So first off, what exactly is Bean-to-Bar? Well it’s exactly what it describes. This method of chocolate making is as pure as it gets, taking raw cacao beans and turning it into chocolate bars with as few added ingredients as possible to create the perfect flavour.

What makes our Bean-to-Bar chocolate truly special is the varieties of cacao we use to create it. We source our cacao from small land holders and indigenous farmers in Central and South America, as well as the Caribbean, the original home of cacao.

For each of our Bean-to-Bar chocolates, we use a single-origin cacao, some with histories dating back thousands of years. We only use unique and flavour-rich cacaos which have an amazing depth of flavour.

We deal exclusively with cacao traders and farmers who closely match our ethical goals and beliefs, particularly when it comes to protecting the planet and people. Many of our suppliers grow using agroforestry techniques, protecting the invaluable rainforests in the regions. We also only deal with suppliers who give their farmers a fair price for their cacao, and many also support their farmers in other ways such as providing a route to market for small farmers who otherwise could not afford it, and providing farmers with support and education around more sustainable growing techniques.

The tempering process finishes off the creation of the chocolate, making the liquid chocolate ready to set into the familiar shiny, smooth and snappy treat we’re all familiar with and love. Tempering is a really important step for any chocolate making but getting it perfect is essential to us, to finish the bars as best as possible.

For our bean-to bar chocolate bars we use a beautifully-crafted custom mould we commissioned from artist Kim Francis, which accentuates the rich beauty of the chocolate.

Once the chocolate is tempered and the bars are set, it’s time for the final step, packaging them ready for people to buy. Like the chocolate making itself, this is all done by hand, wrapping the bar first in foil and then in a card sleeve printed locally at Stroud Print. We make sure to use only natural, plant-based inks in our packaging, so the whole product is environmentally friendly and recyclable.

Our bars are available online and in quality stores. We package our chocolate plastic-free.

Once we’ve selected our cacao, we receive a large and heavy hessian sack of it delivered in its raw form, the loose cacao beans. Before we can use it, though, we have to extract the nibs from their shells. We do this in our winnowing machine, which cracks open the shells and lets the nibs fall through into a collection tray while the shell fragments are vacuumed away.

From here it’s just a matter of adding the nibs to one of our grinders and letting it run for at least 24 hours to ensure we get the smoothest chocolate possible. It’s not quite that simple though, as it’s also at this stage when we add our organic coconut sugar and sometimes cacao butter to the chocolate. It’s important to add exactly the right proportion of coconut sugar to remove the bitterness while not hiding the flavour of the cacao behind a wall of sweetness.

Each cacao needs a different proportion of coconut sugar to get the balance of flavours just right, so precision is key. Once that’s done, though, it’s time to remove the liquid chocolate from the grinders and begin the tempering and moulding process.