The Northwest Chocolate UnConference and Festival 3: Days 0-2

Over the course of two days, I was in Bellevue, Washington, for my third Northwest Chocolate UnConference and Festival. It makes my head spin when I think about the fact that I've been going to this since I was ten, whereas there's maybe hundreds of tiny little chocolate makers who haven't even heard of it.

Day 0

Day 0 was the tour of Fran's (read that post too) and a very nice dinner with one of my friends who I met at the first UnConference I went too, Anne. I've been to her cacao farm in Hawai'i, and I've also taken a Utah State course with her called "The Science of Chocolate". We went to a Spanish tapas bar, as we have been doing for two years straight now. Of note, I will be traveling to Amsterdam in February for Chocoa with her, so stay tuned for that.

Day 1

Day 1 was the only day of the UnConference we went to since initially, there wasn't supposed to be an UnConference this year. Brian, the organizer, pulled everything together on time, and one of the seminars that day was something that would prove instrumental. Before that, though, there was a few seminars worth mentioning: Women in Chocolate, IICCT Tasting Methods for Evaluation of Chocolate Products (a lecture delivered by none other than Maricel Presilla, which is a huge name in the chocolate world), Micro-Batch Testing: Creating A/B samples of Cacao into Chocolate with CocoTerra Pro, and easily the most important (and also by far the best seminar that day), Multi-Tasking with Melangers: Q&A with Diamond Custom Machines. This last one happens to be the only one worth speaking in depth about, although I will say that the CocoTerra lecture was rather interesting, what with fitting a refiner, conche, tempering apparatus, and molder into one machine that could be carried by hand and takes 2 hours to fully finish. The essentials are that since it handles such a small number of nibs, it doesn't need to refine for long. The conching actually does not happen, which I thought strange, but it actually works somewhat well, and the tempering is a simple matter of a plate that heats and cools periodically. The molding is done via centrifugal force, and this produces chocolate that is in the shape of a ring, which is not exactly what most want.

Anyway, the melanger Q&A was led by the owner of Diamond Custom Machines, Bhavani Veerapaneni. He was extremely knowledgeable about the subjects and questions thrown at him, and when he did not have an answer, he asked the others if they knew. In addition, his was the only seminar that wasn't trying to sell something. Apparently, the lecturers have to pay to give their talks, and it seems that most intend to get their money's worth.

Some notable topics include the spacing of the wheels, and it seems that finding a middle ground is far better than applying too much force. One can think of it in 2D. You have a particle, a flat surface, and a wheel that spins over it. If the wheel is too far away from the base, then the particle does not get refined at all. If it is too close, then the particle cannot get in between the wheel and the base, and it simply flows around it. One must adjust their wheels to the point where the particle can fit underneath to a certain point where the rotation of the wheel pushes the particle through the rest of the way.

Another topic that interested me was how to clean the melanger. I would say cleaning is the most annoying part of making chocolate, so this was of special interest to me. The best way is to scrape out as much as you can, and then lightly wash off the rest. The last step is polishing it with a cloth, and this makes it so that a thin layer of cocoa butter is left behind to provide lubricant for the next batch. Cocoa butter is hydrophobic, so the water has no effect on it, and polishing gently won't do much, since as a general rule, cocoa butter is very sticky (I can tell you firsthand).

In between these, we squeezed in time for a homemade Thai lunch with Anne and a few others. The food was excellent and the conversation fantastic, entertaining, and educational, not to mention humorous and exciting.

After the resounding success with the last session, the rest of the day was also excellent. I had dinner with Snooky, who you'll remember as Dandelion's "machinery wizard" and also the man whose eyebrows appear to permanently caught in a hurricane. We had a very long conversation about many things that would take me far too long to transcribe, but trust that the topics were edifying and the humor was palpable.

Day 2

Day 2 started with the Festival, at which I picked up a few bars (by a few, I mean 7) and a couple of bonbons and other confections (by a couple, I mean 18 bonbons and 2 chocolate "candy bars" that are absolutely incredible, made by Melissa Coppel). After that, I went to Pike's Place Market with Anne, and just as last time, it was a very fun trip, well worth it. While I was there, I picked up a bottle of water lily extract for my brother's diffuser, and looked at length at a spice shop that had three for every letter of the alphabet, and then some.

Overall, I would say this has been the best UnConference, setting aside the morning's seminars. I met up with my friends and mentors several times, and each one was used to its fullest potential. Everything went as planned, and it was a good trip in general. Plus, I made it back to California in time for a birthday party that I had been forced to miss the last two years.

This is a snippet of text about Fran's, the chocolatier I visited the day before the UnConference.

This is Anne, Snooky, and I eating lunch together. The lunch was made by Anne, and it was delicious. It also made me realize that limes are better than lemons when used as garnish. Those who dare to challenge this, you may present your case in the comments.

This is Snooky and I during our dinner at an Indian restaurant, which I would say had one of the best aesthetics and atmospheres of any restaurant I've ever been to (some others are Din Tai Fung and Americano, which is a pizza place in India, of all places).

This is Anne and I during the lecture  "IICCT Tasting Methods for Evaluation of Chocolate Products". The bag I'm holding contains chocolate made from the beans on Anne's farm.

This is me with Bhavani Veerapaneni of Diamond Custom Machines. He was the speaker at the melanger lecture, of which I drew massive use from. He's also a very nice person in general.

This is Brendan and I, one of the many new people I met at this UnConference. He studies genetics (I think, sorry if I got this wrong), and is a person who can keep me thinking hard for a while, which not many can say due to my general lack of interest in most topics.