Hello everyone!
Today it’s all about putting the cart before the horse, and considering what we hope our batch will become. If you’re aiming for delightful, crave-worthy, creamy but not gummy, silky smooth with no chalkiness or teensy bits of crunch, this is for you.
Here we are, with a bucket or bowl of roasted nibs. Now what?
Roasting, through its effects on volatiles and aromatic volatile compounds, sets up much of what we work with in refining: through aromatics, roasting can show us what a bean has to offer (recalling aromatic volatiles are what create flavor), but roasting doesn’t accomplish all our flavor goals.
Through roasting and refining we are creating chemical (flavor) changes in the bean.
Refining (we also refer to it as grinding and melanging) isn't just about reducing particle size, but about developing the flavors we targeted in the roast. Refining requires TIME to develop those flavors (and not as much heat as once presumed).
What does this mean for the chocolate maker?
It means variables come into play, from the start (which origin we chose) through roasting (how we approached the origin in the roast or whether we roasted or baked the beans in an oven), and through refining.
Origin results become a variable in the roasting results, and roasting results become a variable in the refining results, and refining becomes a final variable in flavor results.
Meanwhile, we’ve added variables at every step: sorting, heat, time, cooling, cracking + winnowing, freshness of the nibs, batch size, ambient air temp during grind, time length, amount of oxygen mixed into the batch, amount and type of sugar added, cocoa butter (amount, origin, its own aromatic volatiles), all add/take away from the composition of a batch, before we bring tempering into the picture.
It’s a lot of variables to juggle! On the days it seems too much, sit down, eat a bite of chocolate and take a deep breath. It’s only chocolate! By digging into each sector of variables, the more we can begin to understand how those variables play their parts in this beautiful mess of a livelihood called making bean to bar chocolate.
flavor: the “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” effect.
What goes into the batch starts at the roast
the good news: whatever flavor goals we accomplished in the roast can be further developed and highlighted during refining
the not-do-happy news: whatever issues we did not resolve or any we added during the roast can’t be corrected during refining.
by evaluating the roast(s) going into the batch we can create the best % formulation for the batch.
incorrect roasting and/or misunderstanding what the roast achieved is why many chocolate makers adhere to a 70% approach, no matter the origin, relying on sugar to mask problems.
Origin flavor potential
A cocoa-forward origin won’t become a fruit-bomb chocolate, and a fruit-bomb origin won’t become a cocoa-forward chocolate.
Origins may share similarities along the chocolate flavor spectrum, but flavor potential—the flavor possibilities within each origin created by the sum total we call terroir —can’t be changed. Throughout the chocolate making process we have a simple decision to make: we can learn what those possibilities might be, and choose the aspects we hope to highlight/focus on/bring to the forefront/draw out/diminish. or, we can craft one-size-fits-all batches that provide a shadow image of what’s actually inside.
Hello, bean? this is your new friend calling.
three ways to learn what the beans can tell us
number 1: order beans
origins you’ve never worked with
origins you’ve never tasted
origins you don’t know beans about :)
origins you aren’t necessarily excited to try
number 2: use your senses
smell the beans as soon as they arrive
learn how to use profile roasting and use it
pay attention to aroma clues (remember, aroma is what creates flavor)
taste chocolate
taste bars made using the same origins you work with
taste bars made with origins you’ve never tasted
taste bars made with origins you know nothing about
flavor + texture are the end goals
Every first bite of chocolate is a sensory experience, and how that sensory experience is perceived matters: besides aroma, taste/flavor, texture plays a critical role in how much, or little, a bite of chocolate is enjoyed.
When we “make” chocolate we are creating a suspension of solids (the cocoa nibs + sugar) in a liquid (the cocoa butter): cocoa butter filled with the teensiest, imperceptible particles of cocoa solids and sugar granules that are so small our tongue can’t sense them.
grinding, refining, conching = making the cocoa solids as imperceptible as we can
These steps serve to:
release cocoa butter by crushing the nibs, separating the cocoa fat from the solids,
reduce particle size of the cocoa solids, sugar, and any other ingredients added at the grind in order to create a smooth, creamy texture,
evenly distribute and suspend the reduced cocoa solids/other ingredients in the cocoa butter,
develop flavor through the release of aromatic volatiles over time,
and create a creamy but not gummy mouthfeel conducive to enjoying an even melt when tasted.
why texture matters
We take a bite of chocolate, which releases aroma, sending a message to our brain that is translated as “flavor.” But in the first seconds of that bite our tongue has sensed texture and/or: this is called mouthfeel.
Our somatosensory system via our tongue senses temperature, texture, and irritation.
Temperature: a bite of chocolate just after drinking a cold beverage is not the same experience as a bite of slightly melted chocolate, or a bite of chocolate allowed to sit and slowly melt on our tongue. cocoa butter melt is critical to both chocolate flavor and mouthfeel: an even dispersement of the fat particles provide the “best” taste because they provide the most aroma to be released.
Often, chocolate makers taste straight out of the melanger and are tasting melted chocolate—which relays different flavors, as well as sensation. To effectively evaluate a batch the chocolate must be at the expected serving temperature.
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the role of expectations
Texture: If the chocolate has any texture that is gritty, sandy, chalky, muddy, gummy, fudge-like—the fat particles are not evenly distributed but are impeded, and the message “yummy melting chocolate” is delayed by our brain because it’s paying attention to what it wasn’t expecting: unpleasant and/or unexpected mouthfeel.
Imagine knocking on your best friend’s door and expecting to be greeted by them, but instead, someone you don’t recognize answers. Even if, as they pull off their mask you realize it was your friend in a costume, your brain has been distracted by the result it was not expecting.
Irritation: ever bite into a green banana? astringency is not flavor, but mouthfeel. Acids have the same effect in that our tongue “senses” the chemical reaction more than our orthonasal/retronasal systems “taste” it.
Expectations play a key role in sensory perception, and in chocolate, our expectations include creamy, liquid, silky, smooth, rich, alongside good taste.
viscosity: through better or worse, thick and thin
Viscosity is also about cocoa butter and texture, but it’s not about texture we sense as particles— nibby, gritty, sandy, or chalky, each of which mean large particles weren’t refined into small enough particles, which means our tongue can still sense them.
Viscosity is about resistance, and in chocolate this means flow (or the lack thereof). namely, viscosity is about small particle size.
For chocolate to have flow it can’t have friction, which causes resistance. during refining we are reducing the particle size of the cocoa nibs and the sugar, and also, distributing the cocoa butter (inherent or added). As the cocoa butter coats the solids (the tiny cocoa particles and sugar) it reduces friction, and the chocolate becomes lovely and liquidy, and has flow. the type of sugar plays a tremendously important role in this.
With particles, however, smallest does not mean bestest :) The smaller the particles become, the more cocoa butter it takes to coat them so they can move past each other in the liquid chocolate. picture a cube with 6 sides. now, divide that cube in ½; there are now 8 sides, and a need for 30% more fat to coat the new/added sides! if we only have the nibs (with the cocoa fat in them) to start with, and the sugar we added, there is no extra cocoa butter to coat the sides.
What we need to know: refining the batch starts with a thick, nibby, gritty, sandy texture that becomes smooth and liquid, but past a certain point (over-refining) will result in thick, gummy, sticky, hard to mould, viscous chocolate.
I hope you enjoyed this post—it’s part of a lesson in the Bean to Bar ChocolateCraft Workshop—and I hope you are excited to make use of this in your next batch!
Happy chocolate making,
Mackenzie