The New Factory

As usual, it’s been a long time since I’ve had a chance to write about Rogue Chocolatier and what we’ve been up to. Over the last year, we have been continually overwhelmed with the demand for our chocolate. It was taking me up to 70 hours of labor a week to produce 70 lbs of chocolate (500 bars), even with the aid of a full time employee.

The long work hours were largely due to the machinery I was using, as the conche was only capable of a very small batch size. In turn, this has lead to persistent stock issues. We are really lucky to be working with stores that have been very understanding of the nature and limitations of artisan production. Our tiny 400 square foot facility was bursting at the seams.

These issues, coupled with a desire to be closer to family, lead us to begin looking into facilities in Massachusetts. We found a great space in Three Rivers, Massachusetts, where we moved April 1st. The following five months were filled with trial, as we painted, did all of the ceiling tile work, installed our former machines (as well as some new ones), plumbing, duct-work, etc. We’re really pleased with the resulting space so far. It has enabled better separation of different processes and allowed us to work a bit more efficiently.

Many of you already know that several months ago we were able to finally sell a couple of beautiful antique machines that I had purchased with the hopes of refurbishing them. After several years of storing those machines, fixing them up, and learning about
chocolate manufacturing and the chocolate that we want to make, I had decided that they weren’t the right fit. Fortunately, we broke even and I was able to use a portion of the money to acquire a small laboratory conche. Laboratory chocolate conches are specialty machines that generally cost the same as production machines, because there are so few produced. They are generally only used for research and development laboratories for larger customers in order to reproduce the dynamics of larger machines for formulating purposes. At any given moment, you’re lucky if one is for sale in the world. We purchased this used conche from a company in Germany. It was a great deal, because there were no controls included, the inside was covered in superficial rust, and it had been sitting in a shipping container for about 20 years. Mechanically, these are very simple machines with just a few moving parts. I thought to myself, how hard can it be to refurbish it myself?

Well, as it turns out, not as easy as I had hoped!

Just a little on the machine: the new conche is a rotary conche. What that means is that we are now able to process the chocolate with much greater energy efficiency, and in my opinion, better repeatability and control over flavor and texture than a so-called melanguer/wet grinder that we formerly used and that are being used by many of the newer bean-to-bar start-ups, or than a longitudinal conche. The conche functions by smearing a powdery mix of cocoa mass and sugar that comprises most of the particles in the chocolate against the walls of a horizontal tank to deaggomeratize, disperse, and coat particle surfaces with cocoa butter. This process changes the texture of the chocolate so that it has better melting properties in your mouth. More importantly, this process changes the way we perceive chocolate flavor by altering the way that aromas and flavors emerge in our mouths.

For example, rather than just tasting a very straight forward cocoa flavor and acidity, one might experience a layering of various fruit aromas, a gradual build or shift in acidity, and a more harmonious overall character to the chocolate. This is the same overall process we have been using for the past year and a half or so of production, but rather than a modified machine with poor temperature control and low power, this machine is designed for this use. Also, we are using the same cycle times as we had before. So, the real change is that we are now able to do the process we have been doing all along, but better. In theory, we should be able to actually control a process that has up until now involved a good deal of chance. There is still a lot to learn and I have been working out the main quirks on the first few batches. So far, the results are very exciting. I am happy to discuss the merits and advantages of different types of conching with anyone interested. I plan to blog about it soon on our website.

As we move into the holiday season, I am working hard to bring in some new products. I hope to have more announcements relating to them very soon. In the meantime, I’m really excited to have all of the bars back up on the site. Everything is in stock. We really appreciate your business and all that it has allowed us to do. We are working hard every day to keep innovating and producing chocolate that we hope you’ll love. I hope to be sending out updates more often. Stay tuned!