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Chocolate from Bean to Bar
- rwmj 5y agoThis was an interesting series of blog posts about a (supposedly) bean to bar chocolate maker: https://dallasfood.org/2015/12/mast-brothers-what-lies-behind-the-beards-part-1-tastetexture/ https://dallasfood.org/2015/12/mast-brothers-what-lies-behin... https://dallasfood.org/2015/12/mast-brothers-what-lies-behind-the-beards-part-2-equipment/ https://dallasfood.org/2015/12/mast-brothers-what-lies-behin... https://dallasfood.org/2015/12/mast-brothers-what-lies-behind-the-beards-part-3-ingredients/ https://dallasfood.org/2015/12/mast-brothers-what-lies-behin... https://dallasfood.org/2015/12/mast-brothers-what-lies-behind-the-beards-confessions/ https://dallasfood.org/2015/12/mast-brothers-what-lies-behin...
- SyzygistSix 5y agoAs a former chocolate maker for small, ethically-sourced chocolate company, this was both hilarious and disheartening to read about when it came out. The Mast Bros have kind of stood out in the industry for being tools.
- daniel_reetz 5y agoFascinating. One of the better bars of chocolate I ever had was a Mast bar with nibs. Later, I bought some of their other bars and they were markedly different. Having read this, I wonder which (if any) were actually Mast chocolate.
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- bedobi 5y agocountless plant and animal species have evolved and died out throughout the history of life on Earth humans have existed only for a tiny fraction of the duration of the history of complex life on Earth but somehow humans managed to co-exist with chocolate, sugarcane, vanilla, bovids (cow milk, steak), coffee and any number of stupidly tasty things I'm not going anywhere with this comment but, like, wow, no!? if humans had evolved a couple of million years earlier, or any of those stupidly tasty things had evolved a couple of million years later, we wouldn't have been able to experience them
- renarl 5y agoMakes me wonder how many insanely taste things we are not experiencing because they went extinct or have not appeared yet. Defiantly there are way way more than the ones that we happened to overlap with.
- bedobi 5y agofor sure, but if you could push a button to make it so, would you really risk giving up chocolate (or whatever you consider to be the tastiest thing in the world) forever for potentially something less tasty? :P no right or wrong here, just an honest and silly question I know I wouldn't risk chocolate, coffee, beer and wine for anything
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- have_faith 5y agoI would be happy if supermarkets stocked more than one or two of the blandest varieties of most foods. There's plenty of existing tasty foods you don't get to experience.
- jcims 5y agoJust had a long conversation about morel mushrooms last night. They fit nicely in this category. Hands down the best mushroom I’ve ever eaten. Probably because they look like a brain on a stick.
- hoseja 5y agoThere are thousands of mindblowingly delicious fruits that are simply incompatible with modern supply chains so most people don't even know exist. I recommend "Weird Explorer" on youtube to get a small glimpse.
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- maxwell 5y agoIf you're wondering who harvested a particular cocoa pod in a commercial chocolate bar, it was almost certainly one of the 1.56 million child slaves in west Africa: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/our-work/child-forced-labor-trafficking/child-labor-cocoa https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/our-work/child-forced-labo... Nestle and Cargill were sued by former slaves but lost their case in the Supreme Court earlier this year due to lack of standing because the events occurred outside the U.S.: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/17/supreme-court-rules-in-favor-of-nestle-in-child-slavery-case.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/17/supreme-court-rules-in-favor...
- afranchuk 5y agoI did this once as I like to understand the processes that go into modern everyday items. Without a grinding mill I wasn't able to get the cacao to the smoothest consistency (it was grainy as the article describes), however it still came out as delicious pieces of chocolate. I did not add any cocoa butter, just sugar (and not much, I like it dark). The process of shelling, toasting, grinding, conching, and tempering wasn't as difficult as one might think; I recommend curious minds to order some beans and try it out! It makes for a fun (and tasty) afternoon.
- tasogare 5y agoIt's something I want to try one day. Did you write something about your experience like a blogpost?
- afranchuk 5y agoUnfortunately no, and it was about 10 years ago so I don't remember the details. But there's not too much prep involved, just get some beans and get cooking! :D
- wastedhours 5y agoAlso used to do it too - amazing how far you can get with a £15 coffee grinder and a bag of beans. Like anything that goes through multiple step processing (same when I roasted coffee), it's the small percentage improvements at every stage that make the difference between home and manufactured.
- Israt241 5y agoThanks for sharing this recipes. I was looking for something like this.
- nerdbaggy 5y agoRotten episode on Chocolate is really eye opening about the staggering amounts of slavery, child labor, and corruption in the chocolate industry. Basically every brand you can think of is in on it. https://www.netflix.com/title/80146284 https://www.netflix.com/title/80146284
- SyzygistSix 5y agoBut there are many smaller brands making excellent chocolate using far more ethical sourcing, at least a hundred in the US alone. The upside of this is that the quality is much better than Nestle, Hershey, Cadbury, Dove, etc. While fair trade and similar designations are not a cure-all and mostly profit farm owners, they seem downright ethical in comparison to the slavery and child labor used by growers of low quality beans. The plain truth is that chocolate, like coffee, is expensive to produce. Source- I worked as a chocolate maker in the US. It really is a fascinating process. And as a bonus, many chocolate companies enjoy showing visitors the process. As far as industrial tourism goes, I highly recommend visiting one. There may be a high quality chocolate maker closer to you than you realize.
- corpMaverick 5y agoIs there something preventing us from cultivating Cacao beans in artificial environments(e.g.green houses).
- SyzygistSix 5y agoCost. It takes large orchards, and I would not be surprised if the surrounding ecosystem has some effect as well. One day, when energy is super cheap and superabundant, it will happen.
- ensignavenger 5y agoMaybe... but I am rather skeptical of Netflix documentaries (really, any documentary) and have a hard time taking their claims with anything but a huge grain of salt.
- jihadjihad 5y agoThis is very strange to see on HN this morning...I was bored last night while eating a piece of dark chocolate, and began wondering how exactly they make it. I learned something fascinating: the primary thing that distinguishes "good" chocolate from "bad" chocolate, apart from taste, is the texture--more specifically, the crystal structure of tempered cocoa butter. There are in fact six different crystal forms of cocoa butter [0], each with its own unique properties. The "goal" when making good chocolate is to allow as many Type V crystals to form as possible, because they have the best properties (great texture, good snap, glossy appearance as opposed to matte, and the melting temp is higher, closer to body temp). In order to form a majority of Type V crystals, chocolate is first melted at a high temp to wipe the slate clean, so to speak (all six crystal forms are melted). It's then cooled so that Type IV and V crystals can form, then heated again slightly to melt any remaining Type IV crystals, leaving only Type V. Wonderful stuff! 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate#Tempering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate#Tempering
- knuthsat 5y agoSounds a lot like annealing.
- riffraff 5y agoit's called "tempering", tempering and annealing are somewhat similar processes.
- Xophmeister 5y agoYou can also do it by seeding, using chocolate with the right crystalline structure. This method is usually a lot less troublesome than the thermal shocking (tempering) approach.
- dylan604 5y agoThat sounds like the non-HNer way of doing something. An HN reader will want to try doing it with a RaspPi or Arduino to control the temps to ensure a perfect level of Type V crystals. Maybe right up some code in Rust with React Native UI. Then, come up with test units to show the Type V levels are within parameters. No HNer would ever do this by hand when a weekend of coding/building could solve the problem.
- crhutchins 5y agoI tried doing cocoa bean to chocolate in the past; I would say that it is not that great and consistent, but I can say that it feels like chocolate once you put it in your mouth.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y agoThe article brings this up, but I'd say that in general home "bean to bar" chocolate isn't worth it unless you have chocolate conche machine, which you can get for about $300-$500 online. Otherwise you're going to end up with something quite gritty with a bad mouthfeel.
- SyzygistSix 5y agoFinding the correct roast takes some time as well. The roasting temperature varies between ~6 degrees Celsius and that variation can make a lot of difference in terms of the flavors that the roast brings out, and every type of bean is different. But I would imagine the process would be rather satisfying. I would add that a gritty feel is not a dealbreaker. There is a Mexican chocolate company, Taza? I think, that makes a more "traditional" grittier chocolate. It is quite enjoyable.
- hnrj95 5y agonot sure how familiar you are with south indian cuisine, but the machine we use to make dosa batter also serves reasonably well for this purpose
- BugsJustFindMe 5y ago> chocolate isn't worth it unless you have chocolate conche machine This, like many other ideas about roasted bean products, is a silly universalization of some individual's arbitrary preference. It's like saying that all mushrooms _must_ be minced because someone didn't like the texture of whole mushrooms at one point. Or that coffee beans must be Arabica for...reasons...when billions of people preferentially drink Robusta. I love unconched chocolate and strongly prefer it over conched. Taza in Somerville, MA is regionally famous for their delicious, distinct, gritty unconched chocolate.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y agoI mean, yes, obviously a post to a public comment board is going to reflect my own personal preference. While I haven't had the particular brand you mention, I have tried many other versions of stone-ground chocolates, and they always taste like chocolate with sand to me. To each their own, though.
- pezzana 5y ago> Alright, so the cacao has some natural oil in each of the beans, this stuff is what is known as cacao butter, depending on how well we were able to grind this down, the cacao butter will express itself in the powder we have here. However, as you can see this isn’t very oily looking, so we will need to bolster this with cacao butter. To my 120 grams of cacao nibs, I am added initially 20 grams of cacao butter, (but added another 10 later). This was a little disappointing to see. But I think it would be a great follow-up topic to show how to make your own cacao butter.
- wastedhours 5y agoIt's very difficult as you need a lot of pressure in order to squeeze the fats out from the mass - there were some small batch machines for doing so, but a homebrew approach would be marvelous to see.
- RangerScience 5y agoProtips for finding the best chocolate in any area: - Look for "chocolate" shops, NOT "chocolates" shops! The latter tends to be confections / pastries, the former, bars - Look for places with 90%+ bars (ideally a 100%). You might not like something that dark, but, it means that the source beans are good enough to stand on their own - Slightly avoid places that put flavored bars (adding anything other than the core ingredients) front-and-center. They definitely can have amazing chocolate, and usually do have amazing flavors, but it does mean that they're not ALL about the cacao. (Don't even bother with "pressed" flavors; if it's not mixed in, it's gonna be mediocre). - Look for bars that don't use soy lecithin.
- fillskills 5y agoTHANK YOU. For showing how simple the process of making chocolate is. From most manufacture sites they make it seem so complicated. Related - You could even skip the fermentation and roasting parts by simply buying pre fermented and roasted pods. Simply crush the beans, add your favorite milk and add sugar per taste. And voila! you can have the best chocolate you ever had.