Exciting new beans

4th December 2021

Ingredients

For our first batch with these new beans, we stuck with the 70% bars with 10% cocoa butter to compare with the previous bars:

706g cocoa nibs - costa esmeraldas
353g cane sugar
118g cocoa butter

Roasting

We started with a 125c roast and tasted the beans regularly, but these beans taste really different to the ones we used before, so we weren’t sure when to stop roasting. We ended up with:

56 minutes at 125C

We’re pretty sure we over roasted the beans as this does seem like an unusually long time to roast for, but they didn’t seem burnt so we carried on making chocolate.

Refining

We tasted the chocolate regularly during refining, and still found it tasted very different from the previous batches. These beans have a much better flavour. We added the sugar when we were satisfied that the acidity had been driven off.

24 hours total
Sugar in the last 14 hours

Maturing

We let this batch mature for 6 days before tempering, and tempering was easier than expected. The chocolate was more fluid than the previous batches and it was much easier to work with.

Tasting

The difference in flavour between these beans and the ones we used before is astonishing, even though we’re pretty sure that the roast was way off. They’re so fruity and delicious. There is a slow release of flavour and a weird aftertaste, probably due to the poor roast, so we can definitely improve, but our best chocolate yet.

Notes

The roast really didn’t seem right at all, but the chocolate was still a big improvement over the previous batches, so next time we’re going to try a hotter roast which may help us decide when the beans are ready as the flavours will change more rapidly.