How We Make Our Chocolate
When cacao beans arrive here in Stroud, they’ve already travelled from origins and farmers we love working with—people who grow and ferment cacao with care and skill. The beans they produce are full of character, and it’s our job to bring those flavours to life.
Sorting and Roasting
The first step is hand-sorting. We carefully check every batch to make sure only the best beans make it through. Then comes a gentle roast—lighter than most—because we want to preserve the delicate notes of each origin while still drawing out a rich, chocolatey depth.
Winnowing
Next, the beans are winnowed. This process removes the shells and leaves us with pure cacao nibs.
Grinding
Those nibs go into our traditional granite stone grinders, where they are slowly refined.
As the stones roll, the natural cacao butter is released, turning the nibs into a smooth liquid. This takes several hours, and we only move on once the texture is just right.
At this stage, we add one of our favourite ingredients: organic coconut sugar. We’ve always chosen coconut sugar (or nectar) instead of cane or beet sugar—for both taste and principle. Coconut sugar is harvested in a way that’s gentler on the environment, and it has a naturally lower GI, meaning no sharp sugar spikes. It also gives a softer sweetness that lets the true cacao flavour shine, leaving you with a clean, chocolatey finish rather than a heavy aftertaste.
Back in the grinders, the coconut sugar crystals are slowly broken down over several days. They don’t dissolve in chocolate, so instead, they’re gradually coated in cacao—layer by layer—like tiny pearls. This long, patient process is what makes our chocolate so silky smooth.
Finally,
after 4 to 5 days in the grinders, the chocolate ready and can be tempered to perfection, giving it that glossy shine and satisfying snap.
We pour it into moulds, let it set, and then every bar is hand-wrapped here at The Cacao House, ready to make its way to you.