Sorting cacao beans.

Sort Beans

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

Roasting cacao beans.

Roast Beans

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

Cracking cacao beans.

Crack Beans

Break beans into little bits by running through the Crankandstein.

Sorting cracked cacao beans by size.

Sort Beans

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

A cacao bean winnower.

Winnow

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

Grinding cacao beans in a conche.

Grind Beans

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

Conche Beans

Conche Beans

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

Packaged untempered chocolate during the aging stage.

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.

Tempered chocolate.

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.

Wrapping a chocolate bar in our gold wrapper.

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?