Batch No. 2 is my first true production batch, and the real start of Cincotti Chocolate Company. I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out.
The texture is smooth, and the flavor moves as it melts. People have described a deep dark-chocolate bite up front that softens into a gentle sweetness at the end, almost like a palate cleanser. Others taste coffee. I love listening to what people notice. Everyone tastes something slightly different, and in an odd way, chocolate becomes a small lesson in empathy.
Getting here wasn’t easy. Before this, I’d only ever made batches of about 15 bars. This batch was 56, and almost every step had to change.
Making a bar goes roughly like this: roast the beans, crack them and separate the nibs inside from the husks outside, grind the nibs with sugar, temper, mold, and wrap.
Roasting. For Batch No. 1, the bars I made for friends, I roasted in an ordinary kitchen oven. It was too small and too hard to control. I now use a dedicated cacao roaster, which is faster and, more importantly, gives me repeatability.
Winnowing. This is the step where the nibs and husks part ways. Nibs are heavy and dense; husks are light, so a stream of air carries the husks away and leaves the nibs behind. Simple enough with a handful of beans, and I used to do it with a hair dryer. But 10 pounds is another story. Two weeks ago I went to Ace Hardware on Vallejo, here in North Beach, and came home with PVC pipe and a shop vac. That setup is a small-batch standard, and it works beautifully.
Tempering and molding. This is the hardest part. Tempering gives chocolate its shine and its snap. Left on its own, chocolate sets dull and streaky and crumbles instead of snapping. By carefully heating and cooling it, you coax it into forming the right crystals: the ones that shine, snap cleanly, and melt on your tongue. Right now I can make 28 bars in 8 hours before tempering becomes the bottleneck, so a bigger tempering machine is likely in my future.
The heat wave this week didn’t help. Tempering depends on the temperature of the room, and I usually let the chocolate cool by an open window. This time I built a small cooling chamber and fed it cold air from a portable AC. It worked! (thank you Chocolate Gods).
Every batch brings new challenges. But watching someone’s face light up at the first bite makes every one of them worth it.
Yours Truly,