Bean to Bar

While others just manipulate chocolate, we make it. We take cocoa beans from farms around the world and highlight their unique and complex flavors through our small batch, bean to bar process. Think Willy Wonka, but hip and local.

Our chocolate starts with the bean. We source the highest quality cacao beans money can buy and make sure that it is ethically produced from farms around the world. We then have the beans shipped straight to Richmond where we inspect them for quality.

Our process involves around 7 steps: sorting, roasting, winnowing, melanging, tempering, molding, and wrapping. Read more about each below:

Sorting

We hand sort our beans to ensure the highest quality beans and to remove any debris from harvesting.

Roasting

We roast our beans with precise measurements in order to draw out the natural flavors of the cocoa beans.

Winnowing

The process of removing the bitter outer husk from the inner tasty nibs is called winnowing. The winnower cracks the beans and removes the husks and other debris from the cracked beans.

Melanging

For three whole days, we grind our beans in “Big Mama”, our trusted melanger. Each particle becomes less than a small fraction of an eye of a needle.

Tempering/Molding

After the melanger, our chocolate is placed in the temperer. The temperer precisely cools and heats the cocoa liqueur to create the best crystal structures to be molded. Once it’s ready, we take that chocolate and insert it into our custom made molds.

Wrapping

In the last step of the bean to bar process, we finish up the process by hand wrapping every inner foil and outer paper wrap.

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