Making your own chocolate—what a brilliant idea! Today I'll guide you through the bean-to-bar chocolate making process, from the cocoa bean to the delicious bar we all love. Get ready to discover the secrets behind this fascinating art.


The selection of cocoa beans

The first crucial step in the bean-to-bar process is selecting the cocoa beans. We favor high-quality beans from different regions around the world, each with its own unique character. In our case, we've chosen to work exclusively with cocoa from Venezuela for its rich, nuanced characteristics and aromas, and above all, for our personal connection to the land.

Roasting the beans

The beans must be selected and sorted according to their size, then it's time to roast them. Roasting gives the beans their distinctive flavor and allows the complex flavors of the chocolate to develop. Each type of cocoa will require a specific roasting profile to achieve the desired result.

Refining beans (and sugar)

To make good chocolate, you only need two ingredients: roasted cocoa and your chosen sugar or sweetener. These ingredients must be added to a grinder until a smooth, velvety mass is obtained. If stone grinders are used, the conching process usually occurs at the same time as the refining process.

The tempera

Once you have obtained a smooth chocolate mass, you can proceed to tempering and shaping the chocolate. Briefly, this process involves heating and cooling the mass in a controlled manner to encourage the creation of cocoa butter crystals that have the property of melting in the mouth but remaining solid at room temperature. At the same time, pouring the chocolate into a mold will allow it to take on its characteristics such as shape and shine.

The beauty of the Bean to Bar process is that it is truly artistic, due to the fact that each process described above will leave its mark on the final result and therefore, even starting from the same raw material, each producer will be able to communicate their own way of making chocolate.