Costa Rica - Canaan de Rivas - Chocolate!

Way up in the mountains about 40 minutes from our Airbnb in Quizarra is a very small chocolate shop. Actually, a small 'bean to bar' artisan chocolateria- Samaritan Xocolata!  The owner Tao, has been making small batches of organic chocolate since 2005. She has created a hands on workshop to show others the fine art of artisan chocolate.

Tao is showing us the barrels of fermenting cacao beans

She does the entire process from the fermenting the cacao bean,  drying, shelling, roasting, grinding, conching,  and tempering to creating bars, bon bons and truffles.  Everything is organic and sourced locally.

I learned about Tao and her shop while searching for other things to do besides birding- I needed a break.   Her shop just happens to be on the way to a birding hot spot.  I had thought that Tom would just want to drop me off, and go hunt for more birds for  a couple of hours, but he surprised me and said he wanted to go attend as well.  As it was we got to her place really early, so we did continue up the hill to the end of the road to look for some feathered friends!

Tao is making us a cup of 'ceremonial chocolate' - YUMMMY

The first thing I noticed when we walked in the door of the small shop was the wonderful smell of chocolate. She's got a small but very usable, productive chocolate kitchen.

 A large stainless table is nestled up to a large marble tempering table.  Various pieces of chocolate making equipment were placed on counter ends and along one wall.

The beans coming out of the roaster

The aroma was coming from the batch of cacao beans she had roasting in the roaster.  Forty five minutes at 140 degrees, plus or minus a few depending on the beans and you've got nicely roasted chocolate nibs.   But before roasting, the beans have to be fermented, then placed on screens to dry, be sorted, and shelled and sorted again. Only then can they go into the roaster.

Me grinding the nibs in the juicer to get the chocolate liqueur.

She uses a juicer to grind the bean while warm.  This creates chocolate liqueur.  The chocolate liqueur is then placed in a machine similar to a flour mill.

 Several stone wheels press the ground chocolate against a stone base crushing the rest of the bits and pieces that didn't get ground up with the first go round with the juicer.  The process in the stone grinding machine is called broyage.  Tao lets this process run for 72 hours.  At this point she adds some extras, some organic sugar, some vanilla and a bit of chili.  She doesn't use any fillers like lecithin.

After this final crushing phase is complete the finely crushed chocolate gets formed into a brick and refrigerated until needed for product.

When it's time to make goodies, the brick goes into a tempering/melting machine. It keeps the chocolate at a constant temperature.  Once it's been in here for a while, then she begins to create.

The tempering and melting machine.  That's a 2 kilo brick of chocolate slowly melting.

Pouring the chocolate onto the marble work top

The bowl of chocolate liqueur in the foreground, a bowl of tempered chocolate  and the spreading and gathering of the liquid begins.

My turn!

Through the 'magic of TV' she had done all of the steps leading up to us creating our own bar of chocolate and some bon bons.

Tom creating a bar of 70% chocolate.

We both got to try our hands at the 'spreading and gathering' the chocolate on the marble surface.  This step does a couple of things.  First it starts to cool the chocolate to a workable temperature - 96 degrees.  Second, you are visually checking the chocolate as it's smeared on the marble for any 'unwanted' - bits of non ground chocolate, or hopefully not a bit of extra protein in the form of a bug!

If the tempered chocolate gets too cool, pull out the secret weapon to warm it up!  She also uses an infrared thermometer to measure the temp!

Filling the molds for the bon bons. The mold is filled, then poured out leaving a shell.  After chilling, this is filled and capped with chocolate to create the base.

Adding the minted cream filling.

A filled tray heads to the refer to solidify before getting a melted chocolate bottom.

We each created a 70% organic chocolate bar - mine is toasted almond with Himalayan salt, and Tom did chili flake and Himalayan salt.

We put them in to the refer to solidify and created a batch of mint bon bons.  Our bon bons were yummy.  We haven't eaten the chocolate bars yet, primarily because we forgot about them with all of our early mornings and long days.

While I won't be doing anything with chocolate on a large scale, a small block of her 'base chocolate' will be in my suitcase. The chocolate was rich, and very flavorful.  Stepping into her commercial kitchen to create was a good day for me. Perhaps some holiday truffles or bon bons from the Eagle Cafe will appear soon. This was a good birding day!