What is Craft Chocolate?
We define it based on 3 things:
1. Simplest ingredients are used in the chocolate – Cocoa mass or cocoa liquor, cocoa butter, sugar, real vanilla and soy lecithin are the only ingredients we want to find in a quality bar. Some chocolate makers include even fewer ingredients.
2. Real Chocolate is made from the finest cacao beans to create a range of distinctive flavours. It may taste hints of hazelnuts, raisins or berries. It may even have earth or wooden notes. It may be simple, straightforward or complex that excites our palate.
3. Quality cacao beans need to be handled properly – farm, ferment, dry and roast in the right way in order to bring out the best in their flavour profiles. Chocolate makers take part in a very important part in the chocolate processing.
* Some people call it “Artisan Chocolate”, “Fine Chocolate” or “Craft Chocolate”
What is Bean to Bar?
This term refers to a chocolate maker who makes chocolate from scratch, starting with selection of raw cacao beans. The beans are then roasted and turned into couverture. Then it can be melted and used to make chocolate products such as bars, bonbons etc.
What is Single Estate/
Single Origin chocolate?
A single estate or single origin bar indicates that the cocoa beans used to produce it are from a specific region of a country (like Bordeaux on a wine label) or a single country.
What cocoa soild % means on your chocolate bar?
It represents everything that comes from cocoa beans – that is, ground cocoa beans as well as added cocoa butter. A high cocoa solid percentage does not imply strong chocolate. It depends on the ratio of ground beans and added cocoa butter.
Also, you may hear a lot about high percentage chocolate being quality chocolate. The percentage of chocolate is not an indicator of the quality of the cacao beans or the ingredients used to make the chocolate. Therefore, high percentage chocolate doesn’t mean good chocolate