For those of you unfamiliar with craft bean-to-bar chocolate, its definitely something special.  Making craft bean-to-bar chocolate means that we process the cacao bean into the rich, creamy chocolate that you may (or may not) be familiar with.  Our sustainably sourced, organic, fair trade cacao beans are inbound from Ecuador and are absolutely perfect.  We roast them, refine them, add sweeteners and flavoring (as needed) temper them, and pour them into bars for the world to enjoy!  ...well, first Montana, then the world.  

You may just be familiar with the big names in commodity chocolates (you know the ones, lining checkout counters in grocery stores).  Unfortunately, they cut an awful lot of corners.  Craft bean-to-bar chocolates go the road less traveled and don't cut corners.  Why?  Because its worth it!

The big commodity chocolate companies source their beans through less than ethical means to keep costs down.  With all of the negative publicity around the slave labor and overall poor treatment of workers on Ivory Coast cacao farms, I wouldn't be doing my job (or succeeding at making people happy) if I didn't help support ethical farming practices and fair trade initiatives.  I like knowing that my cacao beans come from and that the folks that supply them are getting the fundamental financial building blocks to help them live a happy life.

The other thing about commodity chocolate vs craft bean-to-bar chocolates is the the manufacturing process and the flavor.  

The large commodity chocolate manufacturers use excessive cocoa butter and mix cacao from multiple sources to make it easier to manufacture, eliminate seasonal/regional flavors inherent with the cacao, drown out the naturally occurring fruity flavors found in cacao (that you may not have even known existed), and make sure it has the same bland (yet somehow over sweetened) chocolate flavor year after year.  Don't even get me started on the tempering process.  Sugar is cheap...that's why the conventional chocolates ar so sweet.  However the more sugar that is added, the harder it is to temper the chocolate.  As a result the larger commodity manufacturers cut this corner by adding emulsifiers to their mix.  That's right, this means that conventional chocolate isn't even tempered...its congealed.

Bean-to-bar chocolate is generally pretty dark (over 50% cacao even for the sweet stuff) because that's what is needed to make the chocolate temper properly.  We like that nice tempered snap in each and every one of our bars when you break off a chunk.

Bean-to-bar chocolates also like to embraces those seasonal flavor differences by using the bare minimum of cocoa butter.  While cocoa butter is technically cacao, it dulls the flavor of the cacao bean itself.  Joy Chocolates has found the perfect recipe with 75% single source cacao beans (using just enough cocoa to lubricate our melangers) to really draw out that fruity apricot finish...which (believe it or not) is simply the taste of the cacao fruit.  Check out the Big Sky bar when you have a chance.  Its an experience, even if you don't like chocolate this dark.

A final thought with regards to the smaller chocolatiers and confectioners, generally speaking they will just buy chocolate chips from these large commodity chocolate manufacturers, add some secret ingredients, and mold them into basically the same chocolate bar you'll find on the impulse rack on store shelves everywhere...just a little more expensive.  We're not bad mouthing the little guys here, we're actually here to help!  Joy Chocolates is not there quite yet, but ultimately we'd like to step up and help provide an alternative source for ethical (and delicious) chocolate that can be melted down and remade into confections of all kinds!

"The candy man can because he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good."

-The Candy Man, from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory