Mill Street Chocolate – Bean to Bar

Once I have combined these ingredients, my stone-grinder takes 2-3 days to gradually smooth and polish the microparticles of cacao.  This allows the acetic acid naturally present in the cacao to evaporate, whilst slowly coaxing all the complex flavours from the beans.  It also ensures the resulting product is as luxuriously silky smooth as chocolate can be.

Once the stone-grinding has finished, I pour the melted chocolate into a large bowl ready for ‘tempering’.  I gently stir and move the mixture whilst it cools, ensuring the different components knit together properly to form a stable product.

When the mixture falls below 31.5C, it is fully tempered and the chocolate is now ready to use for making any of the products in the Mill Street Chocolate range.

Mill Street Chocolate is a ‘Bean to Bar’ product.  This means that, rather than buying couverture (somebody else’s ready made chocolate), I make all my own chocolate from scratch using Raw Peruvian Cacao and Coconut Sugar.  I use no added emulsifiers or soya lecithins to detract from the purity and quality of the product.

Making Bean to Bar chocolate is a slow process, but ensures that I know exactly what goes into my chocolate, where it comes from, and that the highest levels of quality are maintained.  I can trace every stage of production, right back to the growers and pickers at the small farmers' Co-operative in the Peruvian rainforest, which grows all its cacao using fairtrade principles and without the use of agro-chemicals.  For this reason, I can be sure that the highest levels of care and attention to detail go into every stage of the process.  I also know that everyone involved has received a fair price for their product or work.

I am confident that Mill Street Chocolate represents the highest quality raw chocolate and I continue to strive for excellence in the future as I develop new products and ranges.