Bean-to-Bar: For the love of cacao beans.

It may be difficult to imagine the process of producing chocolate from its original form of the unrefined cacao bean to the creations we know and love on our shelves, however, with the exciting launch of Hill St.’s own bean-to-bar production, our customers will get an insight into what takes place when making our products from the bean itself. The development of this new adventure allows us to ensure both full traceability and sustainability, whilst also giving our chocolatier’s complete control over each stage of the process and therefore allowing us to perfect the flavour profiles of our chocolates. Through the stages of roasting, winnowing, grinding, refining, conching and tempering we are able to bring the concept of our own bean-to-bar chocolates to life. The cacao variety we have selected is Nicalizo which is categorised with notes of grapes, raisins and cocoa, allowing for a smooth and woody chocolate. This comes from a great company called Ingeman in Nicaragua, a country recognized by the International Cocoa Organization to have 100% fine cocoa origin, making it one of nine in total to be awarded this form of recognition. 

To have others equally keen to both see and taste the outcome of our experimentations with bean-to-bar has been wonderful; we even had the pleasure of welcoming Jamie Oliver into our production lab to share his own insight of the journey taken from the Nicaraguan cacao bean to Hill St.’s own tablet - be sure to check out both Hill St and Jamie Oliver’s Instagram to experience the stages of bean-to-bar yourself! For a longer lasting flavour and the guarantee of an ethically sourced product, our bean-to-bar chocolates will leave a favourable impression.