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Archive | trip and travel

Madagascar: Getting there

November 22, 2011 by

Alice and I were in Madagascar last week, checking out the farm that supplies the beans for our Madagascar bar. We had very limited access to internet so we’re doing the posts now that we’re back. Hope you enjoy!

The first part of the whole adventure was just getting to Madagascar. It turns out that Madagascar is almost the antipode for San Francisco, meaning that it’s almost exactly halfway around the world from us. Originally, Alice and I had planned on taking the same flights over but after a missed alarm and an airport shuttle no-show, I’d be setting out first and Alice would be joining a day or two later. My route to get there was San Francisco (SFO) -> Atlanta (ATL) -> Paris (CDG) -> Antananarivo (TNR):

The total distance, according to Google Maps, is just under 12,000 miles. I left SFO on Saturday at 7:40am (PST) and arrived in Tana (the French colonial shorthand for Antananarivo) on Monday at 3am (GMT + 3), which means those 12,000 miles turned into about 36 hours straight of plane travel. The only good thing about flying for that long is that by the time we got to Madagascar, my body was so confused that I didn’t have much trouble adjusting to the new timezone. I met up with Bertil Akesson, the son of owner of the farm and the one who handles bean sales, in Paris for the flight to TNR:

I also met  Olvier Coppeneur as he would be joining us on the trip:

After landing, we had to pass through immigration, which took almost an hour:

We picked up our luggage (fortunately no bags were lost) and exchanged some money. The currency in Madagascar is the Ariary and $1 is worth about 2000 Ariary, which means when you exchange a few hundred dollars, you get this:

I felt pretty flush with cash until I realized a bottle of water cost 3000 Ariary :( Pockets stuffed with bills, we grabbed one of the ubiquitous taxis and headed to the hotel. The main roads from the airport were fine, but as we got closer to where we’d be staying, the “road” turned into an almost impassable series for bumps, ruts, and rocks. Our taxi driver navigated it expertly, though, and we made it. I should point out, by the way, that hotel can conjure images of plush beds and fresh towels but that’s not exactly what our accommodations were like. The room was clean and had electricity and there was a shared shower (in the laundry room) and a shared bathroom (the sink broke shortly after arrival, though). When we asked about internet, we got a quizzical look from the owner of the establishment… and no, there was no room service :) We were all exhausted and so we went straight to bed so we’d be ready to see Tana in the morning.

Good Food Awards

November 15, 2011 by


We’re thrilled to hear that we were chosen as a finalist for the 2012 Good Food Awards. Nine bean-to-bar companies were chosen out of countless submissions and we are happy to be considered in such good company. Here’s the full list of chocolate finalists:

  • Amano Artisan Chocolate, Guayas Utah
  • Bittersweet, Rich Milk California
  • Dandelion Chocolate, 70% Costa Rica California
  • Escazu Artisan Chocolate, 60% Goat’s Milk & 65% Costa Rica North Carolina
  • Fresco Chocolate, 214 Madagascar 74% & 217 Chuao 70% Washington
  • Lillie Belle Farms, Perfect Illusion 65 Oregon
  • Patric Chocolate, LLC, PBJ OMG & Signature 70% Blend Missouri
  • Rogue Chocolatier, Inc., Hispaniola & Sambirano Massachusetts
  • Theo Chocolate, Theo and Jane Goodall 70% Dark Chocolate Washington

In other news, Cam and Alice are deep in the jungles of Madagascar visiting Bertil at the cacao farm. I wouldn’t say there’s a lot of internet out there, but I did manage to get a quick update from Cam that he made it there in one piece. Updates to follow.

Busy, busy, busy

July 12, 2011 by

You may have noticed that we haven’t posted in a while. We’ve been busier and busier making chocolate. It’s a great problem to have. There are orders pouring in, and we’re working hard to keep up! You can catch us each week at the Mission Community Market, and this weekend we’ll be at the New Taste Marketplace from 12-5 PM at 500 De Haro Street. For each, we’ll have single origin bars from Costa Rica, Madagascar, and Venezuela.

We’ll also have posts up in a few days with new updates. Todd traveled to the FCIA event in D.C. and we have a few new machines and process improvements to share. Look out for more soon.

You can also check us out here, we’re the Ourtisan of the week!

 

Chocolate Bike Adventures

June 21, 2011 by

About a year ago, Elaine sent me a calendar invite titled “Take your bike to Paris.”  She had heard about a bike route from London to Paris and preemptively scheduled our trip a year in advance. Figuring that schedules would change and motivations would wane, I didn’t think it was likely to happen and then got very busy making chocolate. Fast forward to a few weeks ago, Elaine reminded me that I better start training as our trip was coming up — and I couldn’t say no as she had scheduled this a year in advance!

As I started prepping for the trip, we discovered that we had been accepted into two markets on the same day and would have a lot of chocolate to make while I was away. Since I was going away and leaving Cam and Alice with a lot of work, I made them a deal: that I would do a lot of “research” by checking out all the various chocolate establishments I found along the way in London and Paris. They seem to think I got the better end of the deal.

Here are a couple of photo highlights from the trip. It was a lot of fun, but I’m glad to be back to chocolate-making.

In London, we only had a day to adjust to the time change, rent our bikes, adjust our equipment, and then check out two chocolate spots: Harrods Chocolate Bar and Artisan du Chocolat. The flight of single origin hot chocolate at Harrods was tasty and Artisan has the most inspired menu items in their small cafe. I especially loved their caramelized nibs and their Grandiflorum drink. The next day, we pedaled over the London Bridge and started heading the long trek south to the Eiffel Tower.

It started pouring as soon as we left which gave us a convenient excuse to stop for a hot chocolate break at Fanny’s Farm. After deciding the rain wasn’t going to stop, we continued towards the coast in the downpour. The next day we took the ferry to Dieppe and continued biking through wheat fields, over poppy patches, and through small villages until we finally reached Paris:

In Paris, we spent a few days making up for all the calories burned over the 210-mile trek. There are so many great chocolate places in Paris that they deserve their own blog post, so I will just point out the highlight here:

Un Dimanche à Paris is a new chocolate themed tea salon / restaurant / bar / shop by the Cluizel family. We went to the tea salon and tried their drinking chocolate plus four small dessert selections. Everything was delicious and it was a perfect way to end the trip.

Costa Rica Trip

March 18, 2011 by

Last week, I was very fortunate to join the Ecole Chocolate trip to Costa Rica, lead by Julio Fernandez and Steve DeVries.

The trip was fantastic! I met a bunch of great people, including a few other chocolate makers. We know a lot about our own process but it was interesting to hear how other people approach some of the same challenges. We compared notes on machinery, roasting profiles, bean sourcing, permits, packaging, problems, etc.

Julio was an amazing guide to all things historical and natural, including this guy:

It was also great to pepper Steve with questions constantly about all kinds of topics (e.g. growing cacao, fermentation, drying, roasting, refining, bean genetics, monilia). Steve was extraordinarily generous, putting up with everything we threw at him without complaint.

I learned a bunch on the trip, particularly about how to select the best beans and what happens before they show up at our door. One of my favorite things we covered was the cut test using a device call a magra:

By cutting 50 beans all at once, we can inspect for ripeness, fermentation level, average size, and contamination and get a sense of the average quality of the beans in the bag being tested. We can then use that data to compare beans from a number of different growers and identify the best beans.

We also visited a number of different places cacao is grown in Costa Rica, including a large, well-run plantation (Finmac), a native Bribri settlement, and a “permaculture” facility. It was very interesting comparing the different techniques and results used by each group. Here’s the head of workers at Finmac showing a split open, ripe cacao pod:

It didn’t take long for people on the trip to figure out I’m a dog lover, as I’d stop to photograph many of the strays that seem to litter Costa Rica. They were often very thin and showed the scars of a tough life, but they were, for the most part, people friendly:

If you want to see more photos from my trip, I’ve posted the rest of them on Flickr.