queer chocolatier

Chocolate House, cocoa wonkery

The Journey from Cacao Tree to Cocoa Bean to Chocolate Bar

The Journey from Cacao Tree to Cocoa Bean to Chocolate Bar

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Settle in for a deep, nerdy dive into exploring the journey chocolate travels to arrive to your hands! It is a LONG journey and I hope that knowing all the steps along the way makes this bit of indulgence something to appreciate even more than you already do!

It truly is a long journey, so before I delve right in, here is a road map of the steps (and approximate time for each step) along the way for you to see where we are headed:

  1. Planting and growing cacao tree seeds and saplings (5-7 years)

  2. Harvesting cacao pods (varies, but occurs over the course of a year)

  3. Fermenting cocoa beans (3-8 days)

  4. Drying beans (5-10 days)

  5. Packing and Transporting beans (2-3 weeks)

  6. Sorting beans (1-2 hours, depending on how big a batch)

  7. Roasting beans (20-45 minutes)

  8. Cracking beans and Winnowing shells (15-60 minutes)

  9. Grinding and refining cocoa nibs (18-24 hours)

  10. Resting and aging chocolate (1 day to several weeks)

  11. Tempering and molding chocolate bars (1 hour to several hours, depending on scale)

  12. Enjoying chocolate bars (almost instantaneously)

Let’s go!

Seed-to-Tree-to-Beans

Planting and Growing

Before your chocolate bar became chocolate—a minimum of anywhere between five and seven years before—a seed from a cacao pod was planted.

But it wasn’t just planted anywhere.

Cacao grows in a narrow band around the equator, roughly 10 degrees latitude above and below, and this region is colloquially known as the Cocoa Belt. The main parts of the world that produce cocoa are West Africa (especially Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana), Indonesia, Latin America (countries such as Ecuador, Guatemala, Venezuela, Peru, Honduras, and Colombia), Madagascar, Tanzania, Vietnam, and India. Hawaii and Puerto Rico are the only places among the United States that are capable of cocoa production.

Cacao tree seedlings grow alongside other vegetation; perhaps some banana trees or other tropical fruits and flora which can provide some shade cover for the cacao tree and crop diversity for the farmer.

A cacao tree can live up to more than a hundred years old but be fruitful for almost half of that time, with some variations to take into account.


Harvesting

After those initial five-ish years passed, the tree begins to produce fruit and cacao pods are finally harvested.

Cacao pods are really quite pretty with their wide range of colors, from greens to yellows, oranges, reds, and even deep purples. Typically, they are about the shape of an American football, that is to say they are oblong with tapering at the ends. They can range in size from about 6 to 12 inches in length.

Cacao or Cocoa? I take my cue from those who follow the delineation at the point of harvest, prior to harvest is cacao and post-harvest is cocoa as the transformation begins here.

Split cocoa pod with fresh cocoa beans and pulp

Relatively speaking, cacao trees are not especially tall, about 15 to 25 feet or so, and their pods grow all slapdash on the trunk and the branches making some of the harvest possible simply by using a machete. For the pods higher up on the trees, a hooked blade on a pole is skillfully used with delicate precision.

Great care must be taken during harvesting so that the flowers that have been pollinated and will turn into pods for next year's harvest are not injured or damaged.

Not all pods ripen at the same time and the farmer must know when the pod is fully ripened before harvesting. It takes a lot of knowledge and skill to recognize which pods are ready, how to reach them for harvesting, and not to harm the tree thereby decreasing next year’s yield.

I don’t know about you, but I’m already exhausted!

Fermentation

Cocoa pods are split open to reveal the seeds and pulp inside. Cutting into one feels akin to cutting open a winter squash as the pods have a thick rind. The pulp has a sweet, tropical flavor to it; being a Hoosier from a temperate climate, tropical fruit doesn’t abound here but my best comparison to the flavor is something close to a mix between kiwifruit and pineapple! I personally enjoyed the flavor!

But how do cocoa seeds turn brown and lose its tropical fruit profile?

Via fermentation.

The beans are placed into large fermentation boxes and remain, stirred occasionally, for anywhere from three to eight days.

During this period, the sugary pulp that engulfs the beans serves as fuel for ambient microbes and sparks the fermentation process.

The beans, from the fermentation process and the pressure of all the weight of beans stacked into the boxes, can reach temperatures upwards of 120° F. That heat is what also halts the germination process of the beans.

Beans or Seeds? Cocoa beans are actually the seeds of the cacao tree but when Europeans first experienced cacao, they erroneously called the seeds “beans” and the mistake took root as the word to call them.

Without this fermentation step, the beans would never develop that familiar chocolatey flavor we recognize. It is an entirely transformative process.

Many experts argue that this step is, in fact, the most crucial of all and is where many craft chocolate makers send agronomists on site to work with farmers to improve their fermentation of their beans.


Drying, Packing, Transporting

Once fermentation is complete, the beans are then spread out to dry.

Ideally, the cocoa beans will be sun-dried, but tunnels for machine drying and wood-fired drying are also common in some cocoa growing regions.

After all, much of the Cocoa Belt is contains rain forests!

Beans take a few days to dry to reach the desired moisture levels so that they are safe to transport with minimal risk of harmful microorganisms growing.

Dried beans are packed in large sacks (40-70 kilograms) and transported to the chocolate makers.

Baby’s first sack of beans! A 50kg sack of cocoa beans from Tumaco, Colombia.

Baby’s first sack of beans! A 50kg sack of cocoa beans from Tumaco, Colombia.

(In some cases, this step is actually more complex than I provide here, as beans are often sold in cooperatives so they are gathered in a central area and sorted, blended, and packed here to prepare for transport. And, especially in the case of bulk beans, there are commodities traders and importers/exporters that are involved in the shipping and purchasing of beans before they reach the manufacturing plants.)

More often than not, the chocolate makers are not in the same country as the one in which the beans were grown, but there are growing numbers of chocolate makers that are in-country and thereby keeping more of the revenue within their borders. Whenever possible, support chocolate that is made in-country where the cacao is grown and help decolonize cacao!

Bean-to-Bar

FINALLY!!

Now the beans have arrived in the waiting hands of a chocolate maker!

Hopefully, you can see how many steps there are along this journey already, even before that chocolate maker gets to glorious work!

Sorting and Roasting

Second only to fermentation, the roasting of cocoa beans is a crucial stage of flavor development.

But, before a chocolate maker embarks on this step, the beans must be sorted and separated from undesirable items that came along for the ride; sometimes bits of burlap, stones, sticks, or other sundry items will stowaway, and there are also defective beans that need to be discarded.

Once all the good beans are remaining for the roast, the chocolate maker decides the roast profile preferred for the batch of beans. Roasting can be done using a number of different methods, from a skillet on an open flame, to an oven, to a heat gun, to a refurbished and retrofitted coffee drum roaster.

But why roast at all? (Please, let's not get into the current “raw" chocolate trend today, but perhaps another day…)

Good roasting accomplishes three goals:

  • kills residual bacteria from the fermentation process,

  • further reduces the moisture content of the cocoa beans (the drying step only brings the moisture content to around 8%),

  • and, most importantly, develops flavor

A roast profile consists of time and temperature; high heat for a quick time or “low and slow” will result in very different flavors in the beans. Adjusting those variables will also result in different outcomes, and so will the humidity in the room, the size and residual moisture of the beans, the type of bean and its origin, and the will of the universe.

Approaches to roasting is a matter of preference and a bit of artistic expression albeit in a science-y sort of way.

One can think of the approach to roasting cocoa beans as similar to that of roasting coffee beans, but there is a considerable bit of difference between coffee and cocoa beans, one being cocoa beans consist of roughly 45% cocoa butter (fat) and coffee bean lipid content is much lower, somewhere between 10-17%. Cocoa beans, with their higher fat content, are more susceptible to burning and have to be roasted at relatively lower temperatures.

Craft chocolate makers take great care (and pride) in dialing in on an excellent roast that highlights unique properties of specific beans. Mass-produced chocolate companies care less about this and will often over-roast beans as a way to get a more unified, consistent flavor and adjust the overall product flavor when mixing the cocoa beans with other ingredients.

Quite a contrast!

Cracking and Winnowing

After the roasted beans have cooled off, the papery shells must be removed before the grinding stage.

This can be done manually (and is incredibly painstaking!) but there are specialized machines that can have the beans pass through in order for them to be cracked, then separating the shell from the bean, and blowing the shell away while reserving the cocoa nibs for further processing.

A winnower machine consists of a hopper that holds cooled roasted cocoa beans that feed into a cracking machine (in this case, a juicer) and the cracked nibs and shells fall into tubing that diverts nib from shell via a vacuum, collecting usable nibs. Photo cred: Rylan Capper of Ball State Daily News

A winnower machine consists of a hopper that holds cooled roasted cocoa beans that feed into a cracking machine (in this case, a juicer) and the cracked nibs and shells fall into tubing that diverts nib from shell via a vacuum, collecting usable nibs. Photo cred: Rylan Capper of Ball State Daily News

The shell is waste, but can be used for garden compost.

Ideally, the cracked nibs have been reserved without too many being included in the shell and vice versa. FDA standards dictate that the percentage of shell in the resulting chocolate cannot exceed 1.75% by weight but nibs getting mixed with husks is just wasted nibs.

I hate wasting nibs…

Grinding and Refining

Melangers (derived from the French word mélange meaning “to mix”) are frequently used to make chocolate as we know it by grinding and refining cocoa nibs and later adding sugar (and any additions such as powdered milk, melted cocoa butter, and dried flavorings such as cinnamon).

The melangers vary in size, with some able to sit on a countertop and others filling entire rooms.

The grinding process is a lengthy one, lasting approximately a full day, give or take a couple of hours.

The primary goal of grinding is to break down the beans into a liquified state where particles are around 10-20 microns (smaller than the width of a hair) so that the feel of the chocolate is perceived as smooth liquid and not grainy. Although, there are purposefully grainy chocolates that are in the style of handmade Mexican chocolates which are quite delicious!

At the point when the nibs have broken down, the substance is referred to as “chocolate liquor” although there is no alcohol present. Adding sugar and cocoa butter at this stage is the beginnings of transforming into chocolate.

Smaller-scale chocolate makers almost exclusively use some sort of melanger while larger chocolate producers (including large scale craft chocolate producers) will use a ball mill instead. Melangers have a maximum capacity whereas ball mills can be continuously fed with virtually no capacity limits.

There is a lot of time saved in using a ball mill, so I’m told, but I am also learning that they are a bear to clean and you have to be making a lot of chocolate to make the process worthwhile. A ball mill is essentially a tower that is filled with ball bearings that work to beat up and grind cocoa nibs as they are poured in from the top and process downward through gravity. They are outfitted with a water jacket to help regulate the internal temperature and also have a pump at the bottom to help recirculate chocolate liquor back through the top of the ball mill.

Although, melangers refine the chocolate simultaneously as grinding and allow for smaller-scale chocolate makers to sort of skip on the separate step of conching.

Conching

Conching is a process that is not always performed as a distinct step; as mentioned before, melangers can do some of the refining while grinding the nibs.

The name comes from the early machines that were used in the process; the shape of the machines resembled conche shells and the name took hold.

However, when performed as a stand-alone step in the process, conching involves polishing the chocolate, reducing or ultimately eliminating any lingering off-flavors to round out the finished chocolate.

Roasting develops flavors but doesn’t completely get rid of some of the vinegary notes that stick with the unrefined nibs. If a chocolate maker under-roasts and underrefines, you might get the sensation of taking a shot of vinegar that had just a hint of chocolate mixed in. Not altogether the most unpleasant thing for some people, but it is not the desired outcome for chocolate makers.

Conching helps provide chocolate that rounded, enjoyable mouthfeel and flavor that feels somehow more finished and complete.

Tempering and Molding

The home stretch of chocolate making is tempering and, if making bars, molding.

Tempering chocolate is perhaps the most intimidating process in handling chocolate. Ask anyone who works with chocolate about any story they might have involving tempering and you’ll likely get something akin to a therapy session!

The most comforting thing is that no matter how much you might mess up tempering by hand, you can always start over without wasting chocolate!

Tempering chocolate by hand on a granite slab. Photo cred: Cheri Madewell

Tempering chocolate by hand on a granite slab. Photo cred: Cheri Madewell

So, what actually is tempering?

It is the process of raising the temperature of chocolate to melt it all to an exact temperature, then cooling it rapidly and warming it again slightly.

Why go through the heating, then cooling, then heating all over again?

Chocolate, on a molecular level, consists of crystals, six possible varieties in fact. But not all of the crystals are the same or equally desirable. Tempering allows for all of the crystals to melt, then reform into the ideal version and align favorably so that when the tempered chocolate is molded and cooled, the chocolate will have a desirable shine and snap.

Chocolate that isn’t tempered will not be desirable in appearance and will be difficult to work with to make confections. It will not have a shine to it and will begin to develop fat bloom, which is that mottled whiteish coloration on the surface of chocolate. The cocoa butter has simply risen to the surface and cooled in such a way that it is separate from the rest of the crystalline structure of the chocolate. It isn’t spoiled but it just isn’t pretty anymore

Tempering is necessary when molding chocolate bars as well.

Molding chocolate bars can also be done by hand, like tempering, but to create bars at a larger scale, machines can temper chocolate and hold it in temper until ready to use while other machines can dispense tempered chocolate into prepared molds.

Enjoying Chocolate Bars

After bars are molded, packaging them for purchase (by hand or machine, again) is the final step on the journey of delivering chocolate to the hungry consumer!

In a future post, I’ll discuss more about how to read a chocolate label in order to be able to understand what can be learned from the details printed on (or left off) the label.

Too few labels, however, tell the consumer the story of how their chocolate bar came to be. But now you have a better sense of the fullness of the journey, from seed-to-tree-to-bean-to-bar!

Tasting chocolate also has some steps in and of itself; Queer Chocolatier offers a Guided Chocolate Tasting Event that walks you through these steps intentionally so that you can appreciate the journey that chocolate bar traveled to get to you. When tasting chocolate purposefully, with the goal of picking up as much nuance and detail as possible, you can taste the effects of how chocolate was roasted and even more about the region in which the cacao was grown.

Enjoying chocolate bars can allow for a delicious reflection on how much transformation and labor and craft the chocolate underwent and, to me, that is a beautiful gift that I now get to enjoy receiving as well as giving as a chocolate maker!

QC Recipes: Champurrado Drinking Chocolate

QC Recipes: Champurrado Drinking Chocolate

Drinking chocolates can be enjoyed anytime of day but I prefer to begin the day on a high note! Paired with my homemade granola, this was my first experiment with making champurrado before my shop opened. It was a delightful rookie cup and catapulte…

Drinking chocolates can be enjoyed anytime of day but I prefer to begin the day on a high note! Paired with my homemade granola, this was my first experiment with making champurrado before my shop opened. It was a delightful rookie cup and catapulted me into exploring more drinking chocolate concepts!

Chocolate's origins are, in fact, rooted in drinking rather than eating. Mesoamerican cultures long cultivated, harvested, consumed, and traded cacao before colonizers stumbled their way to this hemisphere. With a name meaning Food of the gods, we can see how highly-esteemed theobroma cacao was situated in many of the civilizations from as early as 1900 BCE, with some evidence suggesting even earlier.

Cacao beans were even used as currency. Money literally grew on trees, y’all.

Eating chocolate, as we are more familiar with today, didn’t come onto the scene until the 1800s by comparison.

And as much as we love to eat chocolate, one should definitely have a proper cup of drinking chocolate to walk down the road of becoming a true cocoa connoisseur!

Let your Queer Chocolatier help!

Drinking Chocolate vs. Hot Cocoa

You might ask yourself, what's the difference between drinking chocolate and hot cocoa? Sounds the same, right?

The key difference is the form of chocolate used in the beverage.

Hot cocoa is made with, as you may have guessed, cocoa powder as its base and is mixed with sugar, water or milk, and flavorings. Drinking chocolate, on the other hand, is typically made by gently melting down finished chocolate and incorporating various liquids and other ingredients for flavor and texture.

A good but imperfect analogy would be to compare drip-brewed coffee with hot cocoa and espresso shots with drinking chocolate. The intensity and concentration of chocolate is more present in drinking chocolate as so with espresso shots in the coffee world.

Preparing drinking chocolate orders at Queer Chocolatier's Chocolate House

Preparing drinking chocolate orders at Queer Chocolatier's Chocolate House

We served 4 to 5 different drinking chocolates on our menu, depending on the season, but my favorite is the champurrado. This drink is inspired by the Mesoamerican origins but made more palatable for today's consumers. Although, the modern-day Hoosier in me deeply yearns for that corn…

Ingredients:

For 1 serving of champurrado

  • 1 ounce dark chocolate (no less than 60% cocoa, which is what we use at QC), chopped into small pieces

  • 1 Tablespoon of finely-ground cornmeal

  • ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

  • ¼ teaspoon ground chipotle

  • 4 ounces of boiling water

Steps:

  1. Set a small cup to the side ready for you to pour your champurrado in immediately after it is prepared.

  2. Place a kettle filled with water on the boil.

    1. If you have an electric kettle, use as instructed by manufacturer.

    2. If you have a non-electric kettle, pour water in and place in stovetop burner to bring to boil.

    3. If you don’t have a kettle, skip this step and move onto step 3.

  3. In a small pot (tbh, I use butter warmers to prepare our drinking chocolates!), combine chocolate pieces, cornmeal, cinnamon, and chipotle and place on stovetop burner on medium-low heat. (If you do not have a kettle, add 4 ounces of water along with the other ingredients in small pot.)

  4. Stir continuously with a heatproof spatula in order to keep chocolate from scorching and to further incorporate dry ingredients into melted chocolate.

  5. Once chocolate is fully melted, pour boiling water in with the melted chocolate and use a whisk to vigorously combine. (If water was added at the beginning, once you see chocolate is melted, switch out the spatula for the whisk to begin mixing vigorously.)

  6. As beverage heats up, the cornmeal will thicken considerably. Check for temperature and flavor by dipping a small spoon in the pot to bring out for a taste. Be careful, please, and don’t burn your tongue!

  7. When beverage is at your desired hot temperature, turn off heat and pour immediately into your serving cup and enjoy!

A couple of notes:

  • Drinking chocolate is absolutely something to make to your tastes! If you want it spicier, add more chipotle. If you don’t like or can’t eat cinnamon, omit it for a different spice you like. If you like a thinner or thicker beverage, adjust the water accordingly.

  • For something a bit more robust, consider swapping hot coffee for the water!

Serving our drinking chocolates with a palate cleanser such as sparkling mineral water provides a fuller tasting experience. Photo credit: Veronica Engle

Serving our drinking chocolates with a palate cleanser such as sparkling mineral water provides a fuller tasting experience. Photo credit: Veronica Engle

Recipes, Chocolate House, Small Business

QC Recipes: Biscuits and Chocolate Gravy

QC Recipes: Biscuits and Chocolate Gravy

One of my very favorite things I used to make at the Chocolate House (before the pandemic…) was our Saturday brunch plate of biscuits and chocolate gravy!

What on earth is chocolate gravy, you ask? I’m glad you did.

My late grandma is from Tennessee and she used to make it for Saturday breakfast, as told to me by my aunt. I'd never had it before, but when we were building out the Chocolate House, I thought I would make a test batch at home and see if it was something to include in our offerings.

It immediately won over my wife, who serves as the true arbiter of taste in our household. Cheri can be picky but it is always in a way that serves as a line of what is high-quality and what’s not.

We both got excited about offering brunch to the queer community! Muncie, meet biscuits and chocolate gravy; biscuits and chocolate gravy, meet Muncie!

The very first plate of B&CG I ever made!

The very first plate of B&CG I ever made!

If You Like Biscuits and Any Gravy, You’ll Love Biscuits and Chocolate Gravy

Some folks who have never heard of chocolate gravy are universally skeptical at first. My wife included. The concern is whether the chocolate gravy is too sweet.

It isn’t. Trust.

It is situated somewhere between sweet and savory.

Serving it atop warm, tender biscuits helps anchor the gravy from drifting too far into the sweet category as well.

Here’s a bonus: I’ve created a way to make the whole plate vegan!

Part of our mission at Queer Chocolatier is to stand in solidarity with people of all sorts of diets, including vegans, and have the majority of our offerings suitable for their diet.

I’ll offer both versions, with dairy and without, in the recipe below!

The gravy itself is not hard to make but it can be easily ruined, so I tend to recommend not starting your gravy until at least you’ve put your biscuits in to bake or when they are out of the oven altogether. Also, the recipe for the gravy is what I use, but I include some of my preferred optional flavorings as well; feel free to experiment with flavors you enjoy! Gravy is more about expressing your own preferences, some like thinner gravy while others like it thick and never leaving the biscuit surface. Make it your way!

And, in case you wondered, yes these biscuits can be made in a toaster oven!

Ingredients:

For Biscuits (Yield: 6 biscuits)

  • 2 cups All-purpose Flour

  • ¾ teaspoon Salt

  • 1¼ tablespoons Baking powder

  • 1 stick, 8 tablespoons, very cold and cubed Butter (vegan version: butter alternative, such as Earth Balance or Country Crock's plant-based offerings, preferably the avocado over the olive oil)

  • ½ cup Milk (vegan version: unsweetened soy milk), may need to add more, so keep handy.

Steps:

  1. Preheat oven to 425° F.

  2. Combine dry ingredients in large bowl and whisk to incorporate.

  3. Cut butter into dry mixture. Use your hands to work butter into the mix as quickly as possible so as to not get the butter too warm, but get your final mix looking kind of sand and the butter pieces no bigger than pea-sized.

  4. Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour the milk into the well. Stir to incorporate, but only just. Do not overwork mixture, as biscuits will get tough and not rise well.

  5. Turn out biscuits dough onto counter and shape into a disk that is an even 1” thick throughout. Use a 2” biscuit cutter to cut out biscuits and place them onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. Re-shape scraps and cut more biscuits. I always made myself an “ugly” biscuit I shape by hand with the final remaining scraps that I couldn’t use to cut with biscuit cutter!

  6. Bake for 12-15 minutes, until tops are golden brown.

  7. Remove from oven, serve warm with gravy.

Ingredients:

For Chocolate Gravy (Yield: 2 cups)

  • 1 cup Sugar

  • ¼ cup Cocoa powder

  • 3 tablespoons All-purpose flour

  • Pinch of Salt

  • 2 cups Milk (vegan version: unsweetened soy milk)

  • 4 tablespoons, cubed, Butter (vegan version: butter alternative, such as Earth Balance or Country Crock's plant-based offerings, preferably the avocado over the olive oil)

  • Optional: serve with a pinch of ground cinnamon and ground chipotle, maybe add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract to be real fancy!

Steps:

  1. Combine dry ingredients in a medium pot, whisking until fully incorporated.

  2. Place pot on stove top on medium-low to medium heat and slowly stream milk into mixture, whisking to remove lumps.

  3. Cook, stirring frequently and paying special attention to the bottom and sides of pot where gravy can thicken (and burn!) until gravy is warm and thickened to desired consistency, realizing gravy will continue to thicken as it cools.

  4. Add cubed butter at the end of cooking and stir to combine until all butter is melted and gravy has a shiny, glossy appearance.

  5. Serve over fresh biscuits or just eat with a spoon from the pot, I ain’t about to judge.

  6. Gravy can be stored in a jar in the refrigerator for about a week. When reheating, use a microwave (30 seconds at a time, stirring in between) or return gravy to a pot but add a bit of milk to thin out while bringing gravy to desired temperature.

Instagram photos from customers who have unapologetically indulged in Queer Chocolatier Biscuits & Chocolate Gravy

Photo credit: Benjamin Strack (IG @photogben)

Photo credit: Benjamin Strack (IG @photogben)

Photo credit: Ryan Remington (IG @ryanisadope)

Photo credit: Ryan Remington (IG @ryanisadope)

Photo credit: Amy Shaw (IG @alphanumeric.71697

Photo credit: Amy Shaw (IG @alphanumeric.71697

Photo credit: Patrick O'Neal (IG @patrick_mcdarling_oneal)

Photo credit: Patrick O'Neal (IG @patrick_mcdarling_oneal)

Recipes, Small Business, Chocolate House

QC Recipes: Cold Brew Cocoa

QC Recipes: Cold Brew Cocoa

As things are shifting here at Queer Chocolatier, I’ve decided that it might also make for a great opportunity to begin sharing some recipes with readers!

I will hope to have a recipe posted about once a week or so, depending on how the season is going at the shop and whether Dorian will let me sit down to write…

You understand my plight

You understand my plight

My first recipe is incredibly easy and really quite surprisingly pleasant as I literally just tried it for the first time for myself this morning!

Hey, when something is that good, why keep it to myself when I could share it with my family???

COLD brew Cocoa

If you’ve ever had or heard of cold brew coffee, then you gotta try cold brew cocoa!

Some people tend to discuss cold brew coffee as a preferred way to drink coffee without the stomach-wrenching acidity or bitterness that can accompany a typical hot brewed coffee. It has a smoother taste and you don’t have to worry about your coffee getting cold when it already starts out that way!

Cold brew cocoa may require more convincing since the vast majority of the time we consume cocoa is hot or, when not hot, in a frappuccino of some concoction.

But trust your Queer Chocolatier!

I gotchu! Cold brew cocoa is delicious!

Cold brew cocoa: Dark, smooth, but flavorful in a delightfully unexpected way!

Cold brew cocoa: Dark, smooth, but flavorful in a delightfully unexpected way!

To make yourself a serving at home, you likely have all the things you need already.

Ingredients and Materials:

  • Glass (8-12 oz will do nicely) to brew plus a glass to filter into and drink from

  • Spoon

  • Cold water (preferably filtered or bottled)

  • Cocoa powder (any will do, but pick your favorite, and keep an eye out for when QC makes housemade cocoa powder!)

  • Coffee filter (ideally a pour-over coffee set-up of some sort)

That’s it. You may be thinking “But wait! Cocoa powder isn’t sweetened! It is really bitter! I REMEMBER AS A CHILD MY GRANDMOTHER TRICKING ME INTO A BITE OF COCOA POWDER AND I CARRY THOSE SCARS ON MY HEART TO THIS VERY DAY!!”

Ahem, you might be thinking that, but just give this a try first and if you do find that you need to sweeten it up, you can do so just before serving.

Steps:

  • Take your glass and pour your cold water in, leaving a bit of headroom for when you stir.

  • Scoop 1-2 spoonfuls of cocoa powder into your cold water and stir. Be aware that not all of the cocoa powder will dissolve, that’s okay! Just give it a diligent stirring and stop when it is mostly incorporated.

  • Place your glass in the refrigerator overnight.

  • In the next morning, set up a a coffee filter in either a single serving pour over set-up or fit a coffee filter over a clean glass by rolling the edges of the filter over the top of your glass and secure with your non-pouring hand.

  • Take your cold brew cocoa out of the fridge and, without stirring again, pour carefully into your coffee filter. The cocoa solids will be strained away and the water will pour through easily. Discard filter after water is fully filtered.

  • Drink immediately or return to fridge to drink later (but maybe no longer than a day, just go ahead and drink it, you already went through all that trouble). Add any creamer or flavorings similar to how you might fix yourself a cold brew coffee, but be sure to taste it first because you might just like to drink this beverage stra… well… unadulterated.

You can also make ice cubes of cold-brew cocoa and serve a batch of cold brew cocoa over these ice cubes! Or mix & match between cold brew cocoa cubes with cold brew coffee, or vice versa!!

THE POSSIBREWERTIES ARE ENDLESS!!!!

Give this fun beverage a try and let me know your thoughts in a comment below!

Small Business

It takes a village to build a house...in the Village.

It takes a village to build a house...in the Village.

I'm a headstrong, stubborn queer woman.

Occasionally, I'm reminded of this but not always in a negative way.

Expanding Queer Chocolatier into a chocolate house is one of the most positive ways I've been reminded that my stubbornness in doing things on my own is not needed here. 

Doing things on my own is, largely, a trait borne out of being a only child. It also comes from a place of lack. And, I'm more than sure that my own self-assuredness and ego has a role to play.

But, I've learned (and am learning) that people want to help and rally around those they unapologetically love. 

Coffee cupping for the first time at Quills Coffee in Louisville, KY.

Coffee cupping for the first time at Quills Coffee in Louisville, KY.

The new year has brought a whirlwind of joy in the form of new knowledge and new connections. I'm learning so much from so many that my head is on a happy lil swivel. Seemingly everyone I meet has a way of contributing and bettering the upcoming Queer Chocolatier House. If it weren't for all of these folks chipping in, sharing, absorbing, blending all of their knowledge, expertise and passion, I would not only have a slow and lonely go of it, it wouldn't have the depth and richness it is bound to have.

I'm not only honing in on my chocolate passion and encountering other choco-philes (who host podcasts I listen to!),
I'm learning about business modeling from a friend I've known for a decade.
I'm learning about branding philosophies from a kind and creative soul I've just met.
I'm learning about coffee from roasters, equipment vendors, former baristas (including my wife) and former coffee shop managers.
I'm learning about queerness and gender from countless people everyday.
I'm learning about buildouts, remodels, and design from my father-in-law and my aunt along with others who are passionate about architecture and interior design style.

How could one person build that wealth of knowledge on one's own??

Maybe it is possible. But then to take that knowledge and act on it? That seems like quite the task. Luckily we have folks who believe in us and our vision for our contribution to our community that they are contributing financially and knowledgeably.

And I know I'll continue to need help along the way, and there are many ways you can join us in our venture.

The Village will be made all the better and sweeter for their efforts.

Thank you from the bottom of my headstrong, stubborn queer heart.

 

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