New 2.5 Ounce Bars!

Trees, Cocoa Beans, and Venezuela

Our good friend Tanya Beyer, who paints delicate, perfect watercolors, has written a beautiful blog post about trees, finding her way through words to the cacao trees that grow the pods that carry the beans that are harvested and, eventually, make their way to our shop in Meadowlands, Minnesota, where they are made into fine, bean-to-bar chocolate.

Photos of Venezuelan Cocoa Beans are posted on Chocolate Alchemy's Facebook Page. These photos show the places where our Venezuelan Amazonas Origin is grown and harvested. I was struck by the lavender and purplish colors of the raw beans because they are the same colors as our Amazonas chocolate as it conches away in our little grinder in our little chocolate shop in Meadowlands, Minnesota, where we coax out the flavors and turn it into something wonderful and uniquely flavored.

We feel privileged to be working with all these people and to have discovered cocoa in its truest form.

From Belize to Bar: Belize Trip (Mayan ruins, Howler Monkey, rain forest)

Belize 2010

From Belize to Bar: Belize Trip (Mayan ruins, Howler Monkey, rain forest)

I (Beryl) took the photos below on a trip to Belize in June, 2010, not knowing that in three years I would be living in Meadowlands, Minnesota, making bean-to-bar chocolate from beans grown in this area. Notice the Mayan ruins and the high views looking over the valleys below. This is where the Mayan rulers drank their "food of the gods" (cacao theobroma). I can now understand why. Click on the "Belize 2010" link to our Facebook Page for more info.  

Sipping chocolate....sipping chocolate!

Today we are developing sipping chocolate processes and serving suggestions. We are very excited to have the rich, varietal cacao terroir from each country of origin. I have my favorites, and I'm sure, you will, too! Watch our blog, FB, and Twitter sites for the announcement of our sipping chocolates arrival!

The newly roasted and ground Venezuelan Amazonas batch smells divine. No wonder theobroma cacao means "food of the gods."

I hereby do resolve to do my best to eat all the little extra bits of chocolate gleaned from spatulas, bowls and fingers. It's a hard thing, but somebody's got to do it. - Beryl

Belize Origin bars and leaves are finished conching, tempered, and molded, Dominican is contentedly conching away. 

1) Raw nibs from Belize, ready for roasting. The smell is acidic, earthy, wonderful.

2) After roasting (the cocoa smelled like brownies baking), we push the nibs through a Champion Juicer. This has a shearing effect, which forces the cocoa butter out of the bean under pressure. It is a thick, grainy paste at this point.

 3) Here is the cocoa continuing its journey in the Premier Grinder. Refining and conching the chocolate with a granite stone grinder takes about 30 hours for a batch this size (the larger the batch, the longer the conching and refining time). We'll add the sugar when the micron level is at about 55. When the microns are about 20  - sometime tomorrow - we'll back off the stones so it can conch further without grinding the particles any smaller. (This warm, spinning, organic, glorious mass smells incredible!)

4) Before adding sugar. 

5)After adding cane sugar.

6) Everything is coming together. A few hours to go. 

Update: Finally our nibs are arriving tomorrow, shipped from Chocolate Alchemy. We ordered raw nibs rather than raw beans the last time we placed our order, which means we will be going from nib to bar rather than from bean to bar, at least, for this batch. Nibs are nice to work with because the beans have already been cracked and winnowed by the Chocolate Alchemist, but truthfully, we are looking forward to the whole beans arriving again, and to ordering in larger quantities.We will roast these lovely nibs, then grind, refine, conch, add organic cane sugar, keep on refining, conching and conching some more, until the chocolate is at about 20 microns and the taste is right where we think it's best, then temper it and pour it into molds.  The chocolate mellows for a few days. We wrap it. First, beans from Belize, then the Dominican Republic, after that, the Venezuelan Amazonas Wild Harvest, and finally, the Nicaraguan, which gets nibs sprinkled on the back. Should take about a week to ten days to do all four batches. We'll take photos of the progression, so stay tuned.

Check out Meadowlands Chocolate Company's new web site makeover! Thank you once again, SmugMug, for making it so easy to switch over to your new look. I love it. Simple and to the point.  ---Beryl

First wholesale and retail sales

After hundreds of hours developing and testing our cocoa beans and equipment, we have started our sales, both wholesale and retail. We have opened sales sites on our web site and started delivering samples to specialty stores.

The responses we have received have been very encouraging. We are excited to have gotten so many "raves" from people we have sent samples to from coast to coast. Atlanta, Washington D.C., Arizona, Michigan, and other places.

We are proud to announce our first store! That store is in Duluth, MN and can now be found on our list of stores on our web site. Our first store is: Duluth Coffee Company. Available the first week in November.

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Our new chocolate bar wrappers

Here are our new wrappers! We hope that you can see them in person somewhere near you in October.

Drum roll, please!

Our first chocolate made, tasted, and savored!

After receiving our first small batch machines, we have roasted, shelled, ground, refined, conched, tempered, molded, and wrapped our first four batches of chocolates. One batch each of Belize, Venezuelan, Peruvian, and Dominican Republic cacao beans. Even though there is always a learning curve, and always will be, we are very happy with the results! We are test marketing these first products at an art crawl in Longville, MN this week-end. We are pumped!

Each variety of cacao bean has its own distinctive flavors and you can begin to imagine the land they were grown in - called terroir. You've probably seen or heard this word used in relation to wine. It's the same usage here, but in relation to the characteristics of the actual ground each bean was grown in. We love tasting these characteristics and hope you will come to love and appreciate what each cacao bean has to offer as much as we do!

Update: Our first batch of chocolate will be finished in one week! The grinder and temperer, our micrometer, and the wrappers and molds for our small leaf chocolates are arriving early this week. As soon as they get here, we will start processing our first small batch of chocolate.

Thoughts on Direct Trade cocoa beans by "The Chocolate Alchemist"

It's very early and I'm thinking about the workers who harvest the cacao we will be using to make our chocolate. I was glad to read this article by "Alchemist John" (John Nanci) of Chocolate Alchemy. He writes, "But every single effort has been put forth to make sure the farmers are being actively supported in a sustainable manner, both financially and ethically." All righty, then, I can live with that.

                                                                                                                              - Beryl

What are Direct Trade beans and how is this different from Fair Trade and Organic Certified?

First off, that question is mixing the proverbial apples and oranges. How a bean is purchased has no relation to whether it is organic or not. The only relationship they share is that both have the potential for certification. With that out of the way, let’s talk briefly about the history of cocoa bean buying, trading, commodities, etc. and then we can move onto organic certification.

There have been, and still potentially are, some abhorrent practices of buying various commodities. Coffee, sugar…and cocoa. There are well documented cases of forced child and slave labor in the Ivory Coast. We, I believe, can agree this is not a good thing. So, steps were put in place to take a stand that these practices were not acceptable and “Fair Trade” was born. That took care of it right? If it is Fair Trade it is good, and if not, it’s bad. Right? Well, not really. Read on.

Fair trade. Fairly Traded. Direct Trade. Farm Gate. Ethically purchased. These, and many others are all terms you may see on cocoa and chocolate. Mostly it is the paper trail that is different, but what they all attempt to have in common is an underlying principal and commitment to making sure, to the best of our ability, that the people growing and producing the cocoa are being treated well and have not been taken advantage of economically.

Sounds great, right? Well, it is. In theory. But it is not cut and dry. I know many people that will ONLY buy Fair Trade certified beans. Good effort. But with that decision comes the following consequence. Many Fair Trade certifiers (Transfair USA for instance), for good reasons at the time, will only certify a co-op. Right now I have a handful of Venezuelan beans about to come in that were purchased directly from small villages and families that were previously slave villages. They have been paid over 50% over “Fair trade” prices (a price agreed to by BOTH parties) but because they have no infrastructure to be an “official” co-op (and don’t have the money required to pay the certifying agency for their registration) they cannot be called “Fair Trade”.

In my opinion those people and farms are what the whole program should be about. And a lot of other people feel the same way. That is why there are so many different terms for this. Because people saw that many people were falling through the cracks. Enter Direct Trade. Here, the seller is not using a broker as a middle man and is cutting through much of the red tape and making sure the people growing the cocoa are getting the money and support. But it is even fuzzy there. For instance, Chocolate Alchemy is working with Tisano. Tisano is on the ground in Venezuela working directly with the farmer. I can’t call that Direct Trade and I am not doing the “trading”. But every single effort has been put forth to make sure the farmers are being actively supported in a sustainable manner, both financially and ethically. There is no “certification” (because they are not a co-op, remember) but there is a commitment to having purchased these ethically. Ethically Purchased. In many ways, even more transparent and better than those with a certificate.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Certification can be important. Believe it or not, people lie. Looking for that stamp of certification is easy and does help insure compliance. And it DOES give some concrete assurances. But NOT having a certification does not mean the opposite. Not having a certification does not mean people have been taken advantage of. It just means you have to dig a little deeper. Actually take the time to look at what you are buying, who you are buying from and make a decision whether you believe them.

I’ll step down from the FT soapbox for now, and touch briefly on Organic certification.

It’s a bit more clear. Not 100%, but much better. There are MANY steps in an organic certification, and many places (unlike a Fair Trade status) where it can be lost, often out of ignorance. Cross contamination is the #1 issue. But again, it’s not the end of the story. I’m going to go back to those Venezuela beans coming in. I’ve spoken a LOT with Tisano about this, and they have dug and investigated, and found that these farms could become Organic certified with an outlay of about $15,000. The point here is they could be certified. Meaning they have been following organic growing and processing techniques for at least 5 years. But there is little money or incentive to get the certification as it will bring them no better price for the cocoa (see above). Granted, this is an exception to the rule, but it is there. And one I’ve seen come up more than once. So you care about organic practices. And the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. Good. Then DO look for the Organic seal, BUT if you don’t see it, you can again dig a little deeper and see the practices underneath. Because it’s those practices that really matter at the end of the day.

One final note about certification.  Although I do not push the fact, and maybe I should, Chocolate Alchemy is certified Organic by the USDA through the Oregon Department of Agriculture and Fair trade certified through both Transfair USA and IMO, so both paper trails do exist should you need them for your own edification or certification.

A recipe from Becky Howard-Gearhart - Wolverine, MI

• • I got this recipe from my cousin, Becky, who loves dark chocolate, along with a photo of the results:
    
    

    

    The best tasting and easiest way to satisfy that sweet tooth in a healthy way is to melt Organic Dark Chocolate in a pan with a little coconut oil in the bottom.When the Chocolate is all melted stir in Organic Unsweetened Coconut and stir it in good.Place in a coconut oiled up cake pan. Pack it down evenly and sprinkle course Sea Salt on the top and then layer it with crushed Unsalted Pecans. Put it in the freezer for 1/2 hour,then take it out and break it up into nice bite size pieces.This is so amazing!!! I make myself a cup of Dark Roast coffee and pop one of these in my mouth, and let it melt away!!
    
    I cannot wait to try the Meadowland Chocolates for this recipe of mine!
    

    
    

Our First City Council Meeting in Meadowlands, Mn

Last night we attended our first City Council meeting with Meadowlands, Mn to introduce ourselves, our new business, our plans for producing and marketing our new work...Free Trade, Certified Organic chocolate.

We were very happy with the amenable reception we were given by both the council itself and the people attending the meeting. We feel confident that we will be able to work with the City of Meadowlands in the successful creation of our new business. Our impression is that the creation of this new business is creating an atmosphere of enthusiasm with the people of Meadowlands, but also increasing our own!

We are happy to be working with the council and the people of Meadowlands in our new venture. Thank you Meadowlands for the warm reception we received last night.

The Melanger and the Temperer

The melanger takes the chocolate after it has been ground from roasted beans into a thick, gooey paste, and grinds it between stones on rollers, pushing and agitating the mass for up to 48 hours, until the particles are about 30 microns (a human hair is about 100 microns) and all the cocoa butter is released and evenly coats the particles. This is the refining and conching of the chocolate. It pulls out the subtle flavors and eliminates too much acidity and bitterness. It's not all the machine, though. The chocolate maker plays a big role in perfecting the taste, texture and smoothness. Then the chocolate is tempered, a process of cooling the warm chocolate down, very slowly and carefully. After this, the temperered chocolate is ready to be poured into molds.

--Beryl

CocoaTown ECGC-12SL Melanger

ACMC Tabletop Temperer

First Draft Front-of-Wrapper Designs for Meadowlands Chocolate Bars

Here are images of our preliminary designs for our chocolate bar wrappers! These are early sketches and therefore they don't necessarily reflect what the final products will be. We love the colors and layout. We are as wrapped up in this as the chocolate will be... where to go next with our thoughts, taking careful steps to get from A to Z... Clyo and I are excited about where this path is taking us!

-Beryl

creation

I love creating new things, so I am even more excited to create something that is not only beautiful visually, but also smells beautiful and tastes beautiful...not unlike the experience of a fine, well aged Scotch. This is dedicated to all those who savor and enjoy excellence. - Clyo -

The road less traveled by

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, and having perhaps the better claim, because it was grassy and wanted wear..." -- Robert Frost, from "The Road Not Taken"

If artists are used to putting their necks on chopping blocks, then this is the sweetest chocolate... er, chopping block we've ever seen. We love our new chopping block! To make a long story short, we are Clyo Howard and Beryl Wells Hamilton - lifelong best friends and lovers of each other, of beauty and art and flavor. We are artists, first. We make our living making beautiful things.

 Alongside Meadowlands Studio, where Clyo's busy making pottery, and Beryl keeps herself hopping making copper art, sculpture, Celtic Art, and paintings, we are starting a new business. We are going to make chocolate. Or, Clyo says, "Creating Chocolate." From raw, organic cocoa beans,starting out in a very small way, we are making chocolate.We are on our way.

Today,  from the Chocolate Alchemy web site, we ordered four pounds of cocoa beans that were harvested in Belize, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Peru. Every kind of bean has a different story, and we will tell it all here. Soon we'll be roasting, milling, grinding, conching, refining, and tempering these wonderful beans into pure, organic, rich, dark chocolate. More to follow. Much, much more!

Beryl