Chocolate: Bean to bar makes at least a daily appearance in my life in some form: traditional, cheap and the glittery high-end stuff; it never lets me down. But, of course, it’s not all the same and boutique chocolate is certainly a labor of love. What many people aren’t aware of is the intricate process behind making beautiful chocolate from the bean right through to the bar. Here’s some of my knowledge I’ve gathered throughout the years working with different growers and makers.

As a kid I was involved with the cheap stuff. I didn’t know about the good stuff right away, but I was always on the lookout for anything I hadn’t tried before. It was a gradual development, one of trying new chocolate and chocolate confectionery. I made my mind up pretty quick and kept my eyes peeled. You never know when the good stuff might turn up.

As I got older, I earned money and started buying what I liked. My palate changed. I still keep my eye out for something new. These days it could be the cacao beans I am making my mind up about. The cacao beans have a long story themselves before they can be made into chocolate and they really dictate the quality.

Harvest and fermentation

In short, when the healthy cacao pod is ripe, it needs to be picked from the tree and cut open to remove the white pulp-like seeds. Once this is done to at least 40-50 pounds of fleshy, pulpy seeds, it is ready to be fermented and this can be done in a variety of ways. It is common to involve banana leaf, perhaps straight on the ground out in the fields with the pile of seeds, then covered with more banana leaves and turned as necessary to make an even fermentation. Wooden crate boxes do make an appearance from time to time, often lined and covered with banana leaves. Turning the beans as needed to create a consistent ferment is vital – it takes about 40-50 pounds to make a decent ferment. The sugary wrapping of each individual Chocolate: Bean to bar breaks down over a course of days, feeding the development of the ferment. This fermentation process can take from three to 11 days; you need to give it as much time as it needs to be ready.

Drying

Once fermentation is done, the drying process takes place immediately. Usually a flat layer of beans is laid in the sun to dry out in the field or nearby, often elevated on a fine mesh so the beans can’t fall through. This is raked regularly to prevent inconsistent drying, which could lead to mold development. Once the beans have been dried, they are put in robust hessian sacks and stored in a cool, dark, dry place, often elevated off the ground with wooden forklift crates.

Roasting and winnowing

Now the beans are ready for roasting to make chocolate. Once the beans have been roasted they must be ‘winnowed’. This is where the outer husk of the Chocolate: Bean to bar is cracked and under vacuum, the particle size of the husk is extracted. There is always a very small amount of husk in the leftover product, which we call the ‘nib’, and it is common practice to process a little husk in the nib when making chocolate. I think of it as hidden fibre in the chocolate. The husk is often used for mulch – I’ve seen it in soap as an exfoliant and even as a tea. Nothing is wasted.

Conching

Now we take the roasted nib to make chocolate. Some chocolate makers like to give it a ‘pre grind’ to help break down the nib and help warm it up. Some add extra cacao butter to the recipe. This can depend on the fat content of the beans in the first place or the end result the craftsperson desires. The ‘conching’ process can often take 24 hours; some chocolate is even conched for 100 hours. Longer doesn’t necessarily mean better. Volatile aromas are released and need to be given the opportunity to evaporate from the chocolate. I find the right time varies depending on the beans, the amount I am processing and what concoction I am creating. Of course, generally speaking, we add sugar, maybe some chopped up dried vanilla beans and usually in large-scale chocolate making practices, trace amounts of fat-based soya lecithin. Chocolate is a fat-based product with no water content, so they assimilate well.

Lecithin is in animal and plant tissues. Egg yolk is a good source of lecithin. I have only known chocolate makers to use soya lecithin in chocolate making. It is an excellent emulsifier, has good lubricant properties and helps with the flow properties of chocolate. It can help prevent cocoa and cocoa butter from separating in a candy bar. A lot craft Chocolate: Bean to bar makers don’t use soya lecithin due to the GMO practices in the world and, also, you don’t need to use it. So why is it used?

When is comes to sugars, the most common is regular beet or cane sugar, which has been highly refined into white sugar. Like myself and many other chocolate makers in the world, we like to experiment with less-known sweeteners such coconut sugar, rapadura, panela and raw sugars. The main thing with these sugars is you don’t want any water content present – this would help your chocolate to seize or take on an undesirable dough-like consistency. Hence the reason your vanilla beans are best dried so no water content is present.

Once the whole conching process is over, you have subjected your mixture to a mass amount of grinding and mixing, which refines the texture as well as the taste of the chocolate. Chocolate makers believe dark chocolate improves with age. But, I can tell you it doesn’t stop us eating some right away or even during the whole conching stage. It’s good to do so as it’s the palette that helps make the decisions about the whole process as you go. Once the chocolate has been removed, I generally do a bulk ageing of the chocolate and then temper into bars.

All chocolate is best stored in a cool, dark, dry place away from strong foreign odours.

Insider knowledge

The biggest thing that held me back from making chocolate bean-to-bar style in Australia is the accessibility to beans and quality beans at that. Beans are just not all the same – there are three main varieties: forastero, criollo and trinitario. Many beans are hybrids of these three. There are small quantities overall in the world of criollo and trinitario, as forastero makes up most of the world’s bulk when it comes to making chocolate. The criollo and trinitario are the most sought after, not just because of their rarity, but particularly their fine characteristic profile.

The other thing people often get confused about is percentages. High doesn’t mean better. It is just the content description, so if you make chocolate from beans and sugar and the rating is 75 per cent, the other 25 per cent is sugar. If it is a milk chocolate with for example 50 per cent beans, the other 50 per cent is a combination of sugar and dehydrated milk crumb, and maybe vanilla and soya lecithin as they’re the usual suspects.

You can get funky and start mucking around with unique inclusions, to be introduced in the processing part or finishing stages. That’s some of the fun of making your own chocolate. I’ve even used coconut instead of milk powders for a dairy-free result, and it’s delicious. I am a fan of cacao-enriched milk chocolates made this way.

Throughout the past couple of years, students have been coming forward sharing their interest in wanting to do bean to bar classes. At my school Celebration Cooking, I have only taught private classes in chocolate making, but no doubt in the next couple of years the seriousness of go-getters will rise and more people will want to take the next step in Australia. I believe through making bean to bar chocolate you gain a deeper understanding and respect for what it takes and in turn become more mindful in tasting and appreciating the flavours and varieties.

If you’re looking to get into Chocolate: Bean to bar making, there is a lot of information online, but some is questionable content. It will come with experience, documenting and making more chocolate, playing with roasts, percentages and getting the right fluidity. Have faith you can eat most mistakes and rework some recipes or do something else with it. Some of the most delicious things made in life came from something else originally. So go on, give it a go, have fun and taste, taste, taste!

5 questions for Brian Atkin of Makira Gold, bean to bar social enterprise in the Solomon Islands

Makira Gold is a cacao plantation that is making change for the good. It’s a social enterprise that starts with cacao farmers on the island of Makira, Solomon Islands and ends in a small home kitchen in Brisbane’s west, where all of its chocolate is made.

1. Can you tell us about the people behind Makira Gold?
We are Brian Atkin and Ronnie Maxwell, first cousins. I am half Solomon Islander and half Australian, living in Brisbane with a full-time job. But, I also have a strong passion for the Solomons and am shouldering a powerful responsibility to support the community. I am the private investor, visionary, social entrepreneur and emerging chocolatier.

Ronnie is a full Solomon Islander and the brains and workhorse behind the premium quality cacao farming and production in Makira. He learns anything new in seconds and has a burning desire to also improve the lives of his community in rural Makira, Solomon Islands. Together we form Makira Gold, a formidable and aspirational partnership that aims to change the lives of rural Solomon Islanders.

2. Can you step us through the MaKIRa Gold bean to bar process?
We start our story with our cacao farmers on the island of Makira, Solomon Islands. They select and harvest ripe cacao pods, which we purchase as either pods or the raw cacao inside the pods (wet beans). Then we ferment for three days and sun dry our pristine raw cacao for another five days. Once dried, we ship it in hermetically sealed bags on leaky boats across the Solomon Islands to our spare room in Brisbane, Australia. Then in our small kitchen in our home we roast our beans, crack them in the thermomix, then winnow them to separate the husks from the nibs. Then we conch and refine our nibs for two days using a chocolate grinder, or Melangeur, into an amazingly velvety and rich dark chocolate. After this, we age the untempered chocolate to further develop the flavours.

3. Why is Makira Gold so important to you?
I believe it’s important for people to explore their connection to the land and support those who work on the land. The more distant that our city-bound children become from the generations before us working in the countryside, the more important the responsibility is for us to try to reconnect them. Those in the food industry should be mindful of the source of their favoured ingredients, even as far as the farm gate.

4. What do you think people should be aware of in the industry?
The industry needs to be aware of new Australian international aid approaches called impact investment. This is about stimulating private sector investment to create a bigger impact. For the region, this may help to unlock market pathways from consumers to the exotic and amazing foods and flavours in the Pacific. Don’t be afraid to explore this potential and actively seek out ways to get involved.

5. What are some of the challenges to operating an enterprise like this?
Industry requirements for organic certification can be unfair against smallholder farmers in the third world. Organic certification can be very expensive and third world smallholder farmers and their communities can’t afford it. It becomes an additional barrier for them which holds them at a big disadvantage against the singular owned and richer plantation farms that can afford it. I would like to see the industry become more aware of this issue and, until it is resolved, there should be a stronger industry focus on fairtrade certification with organic practices.