What is Craft Chocolate / Bean to Bar Chocolate?

Craft chocolate produces chocolate in a slightly different way from the big producers (yes, including Lindt). While big producers effectively drown out the taste of the bean by over-roasting and prioritising stability and large-scale production, bean to bar or craft chocolate producers produce in small scale with an emphasis on retaining the highly complex flavours of the original beans.

Craft chocolate is a relatively young industry, especially when considered against comparable industries with rich tasting and flavour profile heritages, like wine, whiskey, coffee, even bread.

In brief, these features characterise craft chocolate/bean to bar chocolate:
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-- Made from single-origin or traceable cocoa beans -- these chocolatiers have often met and have ongoing relationships with the farmers, placing emphasis on an ethical supply chain.
-- Produced in small batches by independent makers not affiliated with any big brand and, as the name suggests, made from scratch from the cocoa beans (many chocolatiers buy in pre-made chocolate as ‘couverture’, melt it down and make from that, so they’re not technically bean to bar brands).
-- Uses minimal processing to preserve natural flavour and, studies are increasingly showing, the remarkable health benefits of cocoa, also offering complex and distinctive flavour profiles that the large companies eradicate in their processing.
-- Contains few, high-quality ingredients (often just cocoa and sugar) and there is a lot of transparency in the labelling (origin, cocoa percentage, sometimes even harvest details).
-- Driven by a focus on craftsperson-ship, flavour exploration and sustainability.
-- Usually if you find one of their shops, they’re very happy to enthusiastically chat to you about chocolate! :-)

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I offer events that combine my experience of running mindfulness and relaxation events with my love of craft chocolate. I figured that sound baths are sensory in many ways, but they don't usually draw in taste. Chocolate is often eaten 'mindlessly', a quick snack as we go about our day to day. And yet the mindfulness books themselves will suggest 'conscious' eating as one of the quickest ways to reconnect with the body.

So here we are. I am still building this offering. Currently there are chocolate tasting sound baths on offer in Edinburgh, where I also run aerial yoga classes. I am also available for private chocolate and mindfulness events in Edinburgh, Leeds, York and Harrogate. And I am working on an online offering.

For more information, just get in touch!