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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