Lauren, of Genki Tummy, guessed right away that the mystery picture in yesterday’s post was cacao beans. If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you’ve probably seen my mention of the local food lover and entrepreneur, Dan Schreiber. When we last saw Dan, he was getting prepared to start up bean-to-bar chocolate production. He’s been posting about his experience on his own blog, artisanal thinking. I had an opportunity to hang out with him and help a little in creating his most recent batch.
The first step, obviously, is to obtain the raw cacao. He is currently buying fair-trade, organic beans online in small(ish) quantities. The beans look like dusty rocks, and the smell is… funky. This funky smell comes from the fermentation they go through to develop their flavors. He cracked one open and urged me to try it. It didn’t have much flavor yet, but that’s mostly because…
Once he gets them, he needs to roast them. For now, he’s roasting them in a conventional oven on baking sheets. The roasting not only brings out more of the roasty chocolate flavor of the beans, but it drives off some of the delicate flavors of the chocolate. This can be good or bad, depending on the qualities of the beans he has and the desired effect in the eventual bar.
After roasting, he performs a process of cracking and winnowing. Cacao beans have a papery husk on the outside that doesn’t contribute anything to the chocolate, so it needs to go. There are lots of ways of doing this, and since I wasn’t there to see how Dan does it I have to assume he’s using some sort of high-tech, top-secret, ultra-experimental winnowing method using a hair dryer.
Once the beans are roasted, cracked, winnowed, and cooled, they can be considered nibs. At this point, they are edible and taste like chocolate. You can use nibs in a lot of ways, but for now we’ll focus on making a bar of chocolate. The nibs have intense flavors showcasing the terroir of each variety of bean (he’s currently using two different varieties). In one, acidity and floral notes highlight smooth chocolate. In the other, a deep, dark, complex chocolate experience. These flavors will change over the course of a long grinding process in his melangeur, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Enjoy this picture of a jar of delicious nibs, and next time will be a quick post on grinding and conching and sugar, oh my.
