[fi788]

This is a topic I studied and really love. After hacking my way into chocolate making, the results were extraordinary. I became a famous chocolate maker in Colombia, was portrayed in magazines and became somehow known in the local gourmet scene. I learned a lot and had a chance to meet wonderful people, all while running an IT-sector company doing CMS and cloud infrastructure development.

For the Hacker News crowd, I think the article does well-intentioned but misleading assumptions while not being very encouraging for people to get out and make chocolate. For example, conching is not necessarily required, as is soy lecithin. Domori, a top chocolate maker in Italy does only 'partial conching' and most artisan chocolate makers have a single process for refining and conching on one machine.

If you really want to learn about chocolate making, and doing it on your own, I would definitely recommend these resources:

1. Chocolate Alchemy (http://www.chocolatealchemy.com/), ran by Jon Nancy. He revolutionized the artisan, small scale chocolate industry by popularizing the use of indian lentil grinders (Santha, Ultra) for grinding cocoa. He sells the cocoa and the machines, and his ingenious solutions for refining, winnowing (removing shell) and tempering are a great reference. When starting out, I actually bought one of these machines in India after visiting a friend. Hacked a computer fan for cooling and opened ventilation holes to avoid overheating. Worked great. Don't even get me started on winnowing (husk removal): my household versions ranged from a hair dryer and tumbling beans to a later version with a juice maker connected to a shop vac through complex tubing to control airflow and separate the husk from the bean efficiently.

2. The Chocolate Life (https://www.thechocolatelife.com/), ran by Clay Gordon is a social network for chocolate makers. The archives are full of input from chocolate makers who later became famous.

3. Eat good chocolate. Stores like Chocosphere sell some of the best chocolate online. Fine gourmet stores carry great chocolate. Several brands to try, just look at International Chocolate Award winners for references.

[archagon]

That's fascinating! How did you manage to balance running two such disparate businesses at once? (Or was your chocolate operation very small?)

[fi788]

Most of the effort comes at the beginning during development of the process, formulations, facility. I always produced lower quantities, about 40kg per month or over 500 chocolate bars.

I would work nights, weekends and ocasional afternoons. It was a lot of fun. When making chocolate, you end up smelling like chocolate. Your skin and clothing get a chocolate scent that even stranger can recognize. My wife was super cooperative. I trained a few chocolate makers.

I also saw making chocolate as nice change from working around computers all my life. Yet, after machines break down, chocolate gets splattered all over walls and floors, chocolate loses temper, or a batch of bad cocoa arrives, I ended up appreciating all the beauties of software development and managing virtual servers.

Do checkout Potomac Chocolate, he is a solid chocolate maker in Virginia who is also a sysadmin by profession.