Archive | people

Q & A: Pearl Wong

March 7, 2016 by Molly Gore

Every other Monday (most of the time), we’ll introduce you to a member of the Dandelion community through a Q & A. Stay tuned to meet our chocolate makers, café staff, kitchen team, producers, partners, importers, mentors, and everyone who helps make our chocolate possible. This week, we’d like you to meet Pearl, one of our former chocolate makers who took some time off to get deep into every facet of chocolate making and the cacao supply chain last year, and has since returned to help us open in Japan.

Name: Pearl Wong (or PWONG)

Hometown: Trumbull, CT

Job Title: Consultant – Interim Production Manager for Kuramae

Worked at Dandelion since: March 2013 – June 2015 (San Francisco), November 2015-present (Dandelion Japan)

Q: What do you do at Dandelion in Japan?

Seiji, CEO of Dandelion Chocolate Japan, hired me to set up production at Kuramae and train chocolate makers on the Dandelion chocolate making process.

Q: What is your favorite part of what you do?

We temper by hand (using a marble slab) right now because the test batches are too small to go through the Unica. This means everyone really gets to learn what is happening during the tempering process. I thought it would be easiest to learn that if they had to stir and mold the chocolate by hand.

I love tempering – it’s a beautifully complex process and it feels like the chocolate is talking to you about where it’s at and what it needs to be predominantly Form V (the ideal crystal structure that we want the cocoa butter to take). Also, chocolate tastes great when it’s been well-tempered. And I like tasty chocolate.

Q: How does tempering affect the taste of chocolate?

Basically it changes the way the cocoa butter melts in your mouth and therefore how your mouth draws out the flavors, whether it involves a bit more work on your part or just more time. So, how these flavors are perceived will change due to the crystal structure of your tempering. Not to mention a whole ‘nother set of factors like smells, sounds, and other people’s influence. But I find tempering is a factor that gets a little overlooked.

For an analogy – think of a time you had one type of soup. One time you had it fresh and hot. The other time you had it cold the next day because you don’t own a microwave and extra dishes are work. Think about how those two experiences were different or similar!

Q: Cold soup? Ew. What does your typical day look like?

I stroll in around 8:30AM to write up the plan (we start at 9AM); vacuum out the roaster; take lids off the melangers and test batches; taste everything, and the day just flows from there. Every day we do most of the steps in chocolate making even though we’re still mostly at the test batches phase (i.e. 1 kilo batches).

Q: How are the test batches going? Is the process different at all because you’re in Japan?

Well, the overall Dandelion process hasn’t changed – we’re doing a ton of experiments to narrow down the flavor profile of each bean. But the additional work I’m doing here is to figure out our 10 kilo roaster which uses a different heating element and therefore it has changed our roasting style from Valencia. It’s been pretty interesting because I’ve been roasting manually – something we almost never do at Valencia. And I’ve been roasting cacao as though I were roasting coffee (to a bean temperature rather than to a set time). I’ve been really enjoying the learning process of how this roasting style affects the flavor of cacao. I’ve also been able to dial in the roaster a lot better now that I’m working with Camino Verde beans. They are the beans I am most familiar with since I spent 6 weeks on the farm helping to harvest, ferment, and dry them last fall.”

Q: What’s the most challenging thing you’ve confronted in the last month?

The way companies are structured here is a little different, and working within new kinds of hierarchies takes some getting use to mainly because I’m not a hierarchical person at all. There are so many different etiquettes in business you have to observe. Little things always get lost in translation, so learning to manage here is just different.

The 10-kilo US Roaster and now the used Hobart cutter mixer can be mechanically challenging too. So I guess another continually challenging aspect is dealing with equipment that doesn’t behave the way you expect it to and/or breaks down unexpectedly.

Q: But what else is new, right?

True, it’s not really a chocolate factory until everything breaks down at least once or twice, and then on a monthly or weekly basis. Sometimes I wonder if being a good chocolate maker really means being able to troubleshoot and fix up the machines that make the chocolate.

What happens when you don’t give the Hobart cutter mixer a day off? It takes a day off anyway.

Q: Big question: what’s your favorite chocolate?

Ugh this kind of question is tough to answer because it really depends on my mood. But I always love Marou’s bars (Vietnam). Their Treasure Island is my favorite of their line. I think 24Blackbirds (Santa Barbara) makes great two-ingredient chocolate, as does Letterpress Chocolate (LA). Also, Bar au Chocolat (LA) makes beautiful Madagascar and Bahia, Brazil bars, and their packaging is some of the best I’ve seen. Finally, Om Nom (Iceland) is another one of my favorites for their packaging, and their Papua New Guinea bar is great.

From Dandelion? The Madagascar from 2014 and 2012 are my favorites, as are Mantuano and Öko-Caribe 2014. I will always cherish the original Papua New Guinea bar from 2012 which, by the way, I still have a few of, and I think I must be the only one in the world with these bars now. Obviously, the unicorn Camino Verde 70% 2013 bar is a favorite. Too bad it was too thick to temper.

Q: Sorry to interrupt, but I thought I was the only one who hoarded 2012 Papua New Guinea bars. I keep them locked in a golden box buried three miles underground. I love them.

That’s weird, how would you ever get the chocolate out of the ground to eat it? But honestly there are a lot of great bean-to-bar makers out there, so it’s hard to call out just one favorite. It highly depends on what I’m craving that day. And also I’m very picky, so what I really like might not be reflective of other people’s taste preferences. For example, I only named dark chocolate bars above because that’s my go-to chocolate type. I’m highly biased against milk bars, so you shouldn’t trust my opinion on milk chocolate.

Anyway, my point is: always remember that these things are highly subjective to the individual. Find out what you like and stick with it – don’t worry too much about what experts, foodies, or judges tell you are good or bad.

Q: Good advice. Tell me about Kuramae.

Kuramae is a town within Tokyo. It is considered old Tokyo because there haven’t been as much development here, so there aren’t skyscrapers everywhere. The architecture is also quite old in the neighborhood. It’s quiet, mostly residential, but has some neat craftsmen shops and great little restaurants that are owned and operated by just one or two people.

One of my favorite spots is the 500 yen sushi don (sushi rice bowl, like a chirashi) take-out window. They serve fresh sashimi on top of flavorful sushi rice. And did I mention it’s stupid cheap? 500 yen. That’s less than five dollars.

Another favorite is a handmade soba noodle shop that is literally called the soba izakaya (izakaya means pub). I haven’t gotten to try everything on the menu, but I hope to be able to do so before I finish my assignment.

Q: That is stupid cheap. Speaking of things that are not stupid cheap, do you miss San Francisco?

Not at all. I’m surprised how many people are trying to live in the Bay Area right now. It’s kind of crazy considering all the other great and affordable places where you could be living comfortably, instead of fighting for an old apartment/studio lease with 50 other people. And the even better thing is that you can find local coffee roasters and brewers and chocolate makers almost everywhere in the US. I know because I took a road trip across the country last summer and I found all the comforts I enjoyed in San Francisco, elsewhere.

Q: Ok fine, sure, whatever. Just try to change your mind, okay? San Francisco misses you.

Q & A: Pablo Aguilar

February 8, 2016 by Alex Voynow

Every other Monday, we’ll introduce you to a member of the Dandelion community through a Q & A. Stay tuned to meet our chocolate makers, café staff, kitchen team, producers, partners, importers, mentors, and everyone who helps make our chocolate possible. This week, we’d like you to meet Pablo, one of our chocolate makers with a depth of experience in the cacao industry that few can match. And a thing for pizza.

If you’ve been to our Valencia Street factory and peered through the small windows in the hallway leading to the kitchen, there’s a good chance you’ve seen our bean-prepping juggernaut, Pablo. You might have seen his face affixed with a look of steadfast concentration, or, more likely, you caught him sharing stories with the other makers with a lightness and enthusiasm that keep many of us in the “bean room” for longer than we ever really need to be. He has always told us wonderful stories, but for a while there’s one story I’ve been really hankering to hear: his own.

Pablo immigrated to the US from Cuba four years ago, having previously worked in the Cuban cacao agro industry for a few decades. He’s well acquainted with the gamut of chocolate production, not only from bean to bar but from tree—from ground, from land—to bar. As one chocolate maker to another, Pablo was kind enough to explain to me his life in the “Cocoa World,” offering a glimpse into what it’s like to not only work in the chocolate world, but to live it.

Many thanks to Obed for being an excellent translator.

NAME: Pablo Aguilar

HOMETOWN: Bayamo, Cuba

FAVORITE CHOCOLATE: Cahabón

WORKED AT DANDELION SINCE: July 18, 2015

POSITION: Chocolate Maker

Q: Alright, let’s get into it. Where did you grow up?

A: I was born in Bayamo, Granma, in eastern Cuba. I lived there until I was 24 years old.

Q: How did you get into the cacao world?

A: My wife was born in and grew up in Baracoa city, known as “The Capital of Cacao in Cuba.” I moved there when we married. Since I had already graduated at the age of 23 as an Agronomical Engineer in Bayamo, it only made sense that my professional activity there was to be in cacao.

Q: What’s Baracoa like?

A: Baracoa is in the Guantánamo province, and it’s the second most important city in this area, and generally important as a center of history and tourism—it’s very beautiful and there is a industrial chocolate factory. I like Baracoa! It has a lot of natural resources, very green vegetation, and a very tropical character. It rains a lot and the relative humidity is 80%-85% all year, which makes for very good growing conditions for cacao, coffee, and coconuts. Baracoa contains 78% of Cuba’s cacao plantations, and 88% of its national cacao production. The culture of Baracoa is the cacao, and her handmade chocolate is known as “Bola de Cacao” (cocoa ball), which we use to make a drink called “Chorote.”

Q: How long did you work in cacao?

A: 27 years. First, I taught classes about cacao, coffee, and the science of different agricultural crops at the Agronomical Institute in Baracoa. Next, after one year of teaching, I moved to the Cocoa Research Station, which was the only cacao research center in Cuba. I worked as an investigator in this center for ten years, working in different agrotechnical departments dealing with plant nutrition, irrigation, as well as in nurseries, development plantations, and production plantations. One specific project I worked on was the introduction of organic fertilization into Cuba’s cacao nurseries, transitioning from chemical to organic fertilizer.

I collaborated with other investigators on certain research themes. After that, I worked in the Territorial Plants Protection Center (ETPP)—in the Integral Management of Pest, Disease and Quarantine of Plants—of which I was Specialist-Inspector and the director for many years. A few of us were in charge of the cocoa warehouse, wherein my partners and I checked the phytosanitary quality of the cacao stored in the warehouse. At the same time, I worked in the preparation and realization of the municipality project to improve the quality of life in the cocoa farmer community and others in urban agriculture.

Q: Why did Cuba want to transition from chemical to organic fertilization?

A: Although chemical fertilizer increases production, it’s bad for soil, and bad for the health of people and animals. The Cuban government looked to other countries in the Soviet bloc, and they saw that the old USSR, East Germany and other countries in the world which used inorganic fertilization also used this method. They decided to transition to organic after 1980.

Q: So were the Soviet Bloc countries the biggest customers of Cuban produce?

A: Yes, Cuba exported a lot of citrus products and other produce to those countries of the old bloc.

Q:Was it the same for cacao?

A: No. A big part of the cacao production was, and is, for national consumption, and the other part was used to obtain cocoa butter to export to this country and others. Cuba isn’t considered a big exporter of cacao, but in 2008, a new movement arose in Cuba to export more cacao. A Cuban cacao export enterprise started sending cacao to Holland, and other European countries.

Q: So in Cuba, the government buys all the cacao?

A: Yes. It was Cuba.

Q: So that being the case, what incentive do the farmers have to produce high quality cacao?

A: Well, it works like this: Normally, the farmer farms his own area, and the government buys his cacao, and brings it to a cocoa beneficio for fermentation and drying. To encourage quality, the government also has a stimulus system: when the farmers produces more or better cacao, they get a bonus. It’s like a voucher. For example, the government will give you a voucher for your clothes, shoes, etc. if you produce extra, and with great quality.

Q: What is cuban cacao like?

A: It’s excellent, similar to Ecuadorian. Their farms have developed along with the research that’s working to improve cacao.

Q: Do you think the market and trade of Cuban cacao will expand, and we will see it pop up here?

A: Yes, I hope so. I hope for a good new relationship between US and Cuba.

Q: Okay, so, I know you really like pizza, and you really like sushi. What do you like better?

A: Pizza. But pizza with a nice hot chocolate. Because chocolate is my favorite.

Q: That’s kind of a weird combination. So between pizza and sushi, you like chocolate the best?

A: Definitely, pizza and chocolate.

Q: Makes sense. One more question: what was your favorite part of working in cacao in Cuba?

A: Being involved in the culture of cacao, in the lives of the producers, was always a good reason to do the work I did. I liked to solve the different problems presented to me, so the research was my favorite. That said, I found that being out in the farms, with the farmers, was something I enjoyed as well. I would visit the farmers, and they would show me their unique styles of growing—from seedlings, to fermentation—and I would always learn from them. We would share knowledge, and we would make chocolate together, so I really enjoyed that relationship, working together with them.

Q: Will it be possible for someone like Dandelion to go down and buy cacao directly, or will they also have to go through the government?

A: It’s possible. Now that Cuba is opening new relationship with US, I think it can happen. There are also other companies that are establishing business with Cuba.

Q: Well, here’s to hoping. Thanks Pablo!

A: Anytime.

Q & A: Kai Heimpel

January 25, 2016 by Molly Gore

Every other Monday, we’ll introduce you to a member of the Dandelion community through a Q & A. Stay tuned to meet our chocolate makers, café staff, kitchen team, producers, partners, importers, mentors, and everyone who helps make our chocolate possible. We took a few weeks off for the holidays but we’re back this week with Kai Heimpel, our R & D Assistant who spends his days rescuing machines in distress.

Name: Kai Heimpel

Hometown: Saarbrücken, Germany

Favorite Chocolate: Omnom Licorice & Sea Salt

Worked at Dandelion Since: March 2015

Position: R & D Assistant

What’s your typical day like?

Well, on a typical day I usually have a project in mind. I get to work and I start to work at the project, but inevitably I’ll find something more urgent, a machine that just broke. I’ll take a look at it, and try and fix it. At some point, I’ll get back to my first project, but not before I get caught up in emails or calling a service person or someone to help. You never know when a machine is going to stop working, so it’s really unpredictable. But that’s what I do: projects. Just not always the ones I counted on that day.

So you spend a lot of time repairing broken things?

Basically. At Valencia, something breaks about every week. Sometimes, chocolate gets stuck in between the granite, the steel, and the Delrin (a food-grade acetal resin). Left long enough, it starts to grind down the Delrin and steel, and even the millstones. So we have to keep all the maintained to keep the machines turning at a similar rate.

Last time I saw you, you were elbow deep in the wiring of the tempering machine.

Well, it breaks all the time. It has a big augur screw on an axle in the back that pumps the chocolate, and it’s held by two bearings. Somehow chocolate got into the ball bearings, and chocolate is the darndest things when it gets into machine parts because it grinds down metal surprisingly quickly.

Wait, chocolate beats metal?

Sometimes you can lose a millimeter a month or something weird.

That’s crazy. So what happened this time?

Are you really interested in hearing about this?

Yes.

Okay. So, the chocolate made the bearing irregular, produced a bunch of heat, and baked the chocolate on. It was black and stinky, and looked like charcoal. I’m actually surprised we didn’t find any diamonds. It was so hard and black that I thought it was a seal, so I was spending half a day on it to get the seal off and then, in a burst of inspiration, I grabbed a spike and chiseled it, and suddenly it broke because it was chocolate! Unbelievable. Now that’s what really excites me.

Can you think of anything more exciting than chiseling baked chocolate off a ball bearing?

No.

Got it. How does San Francisco compare to home?

It’s expensive. And all the streets are straight, it’s confusing. Gas is cheaper and measurements are all in Imperial, which you call Standard, even though it’s not standard anywhere but here. Also there’s Yosemite here and all that. That’s different.

Who is your superhero alterego?

Birdman.

Why?

It was a good movie.

Hmm. If you could be any animal, what would you be?

Is a virus an animal?

No. And why would you want to be a virus?

I’m just checking the perimeters of the question.

Right.

This is a trick question because humans are animals.

That’s irrelevant.

Can I go back to work now?

I guess.

Q & A: Dr. Charles Kerchner, Ph.D

December 14, 2015 by Molly Gore

Every other Monday, we’ll introduce you to a member of the Dandelion community through a Q & A. Stay tuned to meet our chocolate makers, café staff, kitchen team, producers, partners, importers, mentors, and everyone who helps make our chocolate possible. This week, we’d like you to meet Dr. Charles Kerchner, Ph.D, the man behind Zorzal Cacao—an innovative conservation effort and our source for Dominican beans.

Name: Dr. Charles Kercher, Ph.D

Title: Chief Troublemaker, Zorzal Cacao

Hometown: Boston, Massachusetts

Current address: Los Cincos de Guinneal

Favorite food: Italian

Q: I hear that Zorzal Cacao started as your Ph.D dissertation. How does that work?

A: It was mostly theoretical, trying to understand how to make conservation efforts for migratory birds more cost effective. You know, trying to answer the question: where is the biggest conservation bang for your buck?

Q: And where is it?

A: Well, conservation is traditionally done with government funding through grants, but those haven’t always been the most sustainable. In general, funding like that has provided about 25% of the real costs needed to finance protected areas in Latin America, and I think the private sector has a really unique opportunity to participate here because instead of surviving on donations, you’re giving and getting. It’s building a relationship.

Q: So, you’re growing cacao on the bird reserve?

A: Yes! About 150 acres of our 1019 are reserved for cacao production, and about 30 of those are in production now. We also buy from cacao farmers who live adjacent to the Reserve and share our conservation goals. And we just completed the construction of fermenting boxes and drying tunnels so so we can process our own cacao…

Q: How do you dry cacao with all that rain you get?

A: Well, we had to develop a few special techniques. We built 18-meter tunnels with big plastic covers and mesh screen beds elevated three feet off the ground inside. We structured the roof in a way that lets humid air escape, and when it’s really rainy, we use artificial drying techniques, powered by our solar panels or propane tanks, that shoots hot air over the beds of cacao. You want the beans to dry quickly enough that they won’t mold, but slowly enough that it lets the residual acetic acid from fermentation dissipate. That’s how you get a nice, chocolatey flavor.

Q: Let’s back up. How did you end up in the Dominican Republic in the first place?

A: Well, I initially came down with the Peace Corps in 2001 with a USAID grant to build fermenting boxes and build out an organic cacao certification program. I was working with farmers at the La Red cooperative, which is going through some restructuring right now. At the end of my Peace Corps service, I remember riding in the back of a red pick-up truck to my village and thinking there was an opportunity to create a business focusing on cacao and conservation. After the Peace Corps, I completed my master’s and doctorate degrees, focusing on conservation economics. Cacao production provides a unique opportunity to protect fragile ecosystems and create jobs for local communities. From a global perspective, there is a strong correlation between the cacao belt around the world (20 degrees North and South of the equator) and biodiversity “hotspots.” Thus, I came back to the Dominican Republic, because there was a unique opportunity to bring my academic knowledge related to conservation finance together with my practical experience in cacao cultivation and create a business. Given my existing connections and the focus on the Bicknell’s thrush, the Dominican Republic was an ideal place.

Q: Okay, now tell me about the birds.

A: It’s cool. The Bicknell’s Thrush is a songbird that migrates from Vermont to the Dominican Republic every year. It’s not the flashiest bird, but it has a beautiful song. It’s a good symbol for the link we’re trying to build between the hemispheres, between the public and private sector, and between business and conservation.

To be honest, it’s also easier to build momentum for a conservation-focused business if you pick a specific species to protect, even though we are really about building and protecting all kinds of biodiversity here.

Ryan Berk (Parliament Chocolate), Nate Hodge (Raaka Chocolate), Liv Ordway (Raaka Chocolate), Charles Kerchner, Greg D’Alesandre (Dandelion Chocolate), Neno (Producer, Zorzal Cacao), and Minda Nicolas (Dandelion Chocolate) visiting the Reserva Zorzal sanctuary last June.

Q: I heard something about a reforestation program too. You’re planting trees? We like trees.

A: Yep. We’re selling carbon credits to the chocolate makers who buy our cacao. The carbon offset project is registered with a third-party carbon standard called Plan Vivo. It is a reforestation project focused on restoration of biodiversity and bird habitat. One credit counts for one tonne of CO2. And everything here is solar powered.

Q: Everything??

Yes, everything. The lights, fans, TV, washer machine, pumps and refrigerator. Well, we need to buy the refrigerator…but we’re getting there.

Q: Sounds rustic. Okay, last question, and it’s a dorky one. If you could have coffee with anyone from history, who would you choose?

A: Eric Clapton, because he’s a rock star.

Meet the Maker: Trevor Fast

November 23, 2015 by Molly Gore

For information about our 12 Nights of Chocolate, including tickets, click here.

Every other Monday, we’ll introduce you to a member of the Dandelion community through a Q & A. Stay tuned to meet our chocolate makers, café staff, kitchen team, producers, partners, importers, mentors, and everyone who helps make our chocolate possible. This week, we’d like you to meet Trevor, one of our lead chocolate makers who has an endless supply of corny jokes and puns that we never hesitate to steal and use as our own.

The chocolate hairstyles of tasting spoons.

Name: Trevor Fast

Hometown: Walnut Creek, CA

Favorite Chocolate: Butuo, Liberia 70%

Worked at Dandelion since: July 2014

Position: Lead Chocolate Maker

Q: What does a Lead Chocolate Maker do?

A: It means I am in charge of making sure things get done on a day-to-day basis on the production floor.

Q: What do your friends think a lead chocolate maker does?

A: They think I play with chocolate all day. But what I really do is more seriously play around with chocolate all day.

Q: What did (or do) you want to be when you grew up?

A: Two things. When I was in elementary school I wanted to make video games, but according to some of my friends, in my junior year of high school I said I wanted to make chocolate. So I guess I’m where I said I’d be.

Q: What is your favorite part of the process?

A: It’s a close call between tempering chocolate and flavor testing. With tempering you’re actually manipulating the cocoa butter to form crystals. I think the science behind what we do is really interesting.

Q: What did you do before you came to Dandelion?

A: I studied Food Science at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, working at Cal Poly Chocolates, a student-run chocolatier project. We had a professor who supervised it, but we pretty much got to run things. We got fair trade milk chocolate and dark chocolate drops, melted and tempered them, and then added things to make them into chocolate bars.

In part, it was science-based, because we tempered, but at Dandelion it’s more about manipulating the natural flavors of different beans from different places, and we’re bringing out different flavors without adding stuff. At Cal Poly, we were chocolatiers and the process was ingredient-based. I like them both. But there I was a chocolatier and here I’m a chocolate maker.

trevor4

Q: What is your superpower?

A: The ability to tell jokes.

Q: Tell me your best joke.

A: How many tickles does it take to make an octopus laugh?

Q: How many?

A: Ten tickles.

Q: (pause) That’s your best joke?

A: No. It’s one of my best jokes.

Q: How many do you have?

A: Infinite.

Q: That’s a lot of jokes.

A: Have you ever seen an elephant hiding in a tree?

Q: No.

A: That’s because they’re so good at it.

Trevor2

Q: Do you have any other superpowers?

A: I haven’t tested this out yet but I’m confident that I have the ability to detect poisons. I’m very sensitive to bitter, and poisons tend to be very bitter.

Q: That sounds useful. Okay, last question. If you could be an animal, what would you be?

A: I’m definitely an indoor cat, because I don’t like to go outdoors. But I like the outdoors. I like watching other people be outdoors, like through a window. Like a cat.

I’d also like to be a bear. I could do whatever I want and people would let me do it, and I’d be at the top of the food chain.

Q: So you’re an indoor cat who secretly wants to be a bear?

A: Yes.

Q: Thanks for your time, Trevor.

Two Years In: A Letter from Lisa Vega

September 11, 2015 by Lisa Vega

Lisa-2 Today, I’m celebrating my two-year anniversary as the Executive Pastry Chef at Dandelion Chocolate! I never imagined that a quick, introductory meeting with Todd while en route to the Jay Z and Justin Timberlake concert (while gainfully employed) could change my career path. I was deep into the throes of restaurant life: long grueling days, dinner out of plastic quart containers, two obligatory post-dinner-service tequila gimlets, and blistered fingers from quenelling ice cream for six straight hours every night. I thought that was just the norm. At first, the cultural difference was a shock. WordPress, All Hands (our monthly company-wide meeting) and weekly “one-on-one” meetings were all foreign terms to me. A “one-on-one” in restaurant culture meant you were ordering a shot of Jameson with a beer chaser. Speaking in the common/pirate-esque kitchen terminology I was accustomed to was like speaking a different language here. However, over time, I have settled in to what has been the best adventure in the most supportive environment (I often receive applause for putting brownie scraps on the factory staircase). I am fortunate to have the creative responsibility along with my kitchen team to take this delicious ingredient and make it into unique drinks and pastries while also teaching our customers about the charm of single origin chocolate. I have consumed chocolate every day for the last two years, and some of my personal favorites (my “Camino Verde greatest hits”) are the nibby horchata, frozen hot chocolate, and dulce de leche bar. I can’t wait for all that the future has in store: the Ferry Building hot chocolate and pastry stand, and a book that will include our kitchen recipes. Until then, I’ll be holding down the kitchen in our continually bustling cafe on Valencia Street, where I end my work week on Saturdays around 5pm when there is always still a line out the door for chocolate!

Thanks for all the chocolate love,

Lisa

*This letter also appeared in our September newsletter. To sign up for monthly updates, visit our Contact Us page.

Our Tours are Changing!

July 2, 2015 by Becky Wurwarg

Every Monday morning when I open the door to the chocolate factory to start my work week, that heavy, roasty, and sweet chocolate smell overwhelms my senses. By Friday I will have gotten used to it, but it only takes a weekend before it knocks me off my feet again on Monday.

I love that smell, but what I love more is how it represents the myriad things that go on under our roof at 740 Valencia Street. It’s the aroma of everything that we do. It comes from the production team roasting cocoa beans or grinding nibs to start a new batch in a melanger; from the cafe team, steaming up a hot chocolate; the kitchen crew baking off the next round of nutella cookies; the flavor team starting an experimental test batch to ensure quality in our chocolate; someone upstairs breaking up chocolate bars for our next Chocolate 101 class.
Our wide open factory is built on the basis that we love to share what we do. One of our favorite ways to introduce what we do is by showing you our process through a tour of our factory floor. Every time we give a tour, we get the chance to stop and really think through what we do and why we do it. The tour gives us a platform to engage regularly about the process, the local food community, the chocolate community, our relationships with the farms we work with, and the folks that visit us.

When we first established our tour program two years ago, we meant to build a clear look inside our process and how we do what we do. We wanted to make it easy and free, and the feedback has been more encouraging than we could have imagined.

Lately, we are finding that because the tours are free and easy to sign up for, it is also very easy to not attend. Of course, we totally understand that things come up, and anyone who signs up for a tour truly intends to come. However, lately, we have also been amazed by a recent influx of tour requests! Because we are truly trying to share our process with everyone who is interested, we are really hoping to make sure the opportunity to tour is really available for those who will definitely participate. So what to do? We decided to make some tour changes and improvements to our current system!

Sign up will now be available through our website with a calendar that’s easier to use. We are increasing the size of our tours to be able to accommodate eight people. Tours will be held Wednesdays-Saturdays from 6:10-6:50pm, and we have hopes of adding new days of the week in the coming months. We’re extending our tours so we can start with a guided tasting of our single origin bars before taking you on a tour of our factory floor and explaining our process. We are also going to start charging a $5 fee for the tour to encourage those who do sign up to attend. But at the end of the tour we will be giving all attendees who do come a free hot chocolate gift card to use in our cafe! We are hoping this system ensures that everybody who signs up really does participate and ends their tour on an extra chocolate-y note.

We hope to explore our factory and all of its toasty aromas, noises, sights, and tastes with you soon! To reserve a spot, head to our Tours page.

This Friday — Chloe and Maria

September 24, 2014 by Todd

This Friday (9/26) at 5-7pm in the cafe, our good friend and chocolate expert Chloe Doutre-Roussel will be doing a book signing and talk. Chloe will be bringing the last few copies still available of her book, the Chocolate Connoisseur. Chloe is considered one of the top chocolate experts / tasters in the world and we are excited to have her here for a few hours. As Chloe only gets to SF every few years, this is not to be missed!

Along with Chloe, we have another special treat — starting at 7pm, Maria Fernanda Di Giacobbe will discuss her recent and exciting work in Venezuela: Cacao de Origen, a Project to enhance and promote the Venezuelan cacao tradition alongside cacao producers, chocolatiers and chocolate makers. She’ll share a chocolate-y presentation from her unique perspective as a chef, entrepreneur, artist, chocolatier, researcher and author of Cacao and Chocolate in Venezuela and Venezuelan Bombons: 25 Recipes.

This event is free — please RSVP here.

La Cervezeria, Papua New Guinea Cacao, and Cocoa Crisp

June 2, 2014 by Maverick Watson

On Tuesday June 3rd we will be hosting a sourcing talk about Papua New Guinea in our cafe at 7pm. Greg D’alesandre will be talking about his recent trip to the country to find new sources of cacao. And speaking of cacao from Papua New Guinea…

I’ve been hanging out with William Bostwick, a local beer maker that often works at the small brewery La Cervezeria de MateVeza on 18th St and Church a lot lately. We met a few months back when he was buying a bag of Whole Roasted Madagascar Beans and I asked how he was going to use them. “I’m making beer!” he said, as he pulled out a bag of Far West Fungi mushrooms that smelled like maple syrup. He used the mushrooms and cacao to make a great ale for SF Beer Week.

William is an inventive and enthusiastic beer maker (and writer) that likes to use unusual ingredients in his beer making, which brought him to Dandelion. That beer turned out really well, so I’ve been working with him and playing with new ideas about using cacao in beer making. We’ve discussed how different origins could be used to get different flavors out of the brews and how to best use the beans. His batches are only around for a couple weeks at the longest and are served on tap at La Cervezeria. All of their beers are brewed in just 20 gallon batches, which lets their brewers have fun playing with new ingredients and recipes very often.

Our most recent batch is a South Pacific Stout made with our Papua New Guinea beans called “Cocoa Crisp”. However, it doesn’t come off as a stout. It is very dark in color with a very creamy coconut body and mouthfeel, but it has a very light flavor profile. It’s playfully malty and effervescent with undertones of rich prune and… chocolate! It’s really unique and if I were blindfolded while drinking it, I would think of it as an amber ale; it’s surprisingly light in body for it’s color.

Alright, let’s nerd out for a minute. I’m new to brewing so all of this was very exciting to me. The base of the beer is Maris Otter Barley, which is a traditional British grain known for it’s “bready” sweetness, that William likened to a honey graham cracker. These grains were added to oatmeal (for body) and wood-smoked grains, to emphasize our Papua New Guinea beans’ smokiness, and some dark roasted grains (for color). All of these ingredients make up the “mash” for brewing the beer, to which we then added Papua New Guinea Cacao! We were thinking “S’mores” when we thought up this profile, but the beer ended up being much lighter and fruitier than we imagined!

We ended up adding the PNG beans to the mash whole and cooking the mash below boiling in order to more more gently extract their flavors. Considering the cacao is naturally about %50 fat (cocoa butter), releasing that much fat into beer isn’t great because it has would decrease the head on the beer, so we decided not to crack them. So we essentially steeped them like a tea in the mash.

After we steeped the mash and drained it, we have “wort”. Wort is essentially beer tea. It’s hot, unfermented beer. It’s got tons of sugar in it that’s been extracted from all of the grains and would make a bountiful feast for yeast… so this is the part where we inoculate with yeast! We used a Belgian Trappist Ale Yeast, which ferments with a lot of fruity esters and lending flavor notes of plum, raisin or even caramelized banana. All of these parameters match up with what we’ve gotten out of the cacao in our Papua New Guinea chocolate, so it made sense to use it for the beer. The brew then took about a week to ferment before it was put into kegs (carbonated) and tapped! It’s on tap right now at La Cervezeria if you want to want to go try it!

Our Cacao beans from Papua New Guinea are delicious and unique because of the way that they are dried on the farm using wood burning fires that give them a “campfire smokiness”. PNG has a tendency to be very humid and wet, so drying the beans in the sun, as most farmers do, is out of the question. To make up for this, the build huts over metal pipes in which they build wood fires. Then they put place the beans on racks above these pipes to receive heat and dry. Of course, this is all in a very rural area with limited building resources, so some smoke reaches the beans. This is where the “smokiness” comes from, if you’ve ever been anywhere near a campfire, I don’t have to tell you that wood smoke has a tendency to stick to things. There are A LOT more ins and outs to the growing cacao industry in Papua New Guinea, their processes and practices that is beyond my knowledge, but if you want to know more, Greg D’alesandre (our Bean Sourcerer) just got back from a trip to Papua New Guinea and is conducting a talk about his trip, the farms he visited there, and their practices on June 3rd at our Factory on Valencia Street! The presentation will start at 7pm and include photos and lots of fun information. If you’re interested in beer as well as the chocolate side of all of this, there’s going to be an unofficial “after-party” for the talk at La Cervezeria, where you can try the Cocoa Crisp Papua New Guinea beer! Hope to see you there!

Next Saturday — David Lebovitz!

April 28, 2014 by Todd

Next Saturday from 11am-12:30pm, David Lebovitz will be signing copies of his new book, My Paris Kitchen in the café. Lisa will also be making one of his signature desserts (made with Dandelion Chocolate of course!) for sale during the signing, or until sold out.

Anyone would be honored to host David. Chocolate lovers have long followed his Great Book of Chocolate, his blog detailing his food adventures in Paris, and his impressive collection of dessert and ice cream books.

However, there’s actually a much bigger backstory that connects David to Dandelion Chocolate.

To set the context, in the mid-2000s, my wife, Elaine, and I started making chocolate in our home kitchen. At the time, there wasn’t much information for making chocolate outside a factory. However, we found the chocoaltealchemy forum, ordered a few unroasted cocoa beans, and did our best to approximate winnowers and roasters with hair dryers and popcorn poppers. We roasted the beans in our oven. We peeled the beans, one by one. But the next step was tough. We needed to crush the beans and sugar into a smooth liquid. Our mortar and pestle wasn’t up for the task and determined to finish our first batch before the weekend closed, we followed a forum recommendation to try a juicer. We called every kitchen store nearby to see who was still open late on a Sunday night with a juicer in stock. Finally armed with our shiny new juicer, we dropped the nibs in and – voila – we were horrified to see all of the nibs spew out the other end, untouched. Apparently we had the wrong type of juicer – an expensive mistake!

The following weekend we researched and located juicer #2. Again, we dropped all of efforts into the feeder and from our first bag of beans, out popped about one tiny Hershey kiss-sized drop of chocolate. It wasn’t much and it didn’t taste great, but it showed that it was possible. We split the little drop into two and made two cups of very diluted hot chocolate. Looking back at our weekends, we could see a thousand things we could improve. We didn’t realize it at the time, but that was the start of a multi-year chocolate adventure. (By the way, if you want to learn how to make chocolate at home, consider our chocolate 201 class — it will save you some trouble!)

A while later, David posted a blog offering a small group a personalized week-long food tour around Paris. We were lucky to secure two spots before it instantly sold out. One plane trip later, we were tasting our way through Paris. There were the farmer’s markets, the cheese shops, the cooking classes, the confectioner’s factory — this tour is a foodie’s dream.

The vision of a small-batch American bean-to-bar factory started to take shape. As we went from chocolate shop to chocolate shop, we were charmed by the French chocolate tea salons, the delicate chocolatiers, and the hot chocolates always served with a little cookie on the side. We met the incredible Mort Rosenblum, author of the book Chocolate, and discussed the New American Chocolate Movement, then in its infancy.

The highlight of our trip was a day trip to Lyon where we saw the small Bernachon chocolate factory. A petit cafe and pastry shop upfront belied a cozy bean-to-bar factory in the back with small batch roasters and artisan chocolate makers. We learned that it was this factory that had initially inspired Scharffen Berger too. With clumsy high school French and a long list of questions, we interrogated their staff about roasts and beans, conching and winnowing, and making great chocolate.

Bernachon Factory; Their roaster looking tired after being asked a lot of questions.

It was on this trip that I confided to David that there could be another chapter to this chocolate making hobby. Back in the states, we started experimenting and working towards the vision. My friend and business partner, Cam, caught the chocolate bug and together we started a mini factory in a friend’s garage. We dreamed of someday opening a cozy café with hot chocolates made from our personal small-batch chocolate. In the meantime, we started roast after roast, making tiny test batches, learning how to make great chocolate — and finally — a few years later we launched and opened our doors.

It’s such an honor to host David whose books, blogs, and tours have inspired us. And it’s exciting to see him inspire a new line of chocolate artisans who are just as excited and passionate about chocolate as we are.

We hope to see you next Saturday!