Bean-to-Bar Process
You may think you know chocolate - a cheap and cheerful sweet fix, with every mass-produced bar tasting almost exactly the same. But chocolate can be so much more.
Much like craft coffee, chocolate should celebrate the beans from which it is made. The farmers we work with are small producers, growing cacao with care and attention, using techniques passed down through generations. Everything - from soil conditions to changes in weather - can influence the taste of the finished bar, so no two batches are ever the same. Each origin brings its own unique nuances, complexities, and flavours waiting to be explored.
Many familiar chocolate brands sacrifice flavour for consistency and lower prices. At Bullion, we do the opposite: we celebrate the differences, from terroir to yearly harvests. Each grower has a story to tell - and we’re here to tell it, so you can taste it.
Bean-to-bar is no simple process, but we believe it’s worth every step. Here’s how we transform a raw cacao bean into a finished bar of craft chocolate:
Sorting and RoastingWhen sacks of beans arrive at our factory in Sheffield, the first step is to sort through them by hand. We’re looking for anything that doesn’t belong in a chocolate bar- string, stones, and broken beans to name a few. This is a painstaking process, but it guarantees that the beans going into our bars are top quality. Once we’ve sorted our beans, we’re ready to roast. Our roast times and temperatures are tailored to each individual origin, allowing us to bring the best possible flavour notes out of the beans, which are showcased in the bars that we produce.
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Breaking and WinnowingWhen our beans come out of the oven, we cool them down before we break them. This step cracks the beans open so we can get to the part we really want – the nibs. After this, the winnowing process uses a vacuum to remove the husk. This part of the bean wouldn’t taste so good in our bars, but it doesn’t go to waste – it is a key ingredient in our candles, helping to produce their delicious chocolatey smell. |
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Grinding and ConchingThe cacao is now ready to be transformed into chocolate. We load small batches of nibs into our stone melangeur, ready for grinding. First, the nibs are ground down until they have a silky-smooth consistency, called the cocoa liquor. At this stage we can start adding the cocoa butter and cane sugar, before leaving them to grind together for up to 72 hours. |
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Tempering and MouldingThe grinding process produces blocks of chocolate ready for tempering. At this stage, the chocolate has a crumbly consistency and can be whitish in colour. The tempering process involves heating and cooling the chocolate to change its structure, before it is poured into our iconic bullion bar moulds. This results in smooth, shiny chocolate bars with a good snap. |
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Wrapping and DeliveryWe carefully foil and wrap all of our bars by hand, ready to stacked in your local supplier or delivered to straight to your door when ordering online. |
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Using these processes, we bring out the true flavours of every bean, creating chocolate that tastes like it was always meant to. In other words, we bring out the gold in the cacao.