Step I of IX
Harvest
From October to February our pickers walk the rows with hooked knives on long poles. Only ripe pods are cut, the ones that knock hollow. The beans inside are wrapped in sweet white pulp.
40 beans in an average pod
Bean to bar
Nine steps from the pod to the wrapper
About three weeks on the estate and four days in the workshop. We do every step ourselves, and we will show you each one.
- steps
- 9
- days fermenting
- 6
- hours conching
- 72
The nine steps
Scroll through the making of a bar
The drawing changes as you go. Every number is from our own process notes (example figures).
Step II of IX
Ferment
The beans and pulp go into wooden boxes lined with banana leaves. They warm up on their own, past 45 degrees, and are turned on day two and day four. This is where chocolate flavour begins.
Day 1: pulp starts to break down. Day 2: first turn. Day 4: second turn. Day 6: beans are brown and smell of vinegar and fruit.
6 days in banana leaf boxes
Step III of IX
Dry
Seven days on raised bamboo beds in the sun, raked by hand every hour and covered when the rain comes. Dry beans keep for a year without going mouldy.
7 percent moisture when dry
Step IV of IX
Sort
Every sack is sorted by hand. We cut test a sample of beans from each lot: a good bean is brown and cracked inside, like a little loaf of bread.
300 kg sorted by hand each week
Step V of IX
Roast
In our Port Harcourt workshop the beans are roasted in small batches. Too hot and the fruit is lost, too cool and the bitterness stays. We taste every batch.
Ridge Dark is roasted lightest to keep the red fruit. Nib Crunch is roasted darkest, for coffee notes.
120 degrees for about 28 minutes
Step VI of IX
Crack and winnow
The roasted beans are cracked and a fan blows the papery shells away. What is left are nibs, the pure heart of the bean.
30 percent of the weight is shell
Step VII of IX
Grind and conche
Nibs are ground between granite wheels with a little sugar for three days and nights, until the chocolate is silky and the sharp notes have softened.
Our melangers run on the workshop inverter and solar panels, so a power cut never stops a batch halfway.
72 hours in the stone melanger
Step VIII of IX
Temper
Melted to 45 degrees, cooled on marble to 27, warmed back to 31. Tempering gives a bar its shine and its clean snap.
31 degrees working temperature
Step IX of IX
Mould and wrap
Poured into moulds, cooled, then wrapped by hand in our patterned paper. Each wrapper carries the harvest lot, so you can trace your bar back to the trees.
Lot numbers look like CR 26 11 B: estate, year, harvest month and block.
80 g per bar, wrapped by hand
Two places
Estate and workshop
Steps one to four happen on the ridge, steps five to nine in our Old GRA workshop, about four hours away by road.
| Step | Where | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Harvest to sorting | The estate, Cross River | About 3 weeks |
| Roast to temper | Workshop, Old GRA | About 4 days |
| Rest and wrap | Workshop, Old GRA | 2 weeks of resting |
In the workshop
Machines with names
Our melangers are called Grace and Bassey, after the second generation.
Questions
About how we make it
Why does fermentation matter so much?
Unfermented beans taste flat and bitter. Fermenting creates the compounds that turn into chocolate flavour when roasted.
Do you add anything to the dark bars?
Only cane sugar and, in some bars, a little extra cocoa butter from our own beans.
Can I watch the workshop?
Yes, through the glass in the tasting room, and on our Saturday workshops.
Taste the nine steps.
Start with Ridge Dark 72%, our purest bar.