Our Process

Making the magic – our process:

We’re proud to say we make our chocolate from scratch. From harvesting the cacao pods in Ecuador, right through to the finished Ombar on the shelf. It requires heaps of hard work, teamwork and commitment, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. Keeping close to our cacao sparks our creativity and helps us be the best chocolate champions we can be.

1. Harvesting

Farmers who own small-holdings in Ecuador harvest the pods from cacao trees and scoop out the beans.

2. Fermenting

These beans are taken to a post-harvest station nearby where the beans are carefully fermented in wooden boxes for 3-4 days under the watchful eye of Paola.

3. Drying

Once fermented, the beans are left on raised beds to air dry in the sun before being transported to our partner in the capital of Ecuador, Quito.

4. Winnowing

Here the beans are dried once more before being broken into pieces (nibs) and the papery husk removed.

5. Shipping

The nibs are shipped by boat to our chocolate factory in Cambridge, UK.

6. Grinding

We then carefully grind the cacao nibs into a smooth paste called cacao mass. This is our starting point for chocolate.

7. Refining

The mass is pumped into another machine called a refiner-conch where it is mixed with the other ingredients and ground for up to 24 hours until the consistency is silky smooth.
This is liquid chocolate.

8. Tempering

We then pump the chocolate into a machine that cools it to a very specific temperature that forms a crystal structure in the cocoa butter.
This is what gives chocolate a nice snap. It’s more stable too.

9. Moulding

The crystallised chocolate is deposited into our special Ombar moulds to form bars (or buttons) with a swanky hi-tech Swiss depositing machine and the bars are then cooled in a giant fridge for about 40 minutes.

10. Demoulding

If we’ve got the crystallisation stage right, then the chocolate should be hard. We then demould the chocolate by hand.

11. Wrapping

Finally, the chocolate bars are packed on our classic, Swiss wrapping machines.

Ta Dah!

A small and perfectly formed Ombar is ready.

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