26
JULY
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Uncouth Chocolate’s Story
Meet Heidi and Stephanie from Uncouth Chocolate. They offer Bean-to-Bar small-batch chocolate made in beautiful Victoria BC.
Heidi and Stephanie started their chocolate journey 10 years ago after partaking in a chocolate tasting hosted by David Mincey, who is an expert on chocolate and runs The Chocolate Project at the Victoria Public Market. They were blown away by all the new-found knowledge, the different tastes and textures and thought it was life-changing.
After taking a chocolate masters class (hosted by David) and Stephanie starting a part-time job at The Chocolate Project, they knew that handcrafted chocolate was their calling.
Their big debut happened 4 years ago when the Esquimalt Farmers Market opened their “doors” for the first time. And they have come a LONG WAY since then. They started out by sharing a table with one of their friends and selling only chocolate “coins” in the shape of smiley faces, and now they have 6 different chocolate bars, plus truffles, nibs and brittle.
I had the absolute pleasure of tasting the whole “flight” (all the different chocolates they offer), and I can honestly say that I was blown away! I have to admit that I am quite addicted to chocolate and thought that I knew what I liked but I have to say that I have never tasted chocolate that was so flavorful and tasty. I usually am not a big fan of dark chocolate, but after tasting their different chocolates, I am a full-blown uncouth lover!! (Seriously, you have to try it)
The bars they offer:
TANZANIA 75% CHOCOLATE Ingredients: Cocoa Beans & Unrefined Cane Sugar
MADAGASCAR 75% CHOCOLATE Ingredients: Cocoa Beans & Unrefined Cane Sugar
ECUADOR 85% CHOCOLATE Ingredients: Cocoa Beans & Unrefined Cane Sugar
PERU MAPLE 75% – ROUGH CHOCOLATE Ingredients: Cocoa Beans & Maple Sugar
GUATEMALA 75% – ROUGH CHOCOLATE Ingredients: Cocoa Beans & Unrefined Cane Sugar
COFFEE & COCONUT MILK 65% – ROUGH CHOCOLATE Ingredients: Cocoa Beans, Unrefined Cane Sugar, Coffee Beans (from Fernwood coffee), Dried Coconut
But let me tell you a little bit more about their chocolate making process. Also, because I had no idea how chocolate is made and really think everyone should know how many things go into making high quality handcrafted chocolate.
It all starts with sorting through the cocoa beans. (You lose about 10% of beans right away)
Then you take the sorted beans and roast them. Every one of their chocolate bars has a different roasting profile (Kind of like roasting coffee).
After they have cooled down, they have to be broken up, and the shells (or husk) need to be removed. This happens in the winnower, which uses centrifugal force to suck the light stuff (husk) away and leaves the heavy parts (cocoa nibs, or the broken up pieces of the cocoa bean). (They designed and built theirs!!!)
Once all of these steps are done, they have to sort through it again and pick out any pieces of shells that are stuck to the nibs.
Once there are only the nibs left, they can either toss them in sugar and make it into their frosted nibs, turn the nibs into their brittle, or grind them through a stone or blade grinder to make their chocolate bars. But even after all these steps, they are not done. Then the bars need to age for a month before they can be hand tempered and wrapped.
Soooo, now you know at least one of the differences between store bought chocolate that is mass produced in a factory and all of the work that goes into handcrafting uncouth chocolate. :D
Another amazing fun fact about uncouth’s chocolate bars is that all of their single origin bars use only two ingredients: cocoa beans and cane sugar (sometimes maple sugar). And that all of their bars are plant-based (non-dairy / vegan).
