we like machines part 2

The most important piece of the chocolate puzzle has arrived - the cocoa roaster. This beast roasts 50 pounds per batch at up to 125,000 BTU's. It's pretty serious piece of machinery! We had originally received it two weeks ago but it somehow got a bit mangled in transit. So it had to be sent back and repaired. Our duct guy came out yesterday and got the cool and hot air venting completed and piped out our smokestack. Finally feels like we're rolling!

we like machines..

After a few weeks of radio silence (could have bored you with FDA meeting blog posts but decided better of it) I'm proud to announce the production equipment is finally starting to roll in. This week our chocolate tempering machine has arrived unscathed in the delivery process. Why temper chocolate? In the tempering process the machine heats the chocolate, cools it down, then brings it back up to the melting point again. The reason for doing this is to stabilize the cocoa butter crystals so they are all uniform in size. The result is a shiny luster to the chocolate and that satisfying snap when you break off a piece. In the very near future more machinery will continue to roll in hopefully resulting in production as soon as next month!

Most of the work at our location has been completed. Our giant chalkboard (we gotta put our ideas somewhere) will be wrapped up this weekend as well as few other small projects. We'll definitely keep you posted and hopefully add some new video this weekend. Oh, I forgot to mention, we'll have our logo worked out soon as well! That means we get to do some cool stuff like: create our building sign, order some awesome hats, make t-shirts, jumpsuits, petwear...you get the idea.

Fluorescent Free Zone

Ok, so there were lights previously but we pulled them down because I don't think either of us could bare the thought of making chocolate under fluorescent lighting. It can be just a bit hollow sometimes. So we got our new lights hung this week and fortunately we were lucky enough to find these great industrial caged lights that are pretty great.

Hopefully we'll be seeing our completed logo very soon and also be installing a chalkboard on the stripped wall in our office area pictured below! It'll pretty much serve as a giant post it note/place for ideas/ect./etc..

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls...the chocolate room..

This week we managed to get quite a bit of progress made on our production space. A fresh coat of paint and some serious 3 phase electricity was completed. This week we're installing our new lighting and 3 compartment sink while we're waiting for our machinery to arrive. We also hope to get our smoke stack installed for our cocoa bean roaster very soon. Above are a few pictures I took this evening - if you've been to Riverside Village's rear courtyard, the portholes along the wall opposite the herb garden look into our space. We'll also be replacing the sign just as soon as our logo is finished up!