Bean to Bar Chocolate

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deck.md

footer: Brazilian Bean to Bar slidenumbers: true autoflow: true  #[fit] Brazilian #[fit] Bean to Bar #[fit] **Chocolate** --- Grab the chocolate bar nearest to you. Read the **label**. ^Really — a KitKat, whatever's in the drawer. This talk starts there. ---  Sugar. Vegetable fat. Cocoa powder. Vanilla. Lecithin. **Flavoring.** ^A typical supermarket bar. 5-10% actual cacao. Sugar always comes first. --- Chocolate that tastes of everything **except cacao.** ^How did we get here? To answer that, rewind three thousand years. --- #[fit] Rewind #[fit] **3,000 years.** ---  The Maya drank their cacao — bitter, spiced, **alive with flavor**. This vessel held chocolate a thousand years before the candy bar. ^A real Maya chocolate-drinking vessel (Walters Art Museum, public domain). Cacao was ground, mixed with water and chili, poured from height for foam. --- For the Maya and the Aztec, cacao was **currency**. A turkey: 100 beans. An avocado: 3. ^You could literally spend chocolate. Counterfeiters made fake beans out of clay. --- Then the 20th century happened. **Cheap. Sweet. Identical.** Millions of bars, one flavor. ^Industrial chocolate is an engineering marvel — and a flavor funeral. Heavy roasting hides bean defects; additives standardize everything. --- We traded **flavor** for uniformity. --- #[fit] Then someone #[fit] started over. #[fit] From the **bean**. ---  **Cocoa nibs**: roasted cacao beans, cracked and winnowed. Two ingredients: cacao and sugar. ^The maker controls every step from here: grinding, conching for hours, tempering, molding. --- # The Process :::diagram graph LR A[Harvest & Ferment] --> B[Dry & Roast] B --> C[Crack & Grind] C --> D[Conch & Temper] D --> E[Mold & Package] style A fill:#8B4513,stroke:#5C3317,color:#fff style B fill:#D2691E,stroke:#8B4513,color:#fff style C fill:#A0522D,stroke:#6B3A2A,color:#fff style D fill:#704214,stroke:#3E2723,color:#fff style E fill:#1B0E07,stroke:#000,color:#fff ::: ^ Each step affects flavor. Temperature, time, and technique create the maker's signature. --- [.background-color: #3E2723] [.header: #DEB887] #[fit] One bean. #[fit] **Infinite** flavors. ^ Same cacao variety, different soil, fermentation, roasting → completely different chocolate. This is what industry erased — and craft brought back. --- # Industrial vs. Craft :::columns ## Industrial - Bulk cacao, commodity markets - Heavy roasting hides defects - Additives standardize flavor ::: ## Bean to Bar - Single-origin, traceable beans - Light roast preserves terroir - Cacao + sugar. That's it. ::: ^ Supermarket bars: 5-10% cacao. Craft bars: 65-80%+. ---  #[fit] **Brazil** ^ 7th largest cacao producer — Bahia, Pará, Espírito Santo. For a century Brazil exported beans and imported chocolate. That's changing. ---  # Mission Chocolate São Paulo — Arcelia Gallardo trained at Dandelion, came to Brazil, and pays farmers **4× market price**. Most awarded chocolate brand in the country. ^ 50+ awards in 5 years. She's the proof that making chocolate AT the origin beats shipping beans north. ---  # Luisa Abram **Wild cacao** from the Amazon, foraged along the Purus River by ribeirinho families. Two ingredients. Flavors no plantation can copy. ^ Her family bet everything on wild cacao when nobody believed it could work. --- Over **150 makers** in Brazil today. Lasevicius. Raros. Caza. Odle. Mestiço. Nugali. Baiani. Dengo... Full list: **beantobarbrasil.com.br** ^ From two pioneers to a movement in one decade. Brazilian makers win gold at the Academy of Chocolate regularly now. --- # My Collection   ^ Mission, Luisa Abram, Mestiço, Clemens, Conspiracy, Kad Kokoa, Marou, Raros, and more. Every bar tastes like a place. --- [.background-color: #3E2723] [.header: #DEB887] # Your turn Next bar you pick up, **read the label**. If sugar comes first, put it back. beantobarbrasil.com.br ^ From bean to bar, every step matters — and it starts with what you buy.