Today I went to a place in the UK called London Chocolates. We were there courtesy of Nettie Atkisson and Hazel Lee, two friends of mine who I met at the Northwest Chocolate UnConference. We were just barely on time, as we got there around 20 minutes before the shop closed. The only people there were a guy named Alex, who turned out to be one of the owners, and someone who looked to be his assistant. We introduced ourselves, and he took us on a mini tour of the place.
The first place we went was a room with two big melangers. One of them was not running. Alex said the first melanger had been running for around five days, and I immediately wanted to know if the chocolate had ever been over-refined, which occurs when the particle size of the chocolate goes below five microns, giving the chocolate a slightly gummy mouthfeel. He said that in his seven years of making chocolate, that had never happened to him. We also asked how he made money from the industry of craft chocolate, and he said, “It’s like F-1 racing. People ask, ‘How do you become a millionaire?’ You start as a billionaire and work your way down.”
The chocolate in the melanger that was not running was of a special genetic line of cacao. I am referring to the Criollo line. Less than three percent of all cacao trees have even a thread of Criollo in their DNA. Even then, most chocolate bars that claim to be Criollo are only around twenty to thirty percent Criollo. This one was 68 percent. He said that it was quite thick, even though it had been running for like a day.
Then, we went back up to the main shop, where I selected some bars. Alex then offered to show us his tempering room, where a guy was coating molds with chocolate and then pouring all the chocolate out. I asked how one would efficiently clean their equipment, and he gave a long speech about how getting really clean equipment is one of the hardest things in the world. We went back upstairs, where it was now a good ten minutes past their closing time. We bought some bars, and our trip to London Chocolate ended.
I am here in front of London Chocolate. They have a smaller shop than I thought, but there is more than meets the eye, as I quickly figured when we stepped in. There was a staircase leading to a subterranean level where the chocolate was made. The ground level was simply the display.
This chocolate is the rare Criollo chocolate I talked about earlier. This melanger was like no other that I have ever seen. It was tilted on its axis. I have no idea why this is, because that meant that only a small amount of the chocolate in there was actually being churned. Perhaps that's why it was so thick.
This is a map of the bean to bar process. Or at least their way of doing it. Some chocolatiers skip the aging process, claiming that it's sort of a waste of time.
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