Peter’s cocoa beans, grinding process and finished chocolate recipes in Antigua

Cocoa beans go in. A dark paste comes out. Peter walked me through the work between those two moments at Antigua House of Chocolate.

Where does Antigua House of Chocolate get its cocoa beans?

Antigua House of Chocolate uses cocoa from Dominica. Its current website also identifies Caribbean and Dominica cocoa as part of its bean to bar work.

What connection brought Peter’s cocoa beans from Dominica to Antigua?

I then used these contacts and connections in the future and in the past. Now we are here in Antigua to bring cocoa beans from Dominica into Antigua, to make a bean to bar chocolate.

What did Peter mean when he called his cocoa beans organic?

We continue the drying process here. The bean itself has the shell on still.

Some of them shell off. But we take these beans as they are, fermented and dried.

And you can eat them with the shell. It’s a wholesome product.

It’s 100% organic.

“100% organic” is Peter’s description. Ask the maker for the relevant current certification if a certified organic product is what you need.

How does Antigua House of Chocolate turn beans into cocoa paste?

Antigua House of Chocolate grinds its roasted beans into paste. Peter showed me the grinding equipment during the chocolate tour.

Where does Peter use machinery in his chocolate making?

We have the cocoa beans that came from over there, the roasted ones. We put them in our grinding unit.

Now there’s people in Dominica that make the bean into a paste by using an old aluminum meat grinder. It’s a very time consuming thing.

We do not have that time. So here we’re getting the help of technology, but we’re still not modifying the product from its originality.

Well, you will have a look for yourself. And you see.

So we’re going to go now to our grinding unit. In here we have atmospheric temperature.

And the reason why we choose that location for the equipment, because you’re getting the afternoon sun coming in. And it helps to warm the unit slightly because there’s only mechanical manipulation taking place.

How long did Peter run the chocolate mixing machine?

We’ve done some earlier on so it’s already mixing. And then you’re looking in here and you’re welcome to go all the way in and have a look over it.

This is running three days and three nights nonstop to turn the powder into this creamy black paste.

No additives. No liquid, no water, nothing.

We run it because we like the silky smooth of the chocolate because the shells are in it. We work everything into the paste and it grinds it down, grinds it down until you have basically what we call black gold.

We start with this up again. We let it run.

Once we are ready to harvest, we are going to open the lid.

What does Antigua House of Chocolate put into its finished recipes?

The pure cocoa paste is an intermediate product. Antigua House of Chocolate then makes different finished chocolate recipes with it.

Which ingredients did Peter describe adding to the chocolate?

And then we’re bringing the chocolate that we have from the melanger into our tempering unit. It could be almonds.

It could be raisins. It could be fruits, it could be cane sugar.

It could be icing sugar. Depending on what flavor direction we want to go with.

How did Peter sell Antigua House of Chocolate’s slabs?

So we do not do chocolate bars. We do chocolate slabs.

You can see the look of it. These slabs are pound each and we sell them to chefs.

We cut them and break them for people to buy by the weight, by the ounce. So basically bark chocolate, which is the purest form of chocolate that we sell.

This is the product we really like to produce and like to get out there.

This is our flagship product, which is a 75 to 80%, which is basically just been mixed in with some cocoa butter.

We have local people that come in. They use them for cooking brownies, cookies, whatever.

And then people, when they come, we just would take the slabs and we cut them up.

Peter was describing that product range during the interview. Ask about the ingredients and size of the piece you are buying. His paste and an almond, fruit or sugar recipe are different products.

Read the story of the Dominica beans and Peter’s thoughts on growing the business beside it. Victoria’s tasting method gives you another way to pay attention to the chocolate in your hand.