We just started another batch of Venezuelan. Here’s what the ground up nibs (aka cocoa liquor) look like before adding the sugar:

And here’s what the chocolate looks like just after adding the sugar:

After a few days, the lumps will be gone and everything will be smooth and delicious.

I’ll admit it, I’m a sucker for fortune cookies. There’s something about the bonus cookie at the end of a meal that I can’t resist. So, when fortune cookies were being passed out after dinner with my girlfriend and her family one night, I grabbed one, cracked it open, and saw the fortune above. I’m not superstitious and I’m not gonna play my “lucky numbers” in the lottery, but I wouldn’t mind if this one comes true :)

Rather than putting the nibs straight into a melanger (the machine we use to combine the nibs and sugar into chocolate), we use a peanut grinder to turn the nibs into a paste first. We recently upgraded this first stage grinder to a new one. The old one would occasionally seize on nibs with less fat (like our Costa Rican) so we had to feed it a scoop at a time. With the new one, though, we can fill the hopper and it’ll crank through everything. It came configured with an 24 second auto-shutoff but after opening it up and changing a few dip switches, we were all set.

Whenever we get new beans in, we do a bunch of different tests to find the flavors we like best. Since those test batches aren’t worth tempering, we use some flexible silicon molds (rather than the polycarbonate molds we use for our bars) because it’s easier to get them out after they’ve cooled. As a bonus, those silicone molds come in fun shapes, so now we’re swimming in fish shapes, staring at Moai, and munching on space invaders.

As Alice mentioned, we had a great tasting event at Fog City News yesterday. Adam just sent over the group photo taken at the event:

Thanks, Adam!

We just got a few new bags of beans in (we’re still trying to get as many different beans as we can). Obviously, the bags don’t come with roasting instructions so each time we get a new bag, it’s fun to try and coax out the best flavor. We have a lot of taste tests to do :)

We had a great time at both the Underground Market and the New Taste Market. As we mentioned previously, we recruited several friends to help us out. I had my friend Kat (left) and my girlfriend, Sandy (right), help me out at Underground:

They did an awesome job talking to everyone and explaining the whole process. There was a lot of energy at the market and we had a bunch of fun talking to everyone:

As we were looking at the photos, Alice pointed out that I made a lot of weird faces/poses while manning the booth:

Oh, and a special thanks to our friend Justin for taking all the photos!

We were talking to Donna of Pot and Pantry and she told us we had a little mention in the latest issue of edible SF because of our involvement in the New Taste Marketplace:

It’s nice to get our first written press :)