Brad Makes Chocolate Part 2

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Bet ya I could run you through that, Vinny.

Get outta my way, buddy.

Cutting into production here.

Hey guys, today on It's Alive we're gonna be

doing chocolate making Part Two,

if you didn't see Part One,

we were down in Ecuador where we learned how

cacao is farmed, harvested, fermented,

maybe you didn't know it was fermented but it is.

Here in San Francisco at the Guittard factory

we're gonna be learning how we take that

raw ingredient and turn it into the finished

chocolate product of many types.

Chocolate, Vinny!

(upbeat music)

All right guys, turns out the factory is very loud

so I'm going to talk you through it out here

we'll pepper in some awesome footage that we

caught from the factory and all this

chocolate being made.

It should be good fun.

So remember back in Part One

back at the co-op we were filling up

those big burlap bags.

We shipped them back over to San Francisco

where we're going to meet up in

the receiving room we cut open the bags,

the beans fall out into this machine.

What that machine does is

sort by size and gets rid of

foreign objects that aren't cacao beans.

Look at all those beans, Vinny!

Get in there, bud!

Kinda like gutting a deer, Vinny.

Look at that!

Boom, baby!

Huh, who's better than us?

Oh!

It's fine.

And then from there the beans go

over to a machine that roasts the beans

and then cracks them open.

The shells go out one way,

and then the nibs go down this really fascinating

conveyor belt machine that sorts it by size.

They go out to the next process.

Oh, warm!

Freshly roasted. Fresh roasted.

Woo!

So here we're at the milling machine.

It has three big cylinders and inside there are

these stone grinders.

Cacao nibs are half cacao solids

and half cacao butter.

When you grind that up it comes out in this

beautiful rich paste.

It's very similar to the process of

how you make peanut butter.

From there you can see this beautiful liquid

coming out and that's called the liquor.

So if you're gonna be making dark chocolate

you take that liquor and you add some sugar.

Then if you want to be making milk chocolate

you take that liquor, add some milk,

and some sugar.

That liquor gets piped over to these machines

called the refiner.

Essentially what these big drums are doing

is just shearing particle size,

removing any of that gritty texture,

'cause you guys are familiar with sugar.

It's not a small,

it's small but it's not real small,

you know like, if you were.

From there it falls off, and it's called

fleck, or flake?

Flake?

[Assistant] Flake.

Flake.

From there the flake falls off and it gets moved

up these conveyor belts.

So this is before it goes through the rolls.

So it's a little bit coarser,

you can taste the grain.

You're gonna want more than that.

Ooh.

You guys should just sell that,

in a toothpaste tube.

It's pretty good.

I'll buy all of it.

So this is the refiner flake straight off the machine

so this is after it's already worked its way.

[Brad] Through the rollers?

[Amy] Through the rollers.

Oh wow!

Super smooth, none of that gritty,

you can't taste the difference between

the sugar and the cacao.

It's just one.

Yeah.

This is our conche room.

Oh and conching, like the shell?

Sure. Okay.

So after the refiner, the refiner flake

goes into our conches and basically

it cooks in on itself

so it's like a Maillard reaction, so.

Quiet down up there!

We're making a movie!

When you're making toast, you take bread,

you put it in the toaster,

your toast tastes different from your bread.

That's the Maillard reaction.

So it's basically what's happening in here.

So the chocolate goes into the conche,

and it cooks in on itself.

It sort of releases flavor.

[Brad] Wow.

[Woman] So if you look deep inside, you've got these.

Spinning blades.

So once we left the conche,

the chocolate gets tempered.

Tempering essentially sets up the chocolate

so that it has that snap and it melts nice, right?

Yep, exactly.

And then from there, it gets piped over to these

machines which are called Greers.

And what that is, is depositing or molding.

That's where it's going to take its form

and become a chocolate bar.

After these trays are filled, they go down the belt

where the chocolate is cooled and allows it to set up

and take a solid form and then from there,

it gets packaged up, set in the boxes,

and off to the destination.

I'm falling behind, Vinny.

Backwards again?

All right Vinny, put your thumb down buddy,

come on, get in here.

Slip it in.

Chocolate bar, Vinny!

That one's for you, single serving!

Oh that was a good one, Vinny, you get that?

Probably not.

And then right through.

Woo!

Auto Packer!

Ta-ta!

Off to the restaurant world, Vinny.

10 pound bars, book baby, you need them,

you call up the boy at Guittard over here.

Fed-Ex it right to your house, no problem.

Back to the line, Vinny, you're cutting into production.

One of the most important parts of chocolate making

is quality control.

We're gonna take a little detour over in

Guittard's quality control lab.

So we get these pre-shipment samples

of cocoa beans from the farms.

They've already been fermented.

So now what we're going to do is

we're gonna do a cut test to evaluate

the quality of these beans before we

actually use them in the roasting area.

Hey what's this little apparatus called here?

[Sean] It's called a bean guillotine.

[Brad] Oh, a bean guillotine.

Yeah, man.

All right so we just lock 'em up,

just drop the.

I don't even make chocolate, I want one of these.

Ooh, that looked like it felt good, Sean!

It does. Yeah.

It eases stress, man.

All right.

[Brad] Oh, wow!

So we evaluate the color, the texture.

We just look for impurities such as underfermentation.

These purple colored, are good quality beans.

Any chance I could maybe.

Oh yeah, man!

Get some stress out with this little bean guillotine?

Go for it.

Just push it right down.

Yes sir.

You really gotta push it, huh Sean?

Jesus Christ, Sean's strong as hell.

All right.

Flip it around, yeah.

[Brad] Ooh, look at the purple we got, Vinny!

[Sean] That's a good cut.

[Brad] That's a good cut, damn good cut, Sean.

What do you do next after this?

[Sean] Then we'll do a little mini roasting process

over there on that roaster.

Then we'll run it through this little mill.

Pretty much what we did in here

is exactly what happens in the factory

but on a smaller scale.

Now we're going to take the liquor sample we made

and a few others, we're gonna go meet up with

Gary Guittard and we're going to taste the liquors

to make sure that they're up to Guittard standards.

We've done a cut test on these which really

kind of gives us a little bit of a preview

of what we're looking for.

If a cocoa bean is not fermented properly

it has a very astringent taste.

As a cocoa bean is fermented, that goes away

and more of the chocolate flavor comes out.

I understand. More of the aromas.

Let's try a good one.

My untrained palate I'd say, approved, tastes great.

It's such a powerful flavor.

That it's just overwhelming.

A lot of times when I taste it

I'm really tasting it for off-flavors.

Right.

That's a good one, it has no off-flavors.

So let's go to a not-good one.

Yeah.

Smells different.

Tastes completely different.

It has like a manure-y flavor.

It is a little barn-y.

This is over fermented.

Okay.

It does come across on a burnt side.

But that happened in the fermentation.

Wow.

Unbelievable the difference.

Yeah. In flavor.

And that's just like you said, from the fermentation?

That just the fermentation.

Which is super crucial.

We have two trays here, one being good,

one being bad.

[Gary] Right.

And just from my untrained eye and little experience,

I'd go ahead and say this one's the bad one.

[Gary] Yep.

[Brad] So this one you can see has a little more

uniformity and color and it's got more of that

beautiful pink-purple hues to it.

[Gary] Yep.

[Brad] And you said very important that they

have those cracks or fissures.

But this is bad because it's not only

not totally uniform in its color,

but it has some mold in there.

[Brad] You can see the bloom.

[Gary] Yeah, and it doesn't take much to

ruin a whole batch.

I'm amazed it doesn't happen more often.

It is pretty amazing when you see it happen.

It's unbelievable.

It seems like it would be so easy to screw up.

Yeah, it is easy to screw up.

Yeah.

Well Mr. Guittard, thank you.

Yeah, thank you and thank you for your interest.

For tasting with me and showing me the ways here.

We saw how the 10 pound bars are made.

They also here at Guittard make a ton of different

chocolate products, from chocolate chips to the wafers.

The wafers are probably my favorite.

We use them at the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen

for just about everything from snacking to baking.

They melt consistently.

Easy to store.

This is our sample room.

So everything is stored here, it's sort of a

fun place to look and realize the diversity

of products that we make.

So when I call you from the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen

and say Amy, listen, we really need some more of those

wonderful chocolate wafers or chips.

Do you pull them from here?

[Amy] They come from here.

Oh cool. Yeah.

Well thank you Amy.

All right guys, there you have it.

That's chocolate.

Started off all the way on the farm where we learned

how they were growing them, how they were

harvesting them, fermenting them, drying them, bagging them,

all that knowledge that went into there,

just to get that dried bean, just to get this start.

And then all the way back to the factory

where we saw how they roasted them, how they grind them,

how they mill them, from the chips

to the 10 pound bars, all the passion

that gets involved into it.

It reflects in the product.

I would just like to thank Amy Guittard,

Gary Guittard, and everyone involved.

Jimmy and his family.

It was really humbling and inspiring to see

that kind of care going into what most people

consider a simple product.

But it's much more than that.

When you go out there and buy that chocolate,

just keep in mind how much it took to get there.

I would just like to say thank you and I hope you guys

enjoyed this trip as much as we did.

I'll never be able to look at chocolate the same.

Bon Appetit.

I said good day, sir!

You know, it's just a, it's a very specialized.

(loudspeaker)

Mother (beep)!

Oh.

Ohhh!

Oh Jesus!

Nice to meet you!

Right over the old gubellini, pal.

You got, what about ah, woo hoo?

[Assistant] It's inside.

Ah, okay, cool.

I don't wanna go to school.

Hey Vinny, look, I'm you.

All right, a little more energy, Vince.

I don't like this thing, take it back.

I believe that's, cocoa butter.

Wait, is this cocoa butter?

No. Oh.

Just put me in the butter vat.

Augustus Goop?

[Assistant] Gloop.

Gloop, Jesus Christ.

Oh this shirt, Vinny, you like that?

Good thing we're in the Bay Area, babe.

Edgevale, we're gonna go meet up with Tony.

Brought to you by Edgevale.

Is it Edgeval?

Edgevale, well, we'll find out tonight.

(laughs)

Can we please get a shot of the Redwoods?

Okie dokie!

Vinny, up there, bud, take a look.

Look at this thing, huh?

Come on.

Call me whatever you want.

Treehugger, that's fine, man, I love

these freakin' things.

Big ol' Redwood baby, huh?

Look at you!

There's so many different applications with the final

product of chocolate.

Comment below, let me know if there's anything

you'd like to see me make with chocolate.

I'm not looking for chocolate chip cookie recipes

or your triple chocolate cake.

Get creative.

Comment below, let me know.

If we get enough, maybe we'll get a Part Three.