Our Craft

Real chocolate starts with high-quality cacao beans sourced from the best cacao farms in the world. Each bean has unique terroir, or character and flavour, and as craft chocolate makers, we challenge ourselves to find the best possible expression of the cocoa through our chocolate making process.

Our process is rooted in traditional 18th century style chocolate making techniques, but modernized through Hummingbird’s own innovative and industrious style.

Chocolate is a delicate balance of art and science and we make our chocolate slowly, in small batches, with careful attention to detail at every step. Our chocolate makers are diligent and patient folks, carefully checking, monitoring and testing to ensure quality is preserved throughout.

It takes ten steps and over a month to craft our chocolate from cacao bean to yummy bar. We love our craft and nothing is more important to us than taking the time to
do it right.

Here’s a peek at our process.

SORT BEANS

Lay the beans out flat and go through each hand by hand, looking for twigs, strings and other unwanted items.

ROAST BEANS

Sort beans into three sizes – large, medium and small. Roast all the beans separately. Once roasted, let beans cool.

CRACK BEANS

Break beans into little bits by running through the Crankandstein.

ORGANIZE BEANS

Run cracked beans, now in small pieces, through a sorter which separates them into small, medium and large sizes.

WINNOW

Separate the nibs from husk through a contraption involving piping, a mallet and a vacuum cleaner.

GRIND BEANS

Take the separated nibs and grind them. Each solid nib turns into a paste, called liqueur.

CONCHE BEANS

Take the liqueur and run it through a conche. Add sugar slowly and let run for three days or so.

LET REST

Pour chocolate into a baking pan and let rest for 30 days or so, to let the flavours get to know each other and percolate.

TEMPER

Temper chocolate in a machine that puts the sheen on and takes the edge out by playing with temperatures. Then pour chocolate in the mould and let simmer.

WRAP

Take out that glorious piece of gold foil and dress up that bar. Throw on the wrapper with the black bird. How cool is that?

Why not come see the factory for yourself?

Visit Us