Archive | product

Education Station: What’s Up with Whole Roasted Beans?

July 28, 2017 by Robert

You’re curious, so we find answers. Our education team fields lots of questions from our guests during classes, so we’ve decided to launch a series of monthly installments in which we tackle some of those questions and share the answers with the world. We call it The Education Station. This week, Robert addresses some questions about a product we sell in our cafes, and what to do with them.

At Dandelion Chocolate, most people know us for our chocolate bars, drinks, and pastries, but the one item our customers seem to be most curious about lately are whole roasted beans. We sell bags of them in our cafés, and after spending most of my time working at the Ferry Building as a cafe associate, I’ve heard a lot of questions about them: “Are those coffee beans?” or “Is that where chocolate comes from?” and of course, “What do I do with them?” Well, now is the time to grab a bag and come along to dehusk that question.

To start, Whole Roasted Beans (or as we often abbreviate, WRB) are cocoa beans. Yes, these are what we use to make chocolate. So nope, they are not coffee beans. After we finish hand sorting all of our beans—picking out the cracked, flat, and broken ones that might not taste good—we roast them, and then we crack, winnow and grind them down with sugar into chocolate. Roasting is a very important step in our flavor development process for two reasons: One, it helps bring out the flavors that we love in our chocolate and two, it’s the ‘kill step’ that ultimately kills any possible pathogens and assures that our chocolate is safe to eat. For our WRB, we use Madagascan beans from Bertil Akesson’s Bejofo Estate, and roast them a bit longer than we do if we were making them into chocolate. Why? The answer is simple. When roasted lightly, our Madagascar beans have the bright flavors we think taste amazing as a chocolate bar (after they’ve been conched and sugar has been added) but we don’t necessarily love those flavors as much as a stand-alone experience. So, by increasing our roast time, we’ve been able to skim off some of the sharper acidic flavors, leaving us with a nutty, citrusy flavor profile that we think is more snackable. If you want to learn more about the roasting process for our beans, we have factory tours and classes available to answer any questions you may have.

So, how do I eat them?

Snacking
One way people eat them is as a snack! You can squeeze one lightly and roll it between your fingers, just like cracking a peanut, to snap the skin and make it easier to peel off. You’ll end up with two parts; a peel, which we call husk, and the solids inside or the “meat of the bean,” which we call the nib. The nibs are what we refine down to make chocolate. This is the closest thing to eating 100% chocolate without the commitment. I often taste nutty notes in pure nibs, similar to a peanut or almond.

Topping
Using the nibs as a topping is always my favorite way to enjoy them. I like to have the crunchy texture and nibby flavor that it adds to things I already love. You can sprinkle the full nibs on top of yogurt, oatmeal, a salad or even ice cream! If you feel like getting creative, many people candy their nibs and use them as a delicious topping for desserts. Not only can you eat them as broken chunks of nib, but you can grind them up in a blender or food processor to make a nutty powder to boost your recipes. I suggest trying matcha soft serve, covered in ground nibs – yum!

Baking
Baking with chocolate is always fun, but with nibs, it’s even better! My favorite is making chocolate cherry bread using nibs instead of chocolate chips. Roasted cacao beans also make a great substitute for nuts. You can easily make banana nut bread by replacing nuts for nibs. We use nibs in many of our recipes here at Dandelion, stop by either of our cafes to try how our kitchen team incorporates them into our pastries and drinks.

Chocolate making
Although it’s possible, I wouldn’t recommend using these bean for home chocolate making. As I mentioned before, we developed a very specific roast profile that is intentionally different from the one we use for our bars, so we would hate for you to not get the result you wanted. If you’re interested in making chocolate at home we have a book coming out in November where we go more in depth, but if you can’t wait, sign up for our Chocolate 201 classes and let’s make a batch of chocolate!

Are there any other experiments I can do with them?

Absolutely! The great thing about working at Dandelion Chocolate is all of the tasting and experiments we do here—from our chocolate makers developing new bar profiles to our pastry team regularly adding new things to the menu. Everyone works hard in learning and creating something they’re excited about, so I wanted to share a couple of things that I made at home using my roasted beans.

Cracking and winnowing (removing husks)
If you want a quick, but slightly messy way to remove the husk off the beans, this has worked since the beginning of our chocolate journey. This is the same technique our founder, Todd, used when he was starting in his kitchen at home.

Put your desired amount of beans into a ziplock bag and make sure it’s closed all the way.
Using a rolling pin to go over the bag and break all of the beans. What you will have in the bag is a bunch of broken husk and nibs, all mixed together.
Place all of the broken nibs and husk into a bowl. I found that using a strainer helped me filter out some of the bigger pieces of husk before putting in the bowl.
Then use a blow dryer to “winnow” the husk off the nibs. Since husk pieces are light, they should blow away and the nibs should remain in the bowl. This takes a little practice of angling the blow dryer just right to allow only the husk to fly over the edge of the bowl, while the heavier nibs remain inside. As a warning, make sure you do not do this in a place where pets could eat them. Theobromine is very, very dangerous for dogs!
If you’re like me, and like things done at 110%, you can remove any remaining husk by hand. In our factory, we use the ten-minute rule: once you start picking nibs clean, cap yourself at ten minutes. Otherwise, you’ll be doing it for eternity.

I also tried seeing how long it would take me to remove the husk by hand, bean by bean, and got through half of the bag before my hands were covered in cocoa butter and smelled like chocolate. It’s not impossible, but requires more patience, a lot of podcasts, and may take longer than cracking and winnowing.

Cold Brew infused with nibs
After spending some time working at the Ferry Building one of my favorite things to do was to make our Ecuador Cold Brew. So I went home and made some for myself in a French press.

Start off by grinding your coffee at a coarse grind.
Optional: Use a spice grinder. I tried to match the same coarseness as the coffee.
Pour the coffee into the French press first and then fill it about halfway full with boiling water.
Next, add the nibs and stir everything together before topping it off with more water.
Remember to put the lid on, but don’t plunge it.
Leave it to brew at room temperature for 24 hours.
Plunge the coffee, and do it slowly so none of the grounds make it to your coffee.
Transfer to a jar and put it in the fridge to enjoy later.

Waffles with nibs

This was probably the most exciting thing I got to do. I bought a cast iron waffle maker and was finally able to put it to use. If you were wondering, this is where I used those nibs I winnowed by hand!

Here is a recipe I adapted from Flour Arrangements:

INGREDIENTS

1¾ cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
⅓ cup cocoa nibs
2 large eggs
1¾ cups buttermilk
1 stick butter, melted
2 teaspoons vanilla
maple syrup, for serving

INSTRUCTIONS

Combine all of the dry ingredients into a bowl.
In another bowl, mix the eggs, buttermilk, melted butter and vanilla.
Combine wet and dry ingredients.
Brush each side of the waffle maker with sunflower oil, or another neutral oil.
Pour 1/2 cup of batter into the pan for each waffle.
Cook for 2 to 3 minutes, until golden and crispy at the edges.
You can use maple syrup if you like, but I used strawberries as toppings since I wanted to really taste the nibs.

I love incorporating roasted beans into my overall diet, especially if I want to cut out sugar for a bit. The possibilities are endless, and if you ever see me at an event or class I would love to hear how you used your beans. Or comment your favorite ways below! Remember there’s no right or wrong way to taste chocolate, so I hoped this helped answer some of your questions. There are lots more experiments that I wanted to try, like smoothies and candied nibs, so keep an eye out for another post soon.

Getting a little Husky

June 21, 2017 by Greg

We recently changed our menu to include an item which is made by infusing it with cacao husk. This led to a few questions, concerns, and some confusion, so it seemed like a good opportunity to talk husk in more detail, discuss our understanding of husk, and encourage a bit of caution toward the potential risk of using husk for food products.

Anatomy of a cocoa bean

Let’s start at the beginning. Cocoa beans have an outer coating, sometimes known as shell, husk, or seed coat, that, while composed of a few things, is primarily fiber. It’s actually pretty neat, it serves to protect the bean, or seed, until it germinates. When I say that the husk “protects” the seed, this includes absorbing many heavy metals that might be present in the environment and blocking fungi and other microorganisms from penetrating and destroying the bean.

At the point of germination, a taproot pops through the husk, the bean pushes up out of the ground (buoyed by the taproot) and forms a cotyledon which nourishes the plant until it has formed enough leaf area to live and grow using photosynthesis. Sounds useful, right? If the husk isn’t cracked on a bean when it gets to you, you can feel relatively confident that the bean inside isn’t moldy as no spores can get in to grow mold. Yay! Three cheers for the husk!

So, what’s the catch? Why don’t people use husk for all sorts of things? As you might imagine, heavy metal and microbiological contamination, which the husk prevent from reaching the nib, don’t just disappear, they stick with (and to) the husk. Sadly, it gets worse, when cocoa beans ferment and dry, fungi will sometimes grow on the husk and these fungi can produce mycotoxins (specifically alflatoxins and ochratoxins). You might guess from the name that mycotoxins are toxic to human beings and additionally, unlike most microorganisms, aren’t destroyed by heat. Lastly, if the beans aren’t dried and stored in a relatively secure area, chickens can run through them and flies can land on them which can contaminate beans with listeria, salmonella or E. Coli (among other things). So, as a chocolate maker, one of the first things we do is remove the husk from our cocoa beans. This is partly because of possible contamination and partly because it doesn’t refine well (after all, it’s mostly fiber!). Hence the winnowing step in our production process, it separates the husk from the nibs, giving us clean nibs to make into chocolate and leaving husk as byproduct. Boo! Three jeers for the husk!

So, why add a panna cotta that has been infused with husk to our chef’s tasting menu? It is partly that the flavor from a husk infusion is different than a nib infusion, and we really liked the flavor. Also, our production process generates a fair amount of husk as a byproduct and we are always interested in doing better things with waste products than wasting them. While we typically give our husk to Bi-rite market’s farms to use as mulch, finding other uses is, well, useful.

The controversial question is how do we know that we aren’t also putting all sorts of awful things into the panna cotta when we are giving it that husky flavor? Honestly, there is no way to be completely certain. When it comes to manufacturing with agricultural ingredients, it’s very difficult to know anything definitive about the state of their contamination as the contamination is typically in spots rather than completely saturating the product. This means that you need to understand the risk potential contamination presents and find ways to mitigate it although it is almost impossible to remove it completely. While we source our beans very carefully, we know that there is the possibility of contamination in our supply chain, so we test representative samples of beans and husk as we get them (meaning we pull small sample from a variety of areas). In this case, when we considered using husk to infuse flavor into cream, we tested for the most common contaminants to evaluate the risk and ensure that the husk panna cotta on our menu would be both safe and delicious. In comes Anresco labs, a local and experienced food lab that can test for almost everything.

I’ve included the 3 sets of test results that we did on a representative sample of the husk we use for the panna cotta:

If you are looking to use husk, it’s worth understanding what to test for and why. The tests above illustrate our current approach and show the results on the husk that we use to give our panna cotta its flavor. Aflatoxin (B1, B2, G1, G2) are mycotoxins and the results were negative, as were the results for microbiological contamination. SPC (or Standard Plate Count) looks high but doesn’t imply any actual health risks. A high SPC is simply indicative of microbiological activity, which is very common when it comes to cocoa beans—after all, the first step in cocoa processing is fermentation! SPC is also a valuable indicator for understanding sanitary conditions of the environment in which the beans were produced. The only positive test results on the husk were for heavy metals. We analyzed these results based on the worst case scenario of everything present in the husk transferring directly and completely to the panna cotta. Since we aren’t feeding actual husk to anyone, this is almost certainly not going to happen; however, we wanted to ensure that even if all of the heavy metals were transferred, the panna cotta would be safe to consume. Below is a chart of the potential heavy metal content per serving of panna cotta. We arrived at these numbers by accounting for how much husk is used in the recipe and how many servings the recipe yields (we used 200g of husk in the recipe and it produces 40 servings). We also checked how the results line up with Prop 65, a California law which outlines daily limits for consumption of heavy metals and is the strictest regulation that limits heavy metal exposure that we know of). Again, this analysis was done as if we didn’t strain out the husk and/or if the metals completely infused into the panna cotta, which they almost certainly didn’t, have I clarified that too much?

Husk Panna Cotta

200 g of cacao husk / batch
40 panna cotta / batch
5 g of cacao husk / panna cotta (it’s infused and removed however; but in worst case scenario assume it was eaten)

Heavy Metal	Test Result	Potential Panna Cotta Content (PPCC)	Prop 65 Daily Limit	% of Daily Limit (According to Prop 65)
Antimony	<0.05 ppm
Arsenic	0.08 ppm	0.4 μg / serving	10 μg	4%
Bismut	<0.05 ppm
Cadmium	0.3 ppm	1.5 μg / serving	4.1 μg	37%
Chromium	1 ppm	5 μg / serving	8.2 μg	61%
Lead	0.3 ppm	1.5 μg / serving	15 μg	10%
Mercury	<0.05 ppm
Molybdenum	0.2 ppm
Silver	<0.05 ppm
Tin	<2 ppm

As you can see, considering the strictest guidelines, the panna cotta infused with husk should be safe to consume. Even so, this is a specific situation where we are using husk once we have done the due diligence to understand the risk associated with this specific origin and this specific harvest.

Hopefully this explanation was helpful. Overall we don’t encourage people to blindly use or eat husk. It could be dangerous (think of it akin to eating raw chicken). That being said, the risk associated with using husk is quantifiable and assessable. If you are thinking of using husk, it’s important to do the homework, get some testing done, and send us your results so we have more data to analyze!

Advent Calendar!

November 10, 2015 by Todd

For information about our 12 Nights of Chocolate, including tickets, click here.

Since the earliest days of Dandelion, we’ve always dreamed of having an advent Calendar to count down the days until Christmas. Opening up the small doors and finding a little treat was a special part of our childhoods. This year, we were finally able to make this dream a reality with the help of our friends. Designed by the talented Yvonne Mouser and featuring confections made by our very own chef, Lisa Vega, and our friends at Poco Dolce, Le Dix-Sept, Kika’s Treats, Nosh This, and Feve, we are proud to announce the first ever San Francisco Pop-up Advent Calendar.

Pre-sales start today for shipping on November 23rd. We’ve made a limited set of 300 and they are available for $150 in our online store.

Our Sugar

October 7, 2015 by Molly Gore

The Native Green Cane Harvester at work.

At Dandelion, we use only two ingredients in our bars, but we spend most of our time talking about just one: cocoa beans. It makes sense, beans give us a lot to talk about: flavor, process, environmental impact, the producers we work with, genetics, history, and more. But this year will be different. Recently, Mike Orlando of 24 Blackbirds introduced us to a new organic sugar from Brazil, and we loved it. We loved the taste, did a few tests, and despite the fact that it increased the viscosity of our chocolate, we made the transition. We buy the sugar from something called the Native Green Cane Project through a values-driven import company called Global Organics. A few months ago, Global Organics invited our Chocolate Sourcerer, Greg, on his first visit to the source of the sugar. He met up with Ryan Berk of Parliament Chocolate and our old friend Arcelia Gallardo of Mission Chocolate for a tour of the grounds and process. Before long, he came back with a story that floored us all: 350 kilometers northwest of São Paolo, the largest agricultural project in the world is making inspiring headway on a new, sustainable approach to farming sugarcane, and the results are absolutely delicious.

The Native Green Cane Project, under the leadership of agronomist Leontino Balbo, is pioneering new methods of cultivating sugarcane by returning the land closer to its natural state. That means nixing the chemicals and methods that deplete the soil and destroy biodiversity in favor of a more natural approach. Typically, sugarcane is harvested by setting fields on fire to burn off the leaves before the cane is slashed down by machete or machine. The Native Green Cane Project designed a green cane harvester that not only harvests the cane without fire, but leaves it to grow back for seven harvests before planting the field again. The project is also entirely self-sustaining—every output is fed back into the process—and produces enough surplus energy to power a city of more than 500,000 nearby. There is so much more to talk about, so we’ve compiled it all under the sugar button in Our Beans & Sugar page. Head on over to read more!

Caffeine and Cacao: A Stimulating Discussion

September 14, 2015 by Cynthia Jonasson

At Dandelion, customers often ask me about the amount of caffeine in our chocolate. It’s a good question, but a complicated one; especially if you’re asking because you’d like to know how chocolate will affect you. To begin, caffeine is not the only stimulant in chocolate. Theobromine, a bitter alkaloid named after the genus of the cacao tree, is the primary stimulant in cacao—so if we only looked at caffeine in an effort to understand chocolate’s stimulating effects, we’d be missing the whole picture. That said, I’ll try to answer the question at hand by looking at some data we recently collected.

The amount of caffeine in a chocolate bar depends in part on where the beans for that bar were grown. Beans from some origins hold greater concentrations of caffeine than others, just as some beans have a higher or lower percentage of cocoa butter depending on genetics and origin (the farther from the Equator they grow, the fattier the beans tend to be). In order to better understand the properties and components of the beans we buy, we sent some samples to Adam Kavalier Ph.D, a plant scientist and the chocolate maker behind Undone Chocolate in Washington DC. Adam ran some tests and sent us his results, which means we know a lot more about the natural compounds in the chocolate we make! For information on compounds besides caffeine, check out Jenna’s post about our 100% bar.

According to Adam’s study, if you ate an entire Camino Verde 100% bar, you would consume about 350mg of caffeine. This is equivalent to approximately:

8 2oz dark chocolate (70-85%) bars* (according to the National Nutrient Database)
6 1oz shots of espresso
5 12oz cups of black tea
4 8oz cups of brewed coffee
3 2oz Dandelion Chocolate 70% Madagascar chocolate bars

A final note: Take these numbers with a grain of salt; they were used to simplify the question. The amount of caffeine and theobromine in other Madagascar bars will vary because different chocolate makers use different processes. The amount of caffeine in a cup of coffee or tea also varies based on processing.

*Chocolate bar percentages are calculated by the percent of cacao components that are in a bar. A typical mass-produced dark chocolate bar uses beans from West Africa and includes added cocoa butter, whereas our bars have no added cocoa butter and are made from beans with varying genetic makeups. Generally, the lack of added cocoa butter is why our bars tend to have more caffeine than the national average.

Behind the Bitters

August 13, 2015 by Rob Easter

Our friend and collaborator Rob Easter (Workhorse Rye) makes some of the best bitters in the bay. Here, he lets us in on a few of his secrets and how the Salted Cacao bitters came to be.

I never wanted to make chocolate bitters. I have made drinks with molé and other chocolate bitters for years, and didn’t feel like I needed to contribute much to that world so I ignored chocolate (in a bitters context, not an eating context, please) for quite some time. As I started becoming more familiar with Dandelion Chocolate bars, a totally new flavor profile appeared in my mind: cacao bitters. Not chocolate bitters. That sounds silly but it is a totally different beast—a bright, fruity, yet savory beast.

I pitched the idea to Cynthia and Greg after their chocolate class at Four Barrel, and asked them for some cacao husk and nibs, separately. I knew the husk would contribute something bitter and tannic, but wasn’t sure exactly what. I put rye on husk and rye on nibs, agitated them for a month and then tasted. It is ridiculous how fantastically good cacao and quality alcohol taste when married for a month. It tastes like wine. Alcohol is a fantastic solvent of course, and it easily extracts the fats and proteins of the cacao. To compliment those savory and bright tones that our rye took from the cacao, we selected as counterparts cardamom, cinnamon, and super cool Piran salt by Bitterman Salt Co. We added some extra bitterness via dandelion root too.

After that, it was a simply a matter of dialing it in. After a year and a half, the recipe has evolved, and now we put whole beans (with husk, no separation from nib) through our grain mill the same as we would before making mash for rye whiskey. We use an extra dash of husk too—these are bitters after all, and a pleasant but unique bitterness is what we are after.

I like using entire plants as much as possible. Roots, bark, fruit, peel, husk, nib. Not because it sounds wizardlike and “one-with-all” (that’s cool too, I suppose) but because a plant expresses itself in so many ways, and there is core personality in many of those parts. To make a silky chocolate bar, the husk needs to be separated from the nib. It is usually valued as prized compost, aiding in soil aeration, but lately it’s moved to center stage and is more appreciated for what it is: bitter. We rejoice in the name of cacao husk; who would have thought? I don’t yet know what cacao root or leaves tastes like, but I foresee that changing for both us and Cacao Bitters lovers.

You can find Rob’s bitters on the Workhorse Rye website, or in our Valencia Street factory. To start, try a few sleeves with 2 oz mezcal and 1/4 oz Tempus Fugit Crème de Cacao. Or, stir up a dry Manhattan with rye, dry vermouth, and 3 sleeves Salted Cacao Bitters.

The Bar That Broke The Mold

November 24, 2014 by Jennifer Roy

When Josh and Evan, the discerning founders of Cool Hunting, sat down with me in the café at Dandelion to talk about a “collaboration,” I was intrigued. Their concept was to create a chocolate bar like no other, and when they brought in the boundary-breaking design firm Snarkitecture to design the bar and packaging, I knew we were onto something.

Despite the fact that Dandelion production is so very oversubscribed at the moment, we were up for the project for a few reasons. To begin, it’s a labor of love. Secondly, all of the profits will go to support Southern Exposure, a local non-profit organization.

It’s been a year, and we’ve finally arrived at the finish line. The result is a unique edible artwork in the form of a delicious chocolate topographical landscape.

The bar, once unwrapped from its silver foil, reveals a continuous fracture around the perimeter. Along this uneven edge, the bar splits into two pieces, revealing two perfectly opposite textured landscapes.

While the Break Bar looks simple, it was quite a challenge to develop. Creating the mold took several remakes. The first turned out to be too hard to temper, and the subsequent tries left a trail of broken bars which, to confess, we enjoyed immensely. Finally, we got it right.

When it came to actually making the bars, the production team was up for the challenge. Little did they know what they were in for. There’s three times more chocolate in a Break Bar than our regular bar, so getting the air bubbles out is no easy task. And to get the sharp edges we were looking for, each bar needed the tender attention of a hand-held hairdryer.

Even wrapping the bars is difficult. The foil is much thicker than what we regularly use, and the paper is difficult to handle.

In the end, for the sake of art, community, and chocolate, it’s all been worth it. To purchase the Break Bar, find it here.

PS — We’re producing a limited edition of 500 bars. One out of every hundred will include a “White Ticket,” which rewards the purchaser with a non-edible Snakitecture sculpture in the same form as the Break Bar.

La Cervezeria, Papua New Guinea Cacao, and Cocoa Crisp

June 2, 2014 by Maverick Watson

On Tuesday June 3rd we will be hosting a sourcing talk about Papua New Guinea in our cafe at 7pm. Greg D’alesandre will be talking about his recent trip to the country to find new sources of cacao. And speaking of cacao from Papua New Guinea…

I’ve been hanging out with William Bostwick, a local beer maker that often works at the small brewery La Cervezeria de MateVeza on 18th St and Church a lot lately. We met a few months back when he was buying a bag of Whole Roasted Madagascar Beans and I asked how he was going to use them. “I’m making beer!” he said, as he pulled out a bag of Far West Fungi mushrooms that smelled like maple syrup. He used the mushrooms and cacao to make a great ale for SF Beer Week.

William is an inventive and enthusiastic beer maker (and writer) that likes to use unusual ingredients in his beer making, which brought him to Dandelion. That beer turned out really well, so I’ve been working with him and playing with new ideas about using cacao in beer making. We’ve discussed how different origins could be used to get different flavors out of the brews and how to best use the beans. His batches are only around for a couple weeks at the longest and are served on tap at La Cervezeria. All of their beers are brewed in just 20 gallon batches, which lets their brewers have fun playing with new ingredients and recipes very often.

Our most recent batch is a South Pacific Stout made with our Papua New Guinea beans called “Cocoa Crisp”. However, it doesn’t come off as a stout. It is very dark in color with a very creamy coconut body and mouthfeel, but it has a very light flavor profile. It’s playfully malty and effervescent with undertones of rich prune and… chocolate! It’s really unique and if I were blindfolded while drinking it, I would think of it as an amber ale; it’s surprisingly light in body for it’s color.

Alright, let’s nerd out for a minute. I’m new to brewing so all of this was very exciting to me. The base of the beer is Maris Otter Barley, which is a traditional British grain known for it’s “bready” sweetness, that William likened to a honey graham cracker. These grains were added to oatmeal (for body) and wood-smoked grains, to emphasize our Papua New Guinea beans’ smokiness, and some dark roasted grains (for color). All of these ingredients make up the “mash” for brewing the beer, to which we then added Papua New Guinea Cacao! We were thinking “S’mores” when we thought up this profile, but the beer ended up being much lighter and fruitier than we imagined!

We ended up adding the PNG beans to the mash whole and cooking the mash below boiling in order to more more gently extract their flavors. Considering the cacao is naturally about %50 fat (cocoa butter), releasing that much fat into beer isn’t great because it has would decrease the head on the beer, so we decided not to crack them. So we essentially steeped them like a tea in the mash.

After we steeped the mash and drained it, we have “wort”. Wort is essentially beer tea. It’s hot, unfermented beer. It’s got tons of sugar in it that’s been extracted from all of the grains and would make a bountiful feast for yeast… so this is the part where we inoculate with yeast! We used a Belgian Trappist Ale Yeast, which ferments with a lot of fruity esters and lending flavor notes of plum, raisin or even caramelized banana. All of these parameters match up with what we’ve gotten out of the cacao in our Papua New Guinea chocolate, so it made sense to use it for the beer. The brew then took about a week to ferment before it was put into kegs (carbonated) and tapped! It’s on tap right now at La Cervezeria if you want to want to go try it!

Our Cacao beans from Papua New Guinea are delicious and unique because of the way that they are dried on the farm using wood burning fires that give them a “campfire smokiness”. PNG has a tendency to be very humid and wet, so drying the beans in the sun, as most farmers do, is out of the question. To make up for this, the build huts over metal pipes in which they build wood fires. Then they put place the beans on racks above these pipes to receive heat and dry. Of course, this is all in a very rural area with limited building resources, so some smoke reaches the beans. This is where the “smokiness” comes from, if you’ve ever been anywhere near a campfire, I don’t have to tell you that wood smoke has a tendency to stick to things. There are A LOT more ins and outs to the growing cacao industry in Papua New Guinea, their processes and practices that is beyond my knowledge, but if you want to know more, Greg D’alesandre (our Bean Sourcerer) just got back from a trip to Papua New Guinea and is conducting a talk about his trip, the farms he visited there, and their practices on June 3rd at our Factory on Valencia Street! The presentation will start at 7pm and include photos and lots of fun information. If you’re interested in beer as well as the chocolate side of all of this, there’s going to be an unofficial “after-party” for the talk at La Cervezeria, where you can try the Cocoa Crisp Papua New Guinea beer! Hope to see you there!

Pour-Over Coffee and Chocolate

May 20, 2014 by Maverick Watson

I love coffee. A lot. (It’s even how I met my fiance, but that’s another story). I also love chocolate and the two make a great pair. My experience in coffee is how I got started at Dandelion Chocolate. I got involved with Dandelion through our mutual friends at Four Barrel in January of 2013 and I’ve had a great time helping to develop our drink menu. I’ve experimented with different ingredients, origins and methods of preparation for hot chocolates, mochas and coffees alike and it’s tons of fun to be able to adapt our menu seasonally… or whenever we feel like it.

We already have a variety of drinkable chocolate options and a few Café Mochas made with Four Barrel Friendo Blendo Espresso, combined in ways that we think blend our single origin chocolate with their seasonally varied ‘spro. Four Barrel has been a great partner to us in the past year as we’ve learned and grown into a full fledged chocolate cafe and we think that their coffee and our chocolate go great together. They roast their coffee only a few blocks down from us on Valencia Street here in San Francisco, and their dedication to ethical coffee and education is super rad and pretty similar to our approach to chocolate; light roasts, small batches, single origin, and personal relationships with farmers.

The Marocchino

Since opening, we have offered a seasonal rotation of coffees brewed in the french press method. We are now offering single origin coffees brewed in the pour-over method. I think that french press tends to make a cloudy and relatively weak brew in contrast to my personal preference of a strong and clean cup of coffee. French Press produces very pleasant earthiness and silky mouthfeel, but in brewing tends to lose some of the brightness and unique flavors that make our coffee selections really stand out… and that is why we are now offering Four Barrel Coffee brewed via the pour over method.

Why Pour-Over?

When making a single cup of coffee, the pour-over method makes a really delicious cup of bright, flavorful brew with a crystal finish and I think makes a great pairing with chocolate. Similar to the way some people pair wines with chocolate or Lisa Vega uses different origins to help certain pastries shine (see: Papua New Guinea S’mores), the unique flavor notes in coffee can pull out flavors in chocolate that one may not have noticed before and vice versa. For this reason we are introducing a seasonally rotating pour over coffee option with a pairing suggestion depending both on the coffee that we are currently serving and the chocolates we are currently making. Instead of combining the Espresso and Hot Chocolate, we want to also show how the can complement each other.

The coffee that we are currently serving is from a co-op farm in Robot Mata, Ethiopia. On its own, this coffee has flavor notes of kiwi, lemon, ginger, green tea, and honey with a very pleasant sweetness that lingers at the back of the palate and followed by a clean finish.

While the flavors of the coffee can stand on its own, when paired with chocolate we get new interesting notes. Our newest bar from Ecuador (Camino Verde), has the quintessential flavor of fudge brownies that many people look for in chocolate and is definitely the mellowest of our bars. Having a couple pieces with the Robot Mata is like putting cream in your coffee. The smooth chocolate melts over your tongue and slightly mutes the brightness in the coffee in a pleasantly sweet texture and mouthfeel that makes me forget that I’m drinking black coffee and eating a 70% dark chocolate.

When paired with our chocolate from Mantuano, Venezuela, the slight fruitiness of the chocolate and the coffee play off of each other resulting in a roasty, dried cherry flavor with cinnamon notes at the end and a buttery mouthfeel. This pairing is definitely spicier and more interesting than the Camino Verde, but it really depends on your preferences or mood as to what you want. I like a square of the mellower chocolate with my coffee in the morning, but enjoy a more fruity pairing in the afternoon or evening, which is especially nice if you’re sharing it with someone. Everyone’s palate is different, so not everyone will get the same tasting notes out of every chocolate or coffee, so these foster great conversation for the coffee or chocolate connoisseur!

If you come in and order a coffee, you can feel free to taste our varieties of chocolate samples on the shelf and think about flavor profiles for yourself and if you find something that you like in particular, you can take home a bar and a bag of the coffee (yes, we sell Four Barrel Coffee Beans!) that we are brewing so you can have the pair that you like at home! Our coffee offerings and pairing suggestions will change seasonally, but each new variety will be chosen thoughtfully with specific pairings in mind. And as always, everyone at Dandelion is more than happy to answer any questions that you might have regarding any of our products or practices.

Dandelion Chocolate at Caledonia Alley

May 15, 2014 by Maverick Watson

If you like our Marocchino, this weekend you should stop by Caledonia Alley behind Four Barrel! This little treat is our version of a traditional Northern Italian drink (Drinking Chocolate + Espresso + Nib Whipped Cream), and for this weekend only Four Barrel is serving their interpretation (think bourbon whipped cream)!

Caledonia Alley is a small kiosk that harkens back to 4B’s earlier (build-out) days, and is located directly behind the building in the alley. They’ll only be open from 9am-3pm for a few weekends coming up, during which they are hosting signature drinks from a number of their favorite wholesale accounts (we’re one of ’em!)! This definitely aught to be a fun way to start a weekend morning, so check ’em out!