection table that we mentioned a little while ago. We’re really happy with how it came out. To make the table, we first talked about the design before sketching some ideas out on paper. Once we had a general design we were happy with, we started the real production process.
The first step in that process is modeling the pieces in AutoCAD. It took a few iterations to get something we were happy with. Once we had everything modeled, we used MasterCAM to create the toolpaths for the CNC desktop router we’d be using to cut out the pieces. Getting the toolpaths exactly how we wanted them also took a bit of time, but we ended up with a nice, efficient cut. After getting everything set up in the digital world, we went to the Tech Shop to bring the parts to life. We started with an air cut to make sure our toolpath wouldn’t hit anything (work holding, bottom of table, etc) and then we cut the pieces out of foam. The foam pieces looked good, so we started cutting the pieces out of HDPE. We had to adjust the feed rates slightly, but, after a little less than an hour, the parts were all done. After that, we assembled the parts, added the mesh, and sealed the joints using a food grade silicone sealant and the table was done!
It’s important to inspect the beans before throwing them in the roaster as there can be lots of junk tagging along in the bag. We decided to build a bean inspection table (a glorified bin with some mesh to let the small junk fall through) to make that step better. We’ve taken some classes at the Tech Shop in the past and this seemed like the perfect time to apply those skills. We modeled the parts using AutoCAD and created the toolpaths using MasterCAM. The video shows the desktop router cutting the pieces out of HDPE. Now we just need to assemble those pieces, add the mesh, and seal everything and we’ll have a fully FDA compliant inspection table.
We had fun and met some great people at the Homegrown Marin Market. I had missed the fresh stroopwafels at one of the previous markets, but I made sure to hit the Stroopwerks table early this time. Also, thanks to Jere of Biddy McCool’s for taking the picture and the oatmeal cookies (they were delicious)!
After seeing the magra in action in Costa Rica, we ordered one and it was just delivered. We haven’t had time to do a systematic analysis of our beans, but we had to try it out:
We went to the New Taste Market in Portrero Hill last weekend. We didn’t have quite as much space as we’re used to, but Alice made it work:
It’s always fun talking to people about chocolate and the market had a really good vibe:
If you missed us last weekend (or if you’re craving more), we’ll be at the Marin Homegrown Market on Sunday (4/10) from 11am to 5pm at the Marin Fencing Academy (827 4th Street, San Rafael).