There is a phrase the chocolate world likes to throw around. Bean to bar.
It sounds wonderfully simple, take a cacao bean, make a chocolate bar, job done.
Except, of course, it isn’t.
Chocolate doesn't begin with a shiny tempering machine, a granite grinder or somebody in an apron carefully pouring chocolate into a polycarbonate mould.
It starts much earlier than that on a cacao farm, often thousands of miles from the person who will eventually eat the finished bar.
It begins with soil, rain, shade, insects, farmers, fermentation boxes, drying tables and a succession of decisions that can either build flavour or quietly destroy it.
By the time a chocolate maker gets hold of the beans, a remarkable amount of the final flavour has already been decided.
That is the bit we sometimes forget.
So, having worked with cacao farmers, chocolate makers and students both in the UK and at origin, here is what bean-to-bar chocolate actually involves.
1. Harvesting: chocolate starts with a pod
Cacao grows in brightly coloured pods directly from the trunk and branches of the cacao tree.
Inside each pod are usually dozens of seeds surrounded by a sweet, sticky white pulp called mucilage.
That pulp is delicious.
Depending on the variety and ripeness, it can taste floral, tropical, citrusy or slightly acidic. If all you have ever tasted is the finished chocolate bar, tasting fresh cacao pulp for the first time can be a revelation.
The pods must be harvested carefully.
Farmers commonly use machetes or long-handled harvesting tools to remove ripe pods without damaging the tree, particularly the flower cushions from which future cacao flowers and pods may grow.
The pods are then opened and the wet beans and pulp removed.
At this point, they taste almost nothing like chocolate.
And that is where things begin to get interesting.
2. Fermentation: where chocolate flavour begins
Fermentation is one of the most important stages in the entire process, get this wrong and no amount of clever roasting or expensive machinery will completely rescue the beans later.
Fresh cacao beans and their surrounding pulp are gathered into heaps or placed in wooden fermentation boxes, often covered with banana or plantain leaves.
Naturally occurring yeasts and bacteria begin breaking down the sugars in the pulp.The mass heats up.
Acids form.
The beans die and a series of chemical reactions begins inside them.
Those reactions create many of the flavour precursors that will later become recognisably chocolate-like during roasting.
Fermentation methods vary enormously according to country, farm, cacao variety, climate and local practice.
There is no magic universal recipe.
Some batches may ferment for several days and be turned periodically to introduce oxygen and encourage a more even fermentation.
The skill lies in knowing when enough is enough.
Under-fermented beans can taste harsh, bitter and undeveloped.
Over-fermented beans can lose character and develop unpleasant flavours.
This is agriculture, microbiology and craft happening in the same box.
3. Drying: slower than people think
Once fermentation is complete, the beans still contain far too much moisture to store safely, they need drying.
Traditionally this is done in the sun, with beans spread across raised tables, patios or drying beds and turned regularly.
It sounds straightforward, it isn’t.
Dry too quickly and the beans may retain excessive acidity.
Dry too slowly, especially in humid conditions, and you increase the risk of mould and other defects.
Good drying continues flavour development while gradually reducing moisture to a level suitable for transport and storage.
Depending on weather and drying method, this can take around a week or sometimes longer.
When people talk about the flavour of an origin, they often jump straight to genetics and terroir, but post-harvest handling matters enormously.
Two farmers can grow cacao in the same district and produce very different beans.
4. Sorting: the unglamorous bit that matters
Before roasting, good chocolate makers inspect their beans.
Broken beans, mouldy beans, flat beans, stones, sticks and other unwanted material need removing.
Nobody puts this part on Instagram they should.
Chocolate making contains more sorting, cleaning and washing-up than the romantic photographs suggest
But quality is usually built through dozens of apparently boring decisions.
This is one of them.
Now we arrive at one of the stages most people associate with chocolate making roasting.
Heat transforms the flavour precursors created during fermentation into the familiar aromas we associate with chocolate.
Depending on the bean and roast profile, you might uncover notes of nuts, fruit, caramel, spice, flowers, toast or deep cocoa.
Roasting also helps reduce microbial load and loosens the shell around the bean, making the next stage easier.
But there is no single correct roast.
A delicate Madagascan cacao with bright red-fruit acidity probably should not be treated in exactly the same way as a robust West African beans
A chocolate maker may use a lighter roast to preserve delicate flavour or a deeper roast to create darker, richer notes.
The important thing is not simply to roast the beans It's to understand why you are roasting them that way.
The bean should dictate the roast, not the other way round.
6. Cracking and winnowing: getting to the nib
After roasting, the beans are cracked. Inside is the part we actually want: the cacao nib.
Around it is a thin shell that needs to be removed, separating the lighter shell from the heavier nib is known as winnowing.
Commercial machines use controlled airflow, small-scale makers may use much simpler equipment.
Either way, the principle is the same.
Crack the bean, remove the shell, keep the nib, and try not to cover the entire room in cacao husk while doing it.
I have yet to meet a chocolate maker who has completely defeated that last part.
7. Grinding: cacao becomes chocolate liquor
Cacao nibs contain a considerable amount of cocoa butter. nelson here is pregrinding before using a stone wheel grinder
When the nibs are ground, friction releases that fat and the apparently dry nib gradually becomes a flowing brown paste.
This is known as cocoa mass, cacao mass or chocolate liquor.
Despite the name, chocolate liquor contains no alcohol.
At this stage you have essentially ground cacao beans.
To make dark chocolate, sugar is normally added and additional cocoa butter may be included depending on the recipe and desired texture.
Milk chocolate introduces milk ingredients.
White chocolate removes cocoa solids altogether and uses cocoa butter, sugar and milk ingredients.
This is where a chocolate maker begins building a recipe rather than simply processing a bean.
8. Refining: making chocolate feel like chocolate
Freshly ground cacao and sugar are gritty. Very gritty.
If you stopped here, the flavour might be interesting but the texture would probably feel like chocolate mixed with sand.
The particles therefore need to be made extremely small.
Small-scale bean-to-bar makers often use a melangeur, where heavy granite wheels continually grind the cacao and sugar.
As particle size decreases, the chocolate becomes smoother on the tongue this can take many hours.
Sometimes considerably longer, the exact time depends on the equipment, batch size, recipe and the result the maker is trying to achieve.
Longer is not automatically better, that is worth saying again longer is not automatically better.
You can refine the personality out of a chocolate just as easily as you can refine harshness out of it.
9. Conching: polishing the flavour
Refining and conching are frequently talked about as though they are the same thing.
They are related, but they perform different jobs.
Conching mixes, aerates and works the chocolate, helping modify texture and flavour.
Some volatile acids and undesirable aromas can be reduced during the process, while the cocoa solids become more thoroughly coated in fat.
The result can be a smoother, rounder chocolate.
But once again, there is no prize for keeping a machine running simply because another maker does.
Some chocolates benefit from longer conching.
Others lose interesting acidity and aromatic character if pushed too far.
Taste the chocolate then make the decision machines do not have tongues.
10. Ageing: sometimes the chocolate needs to be left alone
This is one of the stages often omitted from simplified bean-to-bar explanations.
Freshly made chocolate may change after grinding and conching some makers allow chocolate to rest or mature before tempering and moulding.
That may mean blocks of chocolate sitting quietly for days or weeks not terribly dramatic, but flavour sometimes needs time to settle.
Chocolate making rewards patience more often than people realise.
11. Tempering: controlling cocoa butter crystals
Now comes the part that terrifies half the people who attend their first chocolate course.
Tempering.
Chocolate contains cocoa butter, and cocoa butter can crystallise in several different forms.
For finished chocolate we want a stable crystal structure, traditionally referred to by chocolatiers as Form V.
Proper tempering encourages those desirable crystals to form.
Get it right and the chocolate should contract from the mould cleanly, have a good shine and break with a satisfying snap.
Get it wrong and you may end up with dull chocolate, streaking, poor contraction or fat bloom.
Tempering sounds mysterious until you understand what is happening.
Then it becomes controlled crystallisation, still occasionally infuriating controlled crystallisation, admittedly.
But crystallisation nonetheless.
12. Moulding: finally, something that looks like a chocolate bar
Once the chocolate is correctly tempered, it can be poured into moulds.
The mould is tapped or vibrated to help remove trapped air and distribute the chocolate evenly.
Good-quality polycarbonate moulds are popular with professional chocolatiers because they can produce an excellent gloss when the chocolate and temper are right.
Then the chocolate is allowed to crystallise and contract.
Eventually comes one of the most satisfying sounds in chocolate making:the finished bars dropping cleanly out of the mould.
After days of work, you finally have something recognisable as chocolate.
13. Packaging: the bit people leave until last
You have grown the cacao.
Harvested it.
Fermented it.
Dried it. Sorted it. Roasted it. Winnowed it. Ground it. Refined it. Conched it. Tempered it. Moulded it.
And then somebody suggests wrapping it in whatever packaging happens to be cheapest.
No.
Packaging matters.
First, it protects the chocolate from moisture, odours, light and physical damage.
Second, it tells the customer what they are buying.
Origin, Cacao percentage ingredients Producer. Flavour. Story.
Chocolate is tasted with the eyes before it ever reaches the mouth good packaging should never compensate for bad chocolate.
But excellent chocolate deserves packaging that respects what is inside.
Bean to bar is not really the whole story the phrase bean to bar is useful.
But it also has a weakness. It can make the chocolate maker appear to be the beginning of the process.
They are not.
Before the bean reaches the maker there has already been a farmer, a harvest, fermentation, drying, sorting, transport and usually several people making decisions that directly affect quality.
That is why I prefer to think of chocolate as a chain of craftsmanship.
The farmer cannot make great chocolate alone.
Neither can the chocolate maker.
Neither can the chocolatier.
Each person inherits the work of the person before them.
And each has the opportunity either to preserve that quality or lose it.
That, for me, is what makes chocolate fascinating.
A simple bar can contain agriculture, microbiology, chemistry, engineering, flavour, culture and human judgement.
All hidden beneath a wrapper.
Next time you break off a square of good chocolate, perhaps give it a second before you eat it.
Look at it.
Smell it.
Let it melt.
Because getting that little square into your hand took rather more than a bean and a machine.