Cleaning:
The beans are delivered as fermented and dried to manufacturers all of the world. The beans are then sorted by origin and they are cleaned.

Roasting:
Second most important part in chocolate making(1st Fermentation).
Roasting is a very important process where the flavor precursors that were developed during Fermentation are fully developed into the chocolate flavor we all know. It takes a very knowledgeable roaster to make good chocolate. This is a position in any factory that takes great skill and attention to detail. At one moment the beans might be under roasted and 1 minute later be over roasted. You have to trust your nose, your eyes, and your taste buds to see when the beans are done with their roast. All different beans require different roast times to bring out their individual and unique flavors. (many times coffee roasting machines are used to complete this job)

Winnowing:
This process breaks off the shell of the bean and then seperates the shell from the "cocoa nibs"(the nibs are just the broken pieces of the cocoa bean).

Milling:
The milling process crushes the nibs and releases the cocoa butter with the produced heat and friction. The machine that is mainly used to do this is the "Melangeur". It is a large round granite slab that has two huge rolling granite wheels that roll around the circle and crush the cocoa nibs. This creates heat and friction and starts to break down the particals and release the cocoa butter within the cocoa nib. This process will leave you will unrefined "chocolate liquor" or "unsweetened chocolate".

Cocoa Pressing:
Now is when you are going to seperate the cocoa butter and cocoa solids by using chocolate liquor in a cocoa press. You have to press with extreme pressure to seperate the two and you will end up with cocoa butter and "cakes" of cocoa powder. The cocoa powder is then pulverized into dust and cooled. The cocoa butter is stored and used for all different products but is also used to put back into chocolate to raise the cocoa butter percentage in a chocolate bar. You can take out different percentages of cocoa butter from the chocolate liquor to create different cocoa powders. This makes it so you can have a few different cocoa powders with varying percents of cocoa butter within. Popular percentages of cocoa butter within cocoa power are 10-12% and 22-24% but there are also others.

Addtional Ingredients:
This is where you mix the percents of any other ingredients in with the chocolate liquor(milk, sugar, lecithin(emulsifier), and Vanilla). You mix these ingredients together and then send it off to be refined.

Refining:
This is where you reduce the partical size in the chocolate to a smaller degree so there is not a grainy feeling to it when eaten. Partical size, once refined, needs to be below about 30 microns. Most manufacturers get it between 10-30 microns depending on what they are trying to acheive. At that point the human tongue can not discern grain anymore. This makes it so that the chocolate will be smooth on the tongue when melting. If you over refine you can end up with too small of a partical size and the chocolate will have a slimy and gummy feeling when eatin.

Conching:
Friction between the sugar and cacao particals occur and refine the mouthfeel of the chocolate and blends all the ingredients into a uniform mass. This can take from a few hours to 5 days. This procses is done to develop the flavors of the chocolate being made and to expel acids in the chocolate that contribute to acidic flavors. Conching will also coat every partical with cocoa butter so that it has a good clean melting property on your tongue. This is a very important step and if not done you will not get the texture and melting abilities that you want in fine chocolate.

Tempering:
The chocolate is "tempered".  This is where all the crystals in chocolate are set so that the bar created has a good clean snap, a good shine, and a good melting point. The procedure for this and more explanation is is on the "Tempering" page of this site.

Cooling:
The chocolate is molded, cooled through a cooling tunnel, wrapped, and is then shipped around the world for us to enjoy.