we love machines: part 3

Thankfully our final delivery of machines has arrived direct from the UK: the conche refiner and chocolate holding tank are now tucked safely at McGavock and Riverside. What the heck is a conche refiner? Its job is a simple one: develop mouth feel (conching) and reduction of partical size (refining). This lucky vessel breaks down the cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa fat and other ingredients into tiny, tiny particles which then yields untempered chocolate. The chocolate then pumps from the conche refiner to our holding tank where it's kept at a proper temperature and hangs out until it's then pumped on to the Gami tempering device. We're completely excited about getting them installed and pumped together so we can get this chocolate ball rolling!

In other chocolate factory developments we are in the process of building our front counter at which we look forward to sliding a bar or two of chocolate across to you. Thanks to Randy for all his help with this!

We are finally nearing the end of a very long journey (almost a year!) of choosing machinery, having it built to specification, receiving it and getting it installed. It's a huge relief to have each component of the machinery puzzle at the shop and ready to crank to kick out some mighty tasty chocolate!

Cuckoo for cocoa pods..

..or at least what's inside of them! We've received our first shipment of cocoa beans which consists of approx. 2400 lbs of Panamanian and Ecuadorian beans. We've been roasting, refining and tempering beans from literally around the globe (Domincan Republic, Ghana, Ivory Coast, ect, ect) trying to find the cocoa beans that really encapsulate the flavor we want to come out of the gate with. And that's not to say we won't come back to beans we've passed on in the beginning to create future bars..we just have a certain vision for our numero uno. It's really interesting how beans from different regions can vary so greatly..Dominican beans have raisin-y notes, Ivory Coast has heavy chocolate notes but not much in substance on the end. I think with our choices we might have it just right.

So, in the very near future we're certain to be dropping beans down the hopper and spreading the rich aroma of roasting cocoa beans to East Nashville..or at least our little portion of it.

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.