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  • Steve Gisselbrechtstevegis_ssg@mas.to
    Aug 1, 2026, 9:01 PM

    The nibs can now be processed a couple of different ways. One option is to heat them and press them for oil, like olives or sunflower seeds. The oil solidifies at room temperature and that's cocoa butter, which has a lot of desirable properties for cosmetics, or can be added back to the chocolate-making process. Finely grinding the remaining "cake" of pressed out solids yields cocoa powder.

    Alternatively, you can simply grind up the nibs whole, and then you have "cocoa liquor," aka unsweetened chocolate.

    To make chocolate bars, this is mixed with sugar, optionally milk powder (for milk chocolate), usually vanilla, and usually some lecithin. Lecithin is a fraction purified from different oily foods that acts like a biological detergent and helps emulsify mixtures of fats with things (like sugar) that prefer to dissolve in water. It helps with the texture and stability of the finished product.

    Even with finely ground sugar and cacao, this mixture is grittier than "chocolate."

    (6/9)

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  • Steve Gisselbrechtstevegis_ssg@mas.to
    Aug 1, 2026, 9:07 PM

    So the penultimate step is called "conching." The chocolate mixture is put in a machine that fundamentally reproduces the action of a mortar and pestle, and continuously ground for hours or, in some of the finest high-end chocolates, days.

    Industrial conchers (or "melangeurs") are typically the size of a small bus, but for home use it's possible to buy a machine originally designed for making dosa batter that works as a concher. A bowl with a stone base has a central spindle with stone rollers. The bowl turns, the rollers roll IN a pool of chocolate, continuously crushing the chocolate in front of them until the entire mixture reaches the texture you want.

    During this process, the whole thing outgasses. It gives up moisture, especially at the beginning, and also there are various smells that come off that really aren't lovely. (Remember, fermented food. Some notes are, I'm sorry, reminiscent of urine.) These are nice things NOT to have in the finished chocolate.

    (7/9)

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  • Steve Gisselbrechtstevegis_ssg@mas.to
    Aug 1, 2026, 9:13 PM

    Once you're happy that what you have is good melted chocolate, the final step is tempering.

    Chocolate is a suspension of finely ground flavorful things in cocoa butter. And cocoa butter is, chemically, a complex mixture of different fats. It can take on various crystal structures, depending on things like the exact cooling profile, agitation, the presence of seed crystals, etc. And these structures can have very different properties in terms of mouthfeel, stability, melting temperature, etc.

    If you just let melted chocolate set back up again, it won't be nice. The default crystal structure that the cocoa butter adopts will get soft and sticky at even moderately warm room temperature, and has a gummy feeling when chewed. It will also develop grey, powdery bloom very quickly, and turn chalky over time.

    So instead, you cool it *past* its normal freezing point, but with continuous agitation. At another, lower freezing point, it starts to form better crystals.

    (8/9)

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  • Steve Gisselbrechtstevegis_ssg@mas.to
    Aug 1, 2026, 9:17 PM

    By hand, this means spreading it out and scraping it up, over and over, on a polished stone slab while it cools. As the desirable crystals form, it takes on a dull, claylike consistency for which the professional term is "mush." Of course there are computer-controlled machines to do this at scale.

    The mush can be added back to a larger pool of melted chocolate, and as long as it's not hot enough to melt the seed crystals, this produces a pool of "tempered" chocolate that can be poured into bar molds or decorative molds, or kept warm and agitated while things are dipped in it to make filled chocolates.

    White chocolate is cocoa butter with sugar and vanilla and milk powder, but without any of the actual cocoa. As long as it's made with actual cocoa butter, it shares the melting/tempering/setting properties of actual chocolate, although the thermal profiles are a little different.

    (9/9)

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  • Richard PennerArpie4Math@mathstodon.xyz
    Aug 2, 2026, 6:58 AM

    @stevegis_ssg There are small-batch chocolate factories which give you a chance to taste varietal chocolate, from specific terroir: place of origin, year, fermentation conditions. There all steps on the fermented beans (sorting, roasting, shelling, grinding, tempering, molding...) can even happen in a small cafe and showroom as visitors can watch.

    This is the model of Dandelion Chocolate of San Francisco. Do you know of others?

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  • Steve Gisselbrechtstevegis_ssg@mas.to
    Aug 2, 2026, 7:20 AM

    @Arpie4Math

    Oh, Dandelion are interesting. They partner with various confectioners on their advent calendar: 25 different companies each produce one thing using Dandelion chocolate, so you get to try a lot of different people's ideas.

    I'm not sure I know another small-batch chocolatier with that level of tour. Taza here in the Boston area gives tours and tastings but they're doing a very different thing. (Stone-ground, unrefined chocolate intended for grating to make drinking chocolate, "let the flavor of the bean shine through," and, from my perspective, gritty and underroasted.)

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  • DB Schweindeirdrebeth@mas.to
    Aug 2, 2026, 9:25 PM

    @stevegis_ssg @Arpie4Math

    Hāmākua Chocolate Farm on the Big Island of Hawaii does a fabulous tour. They also grow all their mix-ins (fruits, spices, etc.) on site. It's like visiting a botanical garden and chocolate factory together 😊

    A horizontal branch of a chocolate tree with a flower, some buds, and a number of very underripe fruits. The flower is white with a dark pink center. The petals look like a Fleur de lis with some being curled and others straight like knife blades. The fruit pods are long narrow ovals with deep veining, and are in shades from bright green on the smallest ones to dark maroon on the largest. In the background are bright green leaves, and the out of focus torso of a person in a blue t-shirt.
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