What are some off-flavours in chocolate? Mold, sour notes, burnt, ferment / barn, putrid / cheesy, metallic / medicinal may be off-flavours you find in artisan bean-to-bar chocolate.
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What is a chocolate truffle?
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How many cocoa beans can make a chocolate bar? How many chocolate bars can you produce from one cocoa tree?
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History of how the chocolate Easter chocolate egg came to be.
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The challenges of selling fine chocolate are often overlooked or not taken seriously, especially by those within the fine chocolate industry who take it for granted what it was to not understand or appreciate fine chocolate.
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Chocolate Maker versus Chocolatier. What's the difference? Don't they both make chocolate? Not quite. Learn the differences, the grey area, and why it matters to you.
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Understanding the percentage on dark chocolate bars is straight forward, but it may get confusing when we see more than just two ingredients on our chocolate bar: cocoa bean and sugar. As well, high percentage chocolate bars are often associated with quality, but is percentage a factor of quality?
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Dark fine chocolate will contain aromas other than chocolate. Just as fine wine and coffee can be described with containing notes of cherry, wood, or roasted almond, fine dark chocolate can be explained in the same way. Where does this flavour come from? It's not added to the chocolate, its contained within the cacao seed, and is created and maintained through quality processing.
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"What is the best chocolate?" I get asked that question often. It may seem like a simple question like that should have some sort of straight forward answer. Is it a brand? A nationality? Percentage? Or maybe it's variety or terroir of where the cacao tree grew. The answer is, good chocolate is none of those, and it's all of those and more. Not the answer you were hoping for? Let's begin to unpack...
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Fine chocolate is making headway in today's market. You may see fine chocolate popping up in high end supermarkets, boutique shops, and local high end food retailers. Terms such as "fine", "craft", "artisan", and mostly "bean to bar" are being thrown around, without people understanding what they mean. Generally, they are all terms used to describe the growing phenomenon of bean to bar chocolate. But what is bean to bar chocolate in the first place?
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