This Is It! Announcing Coto Brus 1

Finally, after years of research and work, we have developed a process to produce high quality beans. These are beans that any bean-to-bar maker would be happy to use - well fermented, well dried and with a flavor that mixes luscious chocolate with tropical fruit notes.

This is all thanks to Dan O'Doherty, of Cacao Services, a cacao consultant from Hawaii, who spent the month of September at the Chocolate Farm, teaching me how to ferment and dry cacao, as well as best practices in regard to fertilizing and pruning the cacao plantation.His knowledge is comprehensive and deep. Every aspect of growing cacao, fermentation and drying and making chocolate was improved by his tutelage.

Dan, hard at work opening cacao fruits.

We have made chocolate from the results of this collaboration and it is good!

We call it Coto Brus, after the river that flows through our valley. This will be the new name of our beans as we market it to bean-to-bar makers. Our beans are already being used by Samaritan Xocolata in Costa Rica and Manoa Chocolate in Hawaii.

It is important to let the beans age before making chocolate. This is just one of the basic but very important things I learned from Dan. We have chocolate now that was made with Coto Brus 1, the first batch of beans that Dan and I fermented together. There are three distinct types of chocolate made with Coto Brus 1.

this is what we hope our trees will look like after our planned intensive program of pruning, fertilizing and grafting

The first  is made with the beans immediately after they were dried. This chocolate has a more acidic, sharper flavor and the fruity notes are not as developed. But the beans were more heavily roasted so the chocolate flavor is more pronounced. This chocolate is named "Coto Brus 1a".

The second is "Coto Brus 1b", but the chocolate was made after the beans had aged 6 weeks. The fruit is more pronounced, with strong notes of cherry and strawberry and the chocolate a little less, due to the lighter roasting.

The third is "Coto Brus 1b mixed", mixed with some chocolate I made in June with our original fermentation technique. This is Keli's favorite, because it mixes the fruity notes of Coto Brus 1 with the more chocolatey elements of the June chocolate.

the drying rack, modeled by "the farmer's daughter"

2013 New Years Harmonia 80%

It wasn't planned but we did our first melt of the year today,  January 1, 2013.  We melted our Harmonia batch which is the batch we make at the Chocolate Farm with xylitol.
I chose these beans carefully before I used up all our xylitol.

We made this chocolate in Dixon at the Nut N Other Farms where we get our almonds and walnuts.  It's a great space to do our bars in because there is a huge kitchen island that Jim can use for tempering.

We hope to go ahead and prepare all the chocolate we have into bars.  We'll list each batch(maybe).
 My New Years resolution was to not lick the bowl for this batch.

This batch is sold out but if you're new to the site and are someone who prefers chocolate with no sugar, email us and we'll keep it in mind next time we make chocolate.

Untempered

We just made a small batch of untempered chocolate today.
It is made with organic brown sugar and a little vanilla and cinnamon.
Some of it has hazelnuts (from Elaine's family's farm!) and some of it has peanut butter (my favorite.)

I wasn't planning on making it all untempered but as I started getting ready to temper it I discovered that I could not find my tempering tools. Keli had requested one tray of untempered and so I just decided that this was a sign to make it all untempered (not to mention that it is a LOT easier to make untempered chocolate!)

Homegrown for Diamond Heart

Here we are in California.

We have wrapped up our first batch of chocolate and the pictures below demonstrate the variety we have available.

Freshly roasted nuts and seeds

 We have not melted and wrapped the xylitol bars yet, but I know there are a couple of people who prefer these bars who can't have sugar and I'm not forgetting.  You'll be the first to know when they are ready.
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You can place orders by emailing Keli or Jim if you have our email addresses or you can email us at keljichocolate@gmail.com.

 As you know, we do things on a very small scale. The beans from the trees, the climate in Bonanza, the fermentation, drying, roasting, tempering etc, are all a combination of science and art with varying factors.  The value in our bars is not how perfect they are -  although we try, there is no such thing as a totally consistent outcome. But rather that we guarantee all the ingredients are the best possible quality, produced with attention to sustainable farming practices. Since we are farmers and growers these factors are very important to us and what makes our bars unique.  In fact, the variety of tastes, all good and interesting, vary according to the batch, which is why we name each batch and list the ingredients and the story behind each batch of chocolate.

Below is what we have available from our first melting and wrapping session.  It's the 'Home Grown" batch named so by Jim because it is one of the rare batches we make with the sugar we grow at the farm.

We made 4 of each kind in the small size $5.50 each
and some large pure chocolate bars $12.00 each.
one or two large with fillings and some untempered ( for those of you who know and and love the untempered)

All ingredients organic and beyond.

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds and Chili--quite spicy, and full of crunch--4 small bars, 1 large untempered
Roasted Cashews--4 small bars
Orange juice sprouted Raw almonds--3 small bars
Antioxidant Boost dried blueberries--2 small bars
Roasted Hazel Nuts--4 small bars
Bonanza peanuts--3 small bars
Pure Chocolalte--8 small bars and 4 large bars
Pure Chocolate untempered--2 large bars plus some extra stuff (ask me)

The peanuts in the upper
right are our own "Bonanza peanuts"

 

Home Grown Disaster

We are simultaneously very proud of this batch and very sad about the way it turned out. It is made with our own sugar and 70% cacao. The taste is very nice but unfortunately we had one of those mysterious disasters which befalls anyone crazy enough to try and temper chocolate in the tropics.
(Tempering is highly dependent on humidity and temperature. And in the tropics, both of those elements are usually hostile to a successful tempering.)
Everything went very well. The fermentation of the beans was good, the roasting was good, all went well with the grinding and mixing, the sugar was grown on our farm and it seemed like the tempering went well. But when we opened up the rack that held the bars overnight while they cooled we could see that we had a severe case of blooming (blooming is when the chocolate turns white and the texture becomes chalky.)

And we couldn't tell why. We have had chocolate making sessions that had similar conditions and the chocolate came out great. But not this time....

Fortunately, we only attempted to temper a small part of the batch. We are bringing the rest of it to California where we will temper it under better conditions.

UPDATE!!!

We are now in California and we have tempered the rest of the Homegrown batch and it is beautiful! Just another example of how easy it is to temper in a temperate climate and how hard in a tropical climate.

Nothing to do with chocolate - I just like this picture. Marcos is the happy farmer with the big jackfruit

Harmonia

We named this batch Harmonia because everything went so smoothly. And that is not always the case when making chocolate in the countryside of Costa Rica.

Unfortunately, we will not have too much of this batch available for sale because the majority of it is spoken for by Keli and a few others who need sugar free chocolate.

This batch is 80% cacao and 20% Xylitol with a bit of vanilla.

Anna's Roast

Anna is our next door neighbor at the Chocolate Farm. In fact, her and her family are our only neighbors for quite a stretch. You can go for a mile in either direction and not meet anybody except a cow or a worker trudging up the road to their work on one of the ranches in the area.
We trained Anna to help us roast cacao. It takes about 20 to 30 minutes to roast a pound and a half of beans in one of our cast iron pans. So even roasting two pans at a time it still takes a long time to roast enough beans for a big batch.
Anna's kids grew up, of course, on their farm and they are used to helping out with all the chores. So when Anna goes to work they quite naturally help out. They know how to do winnowing already because they winnow the family's rice and beans. They are very good at getting all the shells out of the beans.
I like to use a hair dryer because it is a little quicker but it can also blow away some of the cacao.


This batch was 70% cacao and 30% organic evaporated sugar cane juice. (Not our sugar cane - we saved that for a batch called "Harmonia.")


Batch #1 was only ground for 4 hours but is still quite smooth. Batch #2 was ground for 8 hours. Both batches have very subtle additions of vanilla and cinnamon. We could only tell the difference with a side by side comparison. They are both very smooth with a hint of tannin at the end.

Anthony and Julieta winnowing in the breeze

Anna and her daughter Kimberly roasting cacao in our kitchen

Winnowing with a hair dryer