artisanal thinking

In this post we continue the exciting (and very late, sorry!) story of my recent chocolate tasting and learning experiences in the fine city of Seattle. Note: I didn’t bring a camera, so pictures of the factory have been scoured from google images, I take no credit for them.

A Tour and Personal Connection at Theo Chocolate

While visiting Seattle, my prescient sister reserved a spot for me on a tour of local medium size chocolate makers, Theo Chocolate. Theo said that last year they went through 300k pounds of cacao, which according to some of their peers, disqualifies them from being ’small,’ but they are using mostly traditional equipment and traditional techniques, they are artisans, and they definitely have not forgotten that individual humans should be treated as such (whereas to Hershey’s ‘individuals’ are corporations, groups of humans). So on July 28th, 2009, I turned my nose up at the once-in-a-lifetime heat wave, biked across Seattle, over the sizable and steep hill of Queen Anne and after cleaning up with ice water, coffee and a French Shower at Fremont Coffee Company, stumbled into Theo’s factory at 3400 Phinney.

I walked into a pretty space, open, climate-controlled, with lots of windows and natural light (in contrast to Blommer’s in Chicago, where the ‘retail outlet’ was more like a cave for interrogating political dissidents). There were seven or eight tables loaded with displays of bars, each with a pile of samples on little rough-edged marble slabs, a fireplace in the back (just for looks, of course), and a few books on chocolate/cacao history scattered about. Not only was I there to compare notes on technique and taste, but I was on a mission to secure for my sister’s wedding some poundage of delectable, (fair!-trade! organic!) chocolate to serve for dessert (they ran out of budget, then told the caterers to nix dessert the night of her ceremony!). Before the tour started and I was just checking in, I asked one of the (very pretty!) ladies behind the counter whether Theo had any giant blocks of chocolate that they sold to chocolatiers, or something that I could buy in somewhat bulk form for the wedding. She told me that they just had bars, but to go on the tour, enjoy myself, and we could chat about possibilities later—an encouraging sign!

A Peek Behind the Chocolate Curtain

Looking sharp with my meshy blue hairnet I set off with about 20 other folks on the tour. We descended from street level a half flight of stairs and ended up in a room where we would spend the next 40 minutes. Seating us in 2 rows of a semi-circle, our tour guide, Becca, spun for us the story of Cacao. Its ancient history in the Aztec and Mayan civilizations, Montezuma’s 40 daily cups of xocolātl, the spicy-bitter fertility/virility drink, described lovingly thus by Jesuit, José de Acosta:

Loathsome to such as are not acquainted with it, having a scum or froth that is very unpleasant taste. Yet it is a drink very much esteemed among the Indians, where with they feast noble men who pass through their country. The Spaniards, both men and women that are accustomed to the country are very greedy of this Chocolate. They say they make diverse sorts of it, some hot, some cold, and some temperate, and put therein much of that “chili”; yea, they make paste thereof, the which they say is good for the stomach and against the catarrh.

Yea indeed, José, the Aztecs so loved Cacao, they actually used its beans as a form of currency, with a turkey selling for the princely sum of 100 beans, an avocado, however, a lowly three beans. Therefore to drink xocolātl one literally had to be rich enough to eat one’s own money!

We discussed the fermenting and drying processes of Cacao, I learned that only the tropical regions where it grows (± 20 degrees latitude) even have the microbes which ferment Cacao. So this must be done in the tropics before the beans are sent to us, it is impossible for me to get and make chocolate from ‘green beans’ (in contrast to the situation with coffee). Becca told us about fair-trade and organic beans, the world price of which is $3-4/lb (right now, I’m paying about $9/lb), compared with what Hershey’s pays for Cacao from the Ivory Coast and Ghana, $1/lb (we can talk about Cacao economics later…). We sampled chocolate! Instructions were given on how to mindfully eat a piece of chocolate, letting it melt on your tongue, swirling it around, coating your palate with melted chocolate, then, inhaling deeply, trying to complete momentary circuits from your nose, picking up smells, to your brain, identifying those smells, to your mouth, articulating those flavors. Most people are not accustomed to this process with chocolate, and for wine, with which we are familiar with gourmands raving about its undertones of ‘freshly mown grass’, it takes practice to identify such flavors, but oddly enough, it is children who can be best at this game! We were given two kinds, both from their ‘origin collection’ of single origin, terroir heavy bars. First the robust, nutty and earthy Forastero Cacao from the Ivory Coast, followed by the tart, fruity-cranberry-raisin, wine scented, but with some caramel, overall highly complex and oh! gods, my gods, coy and alluring 74% dark chocolate from (Sambirano Valley of…?) Madagascar. I later bought two pounds of this chocolate.

We entered the factory floor, proper. Immediately we were confronted with a long line of 6 foot high stainless steel boxes, connected to each other, end to end. This entrance to the factory is the end of the chocolate making process, these boxes formed the cooling tunnel, where eventually, polycarbonate molds of 85F tempered chocolate will be allowed to chill and crystals will get to link arms. To our right were even taller stainless steel cylinders, chocolate holding tanks, purgatory. Behind them were conches painted in shades of lime green, where refined, melted chocolate spends hours to days being mixed so that each particle of cocoa mass is coated by butter, smooth butter, baby, and bitter flavor compounds are slowly heated away. Next to those, two mills stood, the numero uno, an ‘impact mill’ which crushes nibs into a coarse liqueur by slamming them against stainless steel pins, and the finisher, a ‘ball mill’ where in a cylinder clamped tightly shut, little ball bearings mingle like protons after the big bang, their shear against each other further reducing the size of cacao particles to 12 microns in size, about three times the size of your cheek cells. The reason I said above that they only mostly use traditional equipment, is that I think it is more traditional to use a large granite stone melangeur for grinding nibs than this combination of mills.

Continuing further back into the factory and process, there was another room with just two machines (pictured at the top of the post), Theo’s ball roaster and their winnower. I was especially interested in hearing about how they roast. They claimed to start with a seemingly insufficient roast of just 5-10 minutes of the whole beans. Next to the roaster, I saw a white jug with sprayer hose labeled “WATER!” and knowing of water’s injurious effects on cacao, I was confused. But Becca said they had recently begun experimenting with spraying a little mist in during the initial whole bean roast, this helped to pull the husk away from the bean…or something. After this roast, the beans have dried enough that they can put them in the winnowing machine, where they are first slammed against a steel plate to crack the beans and separate the husk, then they are jiggled around, traveling through variously sized meshes, and through an air stream that blows the husk away from the recently smashed nibs. Then they take the cleaned nibs and put them back in the roast to develop the flavor. I guess that roasting just the nibs allows for a more even heat distribution, since they are smaller and the heat doesn’t have to travel through any husk. I forget for how long (although certainly it depends on different parameters) they do the post-winnow nib-roast, and I’m not sure they told me the target internal temperature of the beans, but nevertheless, this portion of the tour was especially instructive.

Sweet Talkin’ My Way Into Nine lbs of Premium Chocolate

The tour completed, I was very satisfied with the experience, and my peers even gave me some post-tour complements on my questions, which delved more into the “biochemistry side of things.” I started cruising around the tasting tables, filling my stomach with nibs, nib-brittle, and an interesting 91% dark bar from Venezuela (can you say Criollo?), I was waiting for the room to clear out a bit so I could spend more time presenting my case to the ladies to try to get some bulk chocolate. Then our guide, Becca, tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Okay, so what is your background?” I explained to her that I was an aspiring chocolate maker, we talked shop about roasting and tempering, she told me about a cool visit she had taken to the Mast Brothers in Brooklyn and when she couldn’t elaborate more on the specifics of their roasting procedure, she gave me the email of one of their main roasters, sweet!

Sensing the rapport, I told her my situation with the wedding, and asked if we could figure out a way to get me some bulk chocolate at a good price (if you just bought bars at the retail price, it would be around $20-25 a pound). Becca mentioned they might have some ’scrap’ chocolate of different varieties around, but usually they are limited in what kind of stuff like this they have. At first she checked into how much it would cost to get 10 lbs at the ‘friends and family’ price, but after talking with some of the other folks and calling her boss, it was settled that I could get the employee discount. I ended up buying nine lbs, consisting of two lbs of orange, two of cherry&almond, two of french bread chocolate (another sweet/salty, sans creamy, combination), two of Madacascar, and one pound of Venezuelan 91%! The Madagascar I got was of their previous formulation which is 65% dark, they recently upgraded it to 74%, but Becca claimed to like this sweetness level better .

Overall, I achieved precisely what I came in wanting, a bunch of great chocolate at a great deal. But, my main purpose isn’t to brag about that, but to exhibit a great situation where, unlike a lot of companies, Theo recognized me as an individual with individual circumstances, then did their best to fit what they do with what I wanted. Currently I think corporations, which are simply collections of humans, almost universally refuse to deal with individual humans as such, and only recognize bargaining power in other corporations or other mass groups of individuals. But then who are we serving? I exist on a human level, I want to increase the happiness of humans and help preserve their existence, I feel no desire to, like a social insect, sacrifice myself so that some larger genetic unit, some colony can reproduce. In addition to their sense of fun embodied in the chocolate buddha heads and chocolate hammers they had lying around, I think this quality, a collection of humans serving individual humans is what makes Theo anomalously awesome artisans.

Coda: Transporting Meltable Goods Back Through Seattle

So I returned from whence I came, into the anomalously extreme 95F Seattle heat, now with a full bag of chocolate in hand, and although concern was expressed for my idea of a 4.5 mile bike race back to my sister’s, including a 400′ elevation gain at the end, I made it back alive, barely, my chocolate had only very minimal melting at the edges, and after stowing the precious chocolate in the basement (a ‘chocolate celler’ ?), a cold shower, more ice water, and still sweating for another half hour, I look back on the adventure with particular fondness.

Today I set out on the road to Happy Camp, CA to witness some sororal nuptials, but before that I wanted to share some research I’ve been doing in Chicago and Seattle. As I am on vacation, this research is not of the garden variety, Computer Science/Cryptography flavor, but the more viscerally enjoyable sampling and analyzing of craft, high-end chocolate! Over the past five days, I’ve been savoring exciting chocolate from three different brands, Vosges Haut Chocolat, Claudio Corallo and Theo Chocolate.

Chicago à la mode de France: Vosges Haut Chocolat

As far as I know, there are no craft chocolate makers in the city of Chicago. During a cross-town walk on Friday, my companion and I passed this industrial manufacturer of chocolate near the loop. The window of the Blommer’s Chocolate factory advertised that it was ‘open to the public,’ and as we had nothing important to do, we tried to go in for a tour. The security guard we met told us that only the attached retail outlet store was extending such an offer, and since it had closed for the day, we quietly left. I had previously heard that on certain of the windy city’s bridges, the smell of brownies wafts. Walking along Kinzie, I can say that this is true, however the homogenized and alkalized powders we inhaled were not those I sought.

I leave a full exploration of the differences to a later post, but there is an interesting chocolatier practicing in the city. Katrina Markoff does not go from bean to bar, ie: she is not a chocolate maker, but with the couverture she buys from manufacturers including Valrhona, Felchlin and Belcolade (all respectable but not craft manufacturers), her company flavors chocolate bars and makes truffles and other confections. My interest, Mo’s Bacon Bar, is a milk chocolate which has been paired with bacon and smoked salt. What is exciting about this bar is the sweet/creamy/salty combination. And for those ignorant of mole poblano, the experimental sauce of 16th century nuns from Santa Rosa who had nothing to serve a visiting Archbishop, the idea of combining pork and chocolate is quite novel.

One disadvantage of buying bars from chocolatiers is that the main ingredient, the base, the chocolate, is a mystery. I don’t know who exactly made this milk chocolate, what their practices and ethics are, yadda yadda… The chocolate of this bar is not bad, it is not overly sweet, it is smooth, but I don’t think there is a huge amount of complexity to it. That cocoa mass is the 5th ingredient, after sugar, milk powder and fat, and cocoa butter, tells me that the essence of cacao is not so important in this bar. Also since cocoa butter and cocoa mass are listed separately seems to point to the fact that this chocolate was produced industrially, where first chocolate liquor is separated into its two components, butter and solids, then recombined later into a bar.

To me, the most pleasing part of the bacon bar is when you catch a salt crystal and a mass of melted chocolate on your tongue at the same time—I think more than bacon, salt is the universal flavor enhancer. The texture of the bacon bits and thus the bar is a little strange, I’m not sure it works to have silky melted milk chocolate and much larger hunks of chewy pork in the same breath. I tend to swallow the chocolate first and then be left with some bits to munch on solo. Finally, I’m left wondering if a salted caramel bar might accomplish the same goals in a more natural fashion.

Farming Cacao off the Coast of Africa

On our way to a Seattle farmer’s market, in a building that could have been a dentist’s office, I spotted what appeared to be a specialty chocolate shop, so of course I had to give Claudio Corallo (CC) Chocolate a try. We entered a small room with bags of chocolate on display in glass cases, different chocolate paraphernalia and cacao beans on the walls, and crucially, a platter with 6 different items for tasting. The first sample gave, though there would be more, the first surprise of the day. I was given a piece of 100% dark chocolate, sold as an eating bar! One can not get more minimalist than this, chocolate with one ingredient, cacao beans. Normally this would be too bitter and unpalatable for a chocolate bar, although 100% cacao is sold as baking, or unsweetened chocolate. That Claudio Corallo wanted to sell such a bar shows they consider their cacao to be mild and finely flavored enough to be eaten alone; they are bold if nothing else.

What would make this cacao so mild? It turns out that there are three varieties of Theobroma cacao, Criollo, Forastero, and Trinitario (and again, fuller explanation left for future blogging). Criollo beans are the originals that were cultivated by the Maya and Aztecs, however, pure Criollo beans are assumed not to exist anymore. Hybrid beans which are Criollo-heavy are claimed to be less bitter and more flavorful than Forastero or Trinitario beans, and as such, you often see higher percentages on bars made with Criollo type beans. CC claims to cultivate, “the descendants of the first cacao plants to arrive in Africa in 1819,” this strain of cacao relics are claimed to have survived through the centuries on one island off the coast of Africa, Príncipe. I think with this ancient story, they are hinting at a significant Criollo stock in their beans. Aside from intrinsic properties of the cacao, Claudio Corallo claims to farm biodynamically, though like others, they don’t want to suffer the capital outlay to become certified organic. Unfortunately then, one must take these claims with some grains of salt.

Question is: does it work? Is this a bar for the masses, or an end for those (like myself) acclimated to increasingly bitter chocolates, now forced to resort to the pure high, 100%. The first thought on tasting this bar is that it is obviously not sweet, but it doesn’t make me pucker, this may be due to the care and genetics of the cacao. The next observation, however, is about mouthfeel, this chocolate is not exceedingly silky, it is coarser than other high end chocolate, the finish is especially coarse, with noticeable cacao particles remaining on your tongue. But I discovered this quality is something CC embraces: for one, they claimed they did not conche their chocolate, which as you will recall is the long process of mixing and heating that assures each particle of cocoa solids is surrounded by cocoa butter, a property contributing to a smooth mouthfeel. Another manifestation of intentional roughness was my second surprise while tasting Claudio’s chocolate, their 80% bar had large sugar crystals in it! Usually we would grind the sugar with the cacao until everything is less than 30 microns in size, but they had left pieces of sugar in, giving a crunch to the bar, and a roughness which I think is unique. The texture of that chocolate was more like a cat’s tongue than a cream sauce!

Returning to the flavor of the pure, 100% dark bar, I think it was very much in the earthy spectrum of things. It was not overly acidic, there were not many fruit or wine notes, I think a straightforward, simple taste of soil or oak comes to mind with this chocolate. But I think that earthiness goes well with coarseness, dirt-iness, with a less refined, minimalist bar. For ones who claim to be devoting so much time to the growing and roasting of cacao, as opposed to the grinding and conching, this may be a wise and interesting combination. The taste I enjoy are the thoughts of land that Claudio Corallo inspires.

Because this post is tardy, and I have lots to write about Theo, I’ll make this part I, and leave the exciting story of my trip and tour of Theo Chocolate to Seattle’s Slaver, part II!